EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (5 page)

We sat crumpled in one mass, arm in arm, sobbing in disbelief and joy at having found each other. For me, no matter what came to pass in the future, my life was complete. The spectrum of my life had found its limits from the lowest low to the highest high. After a time we gained our composure and lifted ourselves up off the floor, fortunate that we had done this when we had so there was no need to explain our behavior. We talked a bit and agreed that over time we would be able to share the details of the missing years. Kadishya asked me if that would be all right in French, and followed the sentence with…“Compri?” I smiled and wiped another tear and she laughed a subtle chuckle; then we both went into daydreams from our past for a moment.

We had had six months together then and had filled them with two lifetimes of fun. When there was nothing going on, she would always have our days planned. She taught me how to haggle in the markets. She took me to the beach to swim, and we would lie on the sand and watch the dung beetles push their balls of dung backwards down the beach. It seemed like such a perfect design as if God had created the beetle to form balls of dung so that when the wind blew, it would blow the escaped balls of dung away from the beetles and roll them for miles until they came to rest at the base of a bush that needed the fertilizer. What a perfect circle: camel or goat eats bush, animal drops dung, beetle rolls dung into ball, wind blows ball under bush, dung feeds bush.

We found humor in everything. Sometimes we would belly laugh so hard we would both cry tears of laughter. She had invited me to her aunt’s home for a formal dinner one night. This was a huge honor and my first lesson eating desert fashion with tagine and flat bread. For a teenage boy fresh out of Boy Scouts this was a dream come true. I got to eat with my hands. There was that feeling of my mind taking a photograph. Often in my dreams, in the years beyond, I would see that glance she shot at me out of the corner of her eye as I passed the doorway to the kitchen. This was the same look that I saw today. That was my picture of her. I had carried that mental picture in my mind and heart since then. She was humming with the same dreamy, childlike voice she had been given by the angels as a small child.

For ten years I held the dear, sweet memories of Kadishya in my mind. Parts of my life I lived according to how I thought she would approve. Her moral conviction, her personal pride, and her belief in her own rights and free will had taught me to believe that she would someday inspire the world. In our humor, laughter, and friendship she shared with me how she thought what I did was “weird” but then she would bless what I did because it brought us together. To her this meant that what I did for a living was a good thing for the world. Then she would joke and say, “But only if it always brings you back to me,” and she would rock back and forth. Her voice would go hoarse laughing her belly laugh as she slapped me on the shoulder in her favorite gesture of affection. She could play all roles. She would some days be my mother as she expounded her opinions and shook her finger at me. Some days she was like an older brother and knocked me around. Then there were the days when she would ask me on a date or she would critique my clothes or my hair like a sister. But mostly she was my best friend and I loved her for that. I loved her now as much or more than ever.

In a verbal ballet of catch-up questions, both of us starving for answers about what happened to the other, we filled in much of the gap. It was a surprise to learn that my little Kadishya had become a doctor. She laughed and said she considered studying geology in the hope it would bring me back into her life, but the need for medical personnel and her passion for helping others steered her towards her career.

Kadishya’s eyes watered slightly as she admitted, “There was always hope that my road would lead me to yours. And,” she laughed, “I prayed that it would not be in my emergency room.” One could see she had hung onto her independent mind and her sense of humor. She had developed the calm reserve of a worldly professional. Just then she spoke in her childhood voice and reached over to pinch my side like she had done the last day I had seen her and so many times before that whenever she was about to tease me. As she pinched me, she said, “Still chasing the stars and your bigger than life dreams I see.” One could see we were both happy with our choices, but we had always rather have shared them with one another. She added that now that she had her career, she could better understand the commitment I had to my own vocation. I told her that I have so much fun it feels like a sin. She rolled her eyes, laughed, and slapped my shoulder fondly. Just then Ali walked in and gave us a puzzled look. Ali was not part of the family and there was a chance he didn’t know much of our past.

There were three tables of people at dinner that night. Kadishya and I were both straining not to burst with questions and stories. After dinner the children sprang into action, dutifully clearing the tables and bringing more tea. In time people began to slip out of the room. Eventually the conversation turned to exclusive question and answer between Kahdy and me. Ali sensed that we needed this time to visit, and he slipped away with the last of the children in tow. Kadishya and I covered everything: my life, her life, my work, hers also. It felt being apart all those years had brought us even closer together. It wasn’t just seeing her there or hearing her voice or knowing that I could reach out and touch her; I could feel her presence fill the room.

I teased her by asking, “Where are your great girly glasses?”

She smiled, eyes closed, then cocked her head to the side, fired a look back, resisting a counter-tease, and said, “Contacts.”

I teased again with, “I miss the glasses, they did so much for you.”

Then, happy to reply to this one, she countered; “Then it’s a very good thing that I kept them for you. I remember how much you liked them. I always planned that when you grew old, I would loan them to you.”

We both laughed as we tried to get each other with some old tease target from our past. It was such fun to feel those feelings again. They were precious feelings and memories that had been locked away for so terribly long.

Kadishya had a more serious side that melded with her humor and it had always been there, but it had matured over these long years. Even though she was much younger than I, she had helped me grow up in those months we had together. She would always make me tow the line. She would mother me and berate me like her own child if I acted too foolishly or irresponsibly. She always had a keener eye, more like a sixth sense for risk or danger, and she could change her tone in an instant to warn me off or keep me in line. I liked that about her. Made me feel safe and secure, watched over.

“I see you’re still chasing your stars and taunting fate with near misses,” Kadishya ribbed, gesturing for me to sit. She lowered her eyelids into a criticizing sneer and said, “You are a slow learner aren’t you?”

Without agreeing I replied, “I like the term ‘tenacious.’”

Then Kadishya opened her heart and admitted sincerely, “I never stopped thinking of you, not for one day. I have always wished you success and I have prayed for you. In these years I have kept a journal; in it are articles and notes, pictures and names of contacts. Everything recorded in this journal might help you find more of your treasures from space.”

As she handed the scrapbook-like journal to me with photos and irregular papers and newspaper clippings hanging out of the edges, I could see she had spent an immeasurable amount of time building this colossal journal that lay heavy in my lap. As I flipped from page to page I could see the years of days of hours she had spent in hope that she might some day present this tremendous gift to me. These pages of hope that we would see each other again someday were pages of proof that she believed in my life’s passion. She supported in me the same thing that she used to delight in teasing me about. They say that guilt is the enemy; well then, the enemy had me by the throat. This was such a monumental effort of support and caring, and I had nothing to show her that I had thought about her also and as much. Just then it occurred to me that I did have something to show her. In my wallet, which I had gotten back from Zen’s vest, was a worn, tattered photograph of Kadishya and on the back it said, “My Kadishya, Compri?” When she held the picture in her hands, she gently ran her fingers over the ragged edges of her picture; the paper was tattered and curved from time, faded and stained from tears. She could see that I had spent countless hours staring into her eyes. The look in her face was as though the picture was speaking to her. Kadishya began to weep; we both leaned into each other and sobbed away some of the pain from having been apart for so long.

She disarmed the moment by cheerfully saying, “Now you must stay in my land and find all these specimens. I will find you a house so you can live nearby.”

We had found each other in an insecure time of change, both our lives between childhood and adulthood. What we had left with each other was a trust that the spirit of that love and friendship would always be there in our lives. I still had many questions for Kadishya but they could wait indefinitely. I just wanted to be with her.

Kahdy pointed as she volunteered, “Here, this section is on your sacred stone. Ali says this is what brought you here to me.”

I smiled as she said this, but replied, “I have never tried to find this stone. I have always felt that this stone has sacred significance and that it should not be pursued. It’s more like this stone is trying to find me. In the quest for other meteorites, the stories and legends of this stone keep presenting themselves. For something so mysterious and secret, there certainly are a lot of clues and flags laid in my path.”

She asked, “Do you want to find it?”

“I admit that I do have a serious curiosity, but only because I have heard about it for years and have never seen the mass.”

She continued, “You must promise that you will be extremely careful in approaching this treasure. Anything of this much legend and intrigue will always draw a bad element. Even good energy draws bad energy in this world. You must make a solemn promise that you will always return to me. You have a family here and you are well known to my children. My husband, God rest him, considered you as family also and he had hoped of someday getting to know you better. He was a historian and an archaeologist. You would have liked him a great deal and he you. He had taken an interest in your efforts. He would have wanted to go with you on some of your journeys. It was he who found many of these papers on your sacred stone. Shortly before he passed, he had told me that he felt he had gotten close to its truth. At that point I asked him to let it go. A part of him was like you; he laughed at my request. I could see that he had your silly fever, that feeling that he was so close that stopping now was impossible to even consider. He used to tell me, ‘Brightest star of my heart, does a fisherman work all day and then when his quarry finally shows interest in the bait, draw in his line and row for shore?’”

I nodded in agreement with his analogy. I liked this man that I would never meet. I felt that he would have been fun to work with; he was of a like mind.

“Ah, there is that look of yours,” she pegged me. “I used to tell my father, Sharif, about your look and how you and he would get that same look when you would talk about this thing. Please tell me that you will be careful. I lost you once and cannot bear to lose you again.”

I really wanted to ask her for her side of the story, but I knew that in time I would learn the details of our parting. So I simply said, “you will never lose me, you never have, nor I you. And now I can always find my way back to you. I will not let anything happen to me or to us. I promise to take care. I am not after this stone. I am only here on a general hunting and buying trip. I will get this piece of Sharif’s into the hands of scientists who can tell him what he has. But beyond that, this is a routine buying and recovery trip.” I said this as I impulsively reached over my chest and rubbed my arm. “Granted, there seem to be a few more glitches than usual, but I promise to be careful.”

It occurred to me to show the wounds to Kahdy but then when I reflected on how rapidly they had healed, I thought she might find it strange and resisted raising any suspicion. “So tell me about yourself,” I said. Do you still sing my favorite song of the Sahara? Do you still believe that there is magic in the sand? Do you still read late into the night? Do you still drink your tea in the morning brimming with cream and then eat your croissant with goat’s milk yogurt?”

She laughed and gulped for air, leaning forward and throwing her long thick black hair back and flushing with a twinge of embarrassment. “Yes, yes, yes,” she laughed. “And you?” She asked, “do you still snore like my grandfather? Do you still bite mint lifesavers at night and watch the sparks fly from your mouth? Do you still taste every rock you acquire? Do you carry more books in your pack than clothes?” We both laughed loudly and lifted our heads to breathe in from the laughter.

There were no barriers between us: none of culture or gender, none of age or emotion. There were no borders or beliefs that held us apart. We were as one. We protected what we had between us and would not allow any boundary or standard to interfere with our fun and friendship. I reminded her of the day she had taken me to a motorcycle race. We had collapsed to the ground, rolling in audible amusement when the first class of bikes came up the hill in front of us. The poor novices on their mopeds pedaling to reach the top were falling over as they lost momentum. It was a memory she had let go of and suddenly she realized what a treat she had shown me as I recalled every detail and we belly laughed all over again.

“And you, a doctor,” I mused, continuing to tease her, “amazing, so can you save me if I break?”

She quipped, “Only if you are good to me and it will of course depend on how I feel about you on that day. I will always save you, but your behavior will determine how much it will hurt.”