Peter points to the back of his hand and says, “I don’t want to remember you at all. I want to be with the woman who drew the heart. I want to be with her heart. I know her heart. And she is not the bad person she says she is.”
For the first time since their time in Rome, Zara starts to shed her tears, the ones that soaked Peter on so many occasions, so many occasions so treasured by Peter. She looks down as she cannot bear to look him in the eyes. “I know you so desire to know my love. I know you so desire to feel my love. And I so want to tell you of that love. But our time together has come to its end. The thousands of years of destined forces pushing us together disappeared as we sent the objects back to heaven. There is no earthly or heavenly reason for us to continue. I cannot hear the voice anymore. And you should have seen by now, your dreams are becoming less and less severe.”
Not ready for dejection, Peter valiantly tries to save the situation as he saved her once before. “But if we have love, why do we need the object as our reason for being together?”
Recognizing she is not responding to his plea, he says, “Remember our last special touch, the one where you saw my dream of the last high priestess of the Cult of Illyana? And what did she say in her new oral tradition? ‘It is said it must be man and woman. But it must be man who loves woman. Not for her skin, not for her fertility, not for her family. But for her. For her inner beauty seeking to be with the voice.’ That is me to you she spoke of.”
She purses her lips, still looking down. “Peter, we had a few weeks of time together. We became close in ways normal people never will know. Alas, it was only a few weeks. Here in America, in your films, a man and a woman meet. They have an adventure for a couple of weeks. And it’s love for life. Happily ever after.”
Pointing back at her chest, she says, “I do not live in an American film, Peter. Love is something that happens over years. Over decades. Over a lifespan. And my love is for my mother, my family, and my country.”
“But I am family. I am your family. Your mother, your grandmother, both feel that way,” implores Peter. “I am still your silly Little Boy.” He puts his hand under her silk headscarf, moving it back a bit so he can stroke her dark hair.
Finally, Zara smiles and touches his forehead lightly. “You are like my brother, my other brother. And I love you like my brother.”
So hoping for much more than brother status, something far more intimate, Peter concedes and says, “Your brother. I would be so happy with being your brother. Being in your life as your brother. I just want to be with you, Zara. Object or no object.”
She smiles even more deeply, knowing her mother was right about this man. But she lets her logic override her personal feelings. She has made a commitment she feels obliged to complete, and so she explains. “Peter, what afflicted men would want you to believe is that they are the holders of the oral tradition. They held power over women that way. What I should not tell you, but I will because we are close in a special way, is that the afflicted women in secret passed down their own oral traditions. Not even our expert sleuth Jean-Paul was able to discover that.”
Peter’s jaw drops. When will her surprises ever end?
Her face turning more serious, Zara says, “Promise me you will not repeat this. Not even to Jean-Paul. Sara taught me the following, which she said came from the first matriarch but then was suppressed by men who had other ambitions thousands of years ago. ‘God asks us to be people of peace. Find ways to have peace and harmony. Find ways to create bounty to share and create community. For those who are close to God, they can find peace with ease. But for those who are not close to God, they need to have abundance to find peace. For without abundance, there is want, need, jealousy, intolerance, all things that stand in the way of peace. And avoid killing if all possible, but defend people’s right to peace.’”
She waits as her other half absorbs the whole new paradigm she has dropped on him. “My late great-grandmother Sara taught me this oral tradition while I was in the midst of vengeance, killing all those who defiled me and my sisters, while I was repaying Alexander by killing all his enemies. And after I sat with her, listening to her retelling of the matriarch’s view of history, of the object, of what our mission truly should be, Alexander asked one last act of me. I killed his son.”
Pausing again, she brings his head to hers as she looks to the sky. “In that moment, looking into his son’s eyes as he begged me for mercy, I realized what I had become. I made the decision to stop killing. To seek redemption. I renewed my commitment to honor Xwedê again with my full and complete submission.”
Pulling his arms lightly around her, she says, “That was, until Sasha abducted me and told me I had to meet you. And I had to pick up arms again. To my surprise, the old violent hateful Zara came back, all too easily. I do not want to be her. I do not.” She kisses him lightly. “And I cannot be with you. I cannot be that Zara ever again.”
She turns away from him but keeps his arms around her. “I never told you what Sasha had promised when he abducted me from the Sugar Fest. What he finally promised to give me in return for taking up arms again and meeting you. As the matriarch advised twelve thousand years ago, I asked him for ‘abundance.’ An abundance to create peace in my lands, for my people, and most importantly for the women of Kurdistan.”
She turns again, facing Peter and taking his hands into hers. “You will be very expensive for Alexander. And you should feel proud of it. He has committed to help the economy of my people. Until we are self-sufficient on exporting goods other than oil, we will not have a truly independent and strong country. One not suffering from proxy wars and violence both from within and out.”
Peter sees his fierce, bold woman once again as she continues. “Alexander promised to build three new plants for making his Mox devices in Kurdistan. One each in the former Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi states. He is even adding one more outside of Ankara as a peace offering to the Turkish government. And to help elevate the labor force in Kurdistan, we have developed a remote university program through his Mox devices to train Kurds, even those in remote villages, on the latest in advanced digital technologies. He is upgrading the tech in leading universities in all three territories, and we will be able to broadcast the first classes in Kurdish in a couple of months.”
Peter’s mind boggles. She’s doing it all over again. Rationalizing every external reason not to touch that part of her that they intimately shared together. The real Zara. All he can say at this moment is, “I don’t know what to say, but I love you, Zara, for the good you bring to those around you as much as I love Zara in all her forms and emotions.”
Putting aside his plea for emotional engagement, she proudly states, “The best part of the deal? I got him to commit to education and employment of women in my country, who otherwise have no access to such. There are many functions within MoxWorld that trained women can fulfill remotely from their rural villages. We will at last allow Kurdish women to advance to their potential. And my friends, Beri, Firya, Peri, and Sana, will be traveling and teaching physical fitness and self-defense. Kurdish women will no longer be economically enslaved, nor physically. No more honor killings. No more suicides,” Zara says emphatically, with idealistic zeal in her eyes.
“That was my quest, Peter. And that is why I agreed to meet you. I am sorry I used you like all the other women in your life have used you.” She pauses, gauging his reaction.
But Peter is calm, waiting on her every word. “And, I thank you, and I love you with all my heart for helping us Kurds to regain control of our destiny.” And she gives him the kiss he has long sought from her, so reminiscent of the ones they shared sitting with the object.
But instead of addressing her diversion away from her inner self, her true essence, the curiosity gene in Peter pops up, not letting him fully enjoy what might be their last kiss together. He asks, “But why would your Sasha still do this for you? You double-crossed him. Through me, you tried to kill him. You told me to kill him righ
t to his face.”
She simply smiles, then says, “Sasha and I have a perverse familial relationship. He tried to kill me once, like he did his son. He has no qualms about me trying to kill him back. That is his form of family. He only loves and respects me more for trying to do so.”
And then her smile goes away. Not knowing how to end this on terms Peter can accept, Zara turns to her Kurdish upbringing. “Sara taught me the wisdom of Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, a great woman, a great Sufi mystic, who wrote, ‘In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel.’ I seek love, Peter. But I seek love inside me of God as did she.”
Peter stares at her pensively. Samantha, once at a distance, has moved nonchalantly within eavesdropping distance.
“Peter, I know you. Better than you think I know you. The energy of the object, it affected us both. I saw your soul. And much to my surprise, you saw mine. Bare, naked, and vulnerable. A bare soul is far more disarming than the bare body. My soul was there for you to see, touch, and do with as you would. I was deeply frightened. I tried to push you away. I held back from you, exactly as Alexander said. But not what he lewdly suggested. I thought I was honoring my vow of celibacy. But, I must be honest with you. I withheld letting us become intimate out of fear of losing myself loving you.”
Zara brushes her fingers down around Peter’s heart. “Our souls have different paths. Your soul still yearns to find ET. Perhaps when an alien sits in front of you and points you towards God, you may be ready. I cannot be distracted from my mission to better the world for my people, so that other women will never suffer in the ways I have, the ways that our women have suffered for generations upon generations. I cannot be distracted from my love of God.”
She gives him one last kiss. Not for his lasting memory, but for hers. “Maybe someday we—”
And before Peter can try to persuade her he is willing to abandon the aliens, he lives to be hers, and only hers, one of the men in black interrupts and says, “Ms. Khatum, it’s time to go. The plane is waiting.”
Zara gazes at Peter with those dark piercing eyes. But not dark and angry ones. Dark and loving ones. Her hands caress his hair. She gives him a peck on the other cheek. “Peter, I must go. Know that I love you. I should say goodbye to Jean-Paul as well.” She nods for Jean-Paul to come over.
Peter, looking at the men in black, asks, “So you’re Alexander’s new henchmen, eh?”
The first man gives him his business card, which reads, “Dan Connelly, Director, US Department of State, Near East Bureau.” Peter glances at the card and then at Zara, who demurely says back to him, “What did I say? What Alexander said was true. But what he did not say is how Mr. Connelly here owes me for not showing certain evidence to his wife, for not breaking up their marriage, for letting him see his children through college with dignity, for leaving him so he could return to ask his wife for her forgiveness.”
Peter asks, “So who is the other guy?”
Zara responds jokingly, “He’s the true crazed CIA agent with the hairpin trigger.” Zara gives a rare giggle. “Peter, seriously, they’re taking me to Air Force Two to meet your vice president.”
Jean-Paul has come over to say goodbye, and she gives him a hug. “And through Jean-Paul, the vice president and I will be meeting with the pope tomorrow. The good Father says His Eminence wants to know this humbled Kurdish woman.”
Looking at Mr. Connelly from the State Department, she adds, “And after Rome, your vice president will take me home, pick up my mother and my aunt, and we will go to Mecca. It is time for me to perform the Hajj again. I have some repentance to make for many of my actions in the last few months.
“It’s obvious your government wants in on the Kurdistan action. Kurds have no friends but the mountains. That is, until they have something everyone else wants to be close to. So, we Kurds have many friends at the moment. But we are wise enough to know that could change,” she says as she nods at her old State Department contact.
For one last time, Zara clasps his hands in hers, and says, “No matter where you go, your destiny follows you.”
She kisses him lightly on his lips, for she too cannot bear the thought of how long it might be before they will touch again, feel that peace again, if ever again. Peter closes his eyes and savors the moment, which lasts for eternity, and yet ends too quickly.
Releasing from the kiss, she readjusts her scarf back into a nice respectful and modest headscarf. And into the government-issued black SUV Zara goes, assertively saying to Dan the shop is closed. And she goes.
The last Peter is to see of Zara. Ever. He cries inside so sadly.
Chapter 45
Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one.
—Saint Ignatius of Loyola
1:00 p.m. GMT−8, July 15, 2021
Colma, California
He saved the world, and yet his world has just abruptly ended as the black SUV leaves the cemetery.
Seeing Peter needs his mother, Samantha comforts her oldest child in the only way she knows how. With a lick of her palm, she takes his hands into hers and says, “Lost your newest girlfriend, did you? She seemed like a real keeper too. You really blew that one, Peter. Didn’t I teach you to leash that curiosity voice in your head? When a woman is in that moment where she needs to hear you know her, see hear, and accept her, you don’t go asking about some monstrous multibillionaire and her.”
She keenly watches as Peter strokes the laminated piece of paper in his hands, the paper with a heart on it. She takes his hands and says, “Peter, here’s some more motherly advice. When a woman tells you she has bared her soul to you, when she tells you that your soul will wander away from her, when she says she is afraid of loving you and makes up reasons to leave, she is exposing to you her deepest fears, her deepest self. And what did she want from you? She wanted you to love God with her. All that nonsense about this Sasha committing to help her country. Come on. You’re smart enough to see she is only trying to talk herself out of loving you. You really should rethink your relationship with God. You may never truly be with your other half until you do.”
A lick of the palm again, she takes her boy’s hand. The one she held so tightly in front of her husband’s grave. The one that so needed her assurances through the sweat of her hand. And she walks him back to her car. The good Father has just finished tapping away on his MoxWrap.
Jean-Paul has watched Peter’s interactions with the women in his life intently. He comes over and puts his arm around Peter, walking him a few meters away from his mother’s car. “Peter, we have been through a lot together in a very short period of time. Sometimes it takes a while to sort through one’s feelings. And for you, the other half of the apple, it may take a long time before you make sense of what has happened.”
Peter hugs his new priestly friend and says, “Thank you, Father. As always, you know exactly what to say.”
Jean-Paul simply serenely smiles and methodically blinks. “It’s simply Jean-Paul. Simple, humble Jean-Paul to you, my friend.”
And the good Father glances into the sky, pursing his lips. Nodding his head, he looks back to Peter. “My friend, I told many lies in my time working for Alexander. I have one of a number of confessions I need to make to you.”
Wondering if the good priest is finally going to admit the Vatican’s acknowledgment that aliens do exist, and maybe even that the Church has been in contact with them, Peter says, “Jean-Paul, simple, humble Jean-Paul. I’m ready to finally hear what you haven’t yet said.”
The good Father methodically blinks. The blink of utter and faithful truth. He says, “Peter, I apologize for not fully expressing my beliefs. I am not noncommittal on the subject of aliens. I believe our Lord has created many creatures throughout the galaxies and we are one of his many. And no less lo
ved because of this. The love you seek, the love Zara seeks, underneath it all is the same. But she is willing to say it out loud. And it is you who hides behind the notion of aliens controlling us all. I suspect that is what she was trying to tell you.”
Samantha interrupts them, pointing at the time on her MoxWrap, and grabs the good Father’s hand, rubbing it softly and lightly. Peter’s eyes pop wide open with that move. She says, “Well, Father, I think we’ve become close enough that I can call you Jean-Paul. We’re going to be late for our date down at the Mission in Santa Clara. It’s so awe-inspiring walking in the rose gardens. And so inspiring of more intimate thoughts.”
Seeing how awfully personal his mother has become, Peter warns Jean-Paul, “If she asks you to give her a foot rub, run. You are still a priest.”
Samantha turns around and gives her son a shush look. “Peter, didn’t you hear? The pope is considering allowing priests to marry. He met with someone very close to him a few weeks ago, who convinced him to finally take action.”
And it finally dawns on Peter—the meeting the good Sister referred to that day in the hospital. “Ma, you have your hands all over that someone. And the priest you’re eyeing, he has a sweet redheaded Sister named Magali waiting for him back in Rome.”
Undeterred, his mother gets in her car with the now-trepidatious good Father. She yells out the window, “Don’t forget, Peter, I’m expecting you for lunch tomorrow with the good Father, your sister, and your simply beautiful friend Mei.” And she drives off.
Left standing with a hearse he needs to return, Peter looks around. And he is alone. Just as he was alone two months ago, on that day when he swore he would change his life for the better. He has sure changed his life. He looks up and says, “I’m waiting for the better.”
The Matriarch Matrix Page 56