The Healing

by Saeeda Hafiz

  Quick-witted Buddy said, “Saeeda, you may not be a supermodel, but you are a super role model.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, grinning and terrified at once. I froze. I realized that I had resisted teaching all these years because I knew that people on some level were watching me. To live this life is to be a role model, and whether you are a super role model or not, someone watching frightens me. I still resist teaching to this day, but with each class, I find that I resist it less and less.

  * * *

  Another phone call came in a few months later.

  “Hi. We received your name as one of Pittsburgh’s top yoga instructors.”

  “Well, I do teach at quite a few places in the city,” I replied humbly.

  The anonymous voice at the other end asked if I worked with high-profile clients.

  “I can,” I said, thinking, Who in the hell is this? Is this a joke?

  “Okay, I’ll get back to you in a couple of days,” the voice said. Again, I didn’t get too excited, nor did I speak to anyone about the call, since I had decided to conserve my energy for things that would actually happen. Later that night, at home in bed, I had a strange premonition. I saw a vision of me teaching yoga to an actor whose face I recognized from a movie I’d seen on video at Stacey’s house in Atlanta. The film was called The Last Seduction. I shook my head and immediately told myself, “You’re crazy,” and then I pushed the thought out of my head.

  The next day, I received a call from the personal assistant of the high-profile client. “Are you available on March 25th at 11:30 a.m.?”

  “Hold on, let me check….Yes, I’m available.”

  “Come to the William Penn hotel and ask for….” It was a name I had never heard of. But I did just that.

  Carrying my yoga mat and CD player with its small speakers, I knocked on the door and waited a few minutes, but no one came. Is this a hoax? I knocked again. No one answered. I’ll wait a few more minutes and then I’m outta here.

  I could see someone peeking through the keyhole, and then slowly the door opened.

  It was a dark-haired woman with a case of bed hair, but not like anyone I had ever seen who had just woken up. Her straight, medium-length hair was disheveled, yet sexy. She wore loose-fitting pajama-style pants. Her skin was white, yet it had a mysterious tint to it. It was what I called “rich-people skin.” It was the kind of skin that I imagined had seen numerous facials, lots of rest and relaxation, and secrets only rich people knew.

  She extended her hand gracefully. “I am Linda Fiorentino.” She said it in a way that seemed rehearsed, a way that celebrities are told to introduce themselves to the everyday person to make them feel at ease in case they felt too starstruck and speechless. I must’ve had a dazed look in my eyes, because it took me a slow second to lift my hand to shake hers. I’m sure that I was staring at her in a way that made her uncomfortable.

  “Come in.” She turned around and I followed her, trying to be cool about it, but my voice was a little shaky. Next, four other people walked in. We introduced ourselves, and most of them were personal assistants to someone in the film Dogma. Linda’s makeup artist was also there. We moved the table to the side and pushed back the chairs to turn the hotel suite into a yoga studio.

  Then there was another knock on the door. In walked this beautiful five foot three inch Latina woman.

  “Leeenda,” she said in a Spanish accent, “I hope I’m not late.”

  “Salma, this is Saeeda, our yoga instructor,” Linda introduced us.

  “Hello, I’m Salma Hayek.” Salma extended her hand and said her name in the same way Linda had said hers, to make me feel at ease. They were both so nice that I did begin to relax. I told myself, You can only be who you are and give them only what you have. Relax. Breathe. Teach.

  I taught the seventy-five-minute yoga class. I learned that they were working on a Kevin Smith film with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Rock. During the class, they invited me to come to the set and watch them film. “That would be cool,” I said, smiling, while I continued teaching as if I wasn’t completely awestruck. When I finished teaching, I returned home and immediately called Stacey.

  “You’re not going to believe who I taught yoga to today,” I paused. “Linda Fiorentino. Had it not been for you, I wouldn’t have known who she was!”

  “You do know that she was in Men in Black,” Stacey said, probably shaking her head at my unworldliness.

  “No. I haven’t been to any blockbusters lately, just independent films! And who is Salma Hayek?”

  “What? You taught Salma Hayek, too?” Stacey paused and said, “Well, she’s only Mexico’s biggest superstar. She is the Marilyn Monroe of Mexico—sexy, sultry, famous.”

  I called a few friends that night and told them what happened. I liked using my energy this way, celebrating something that had actually occurred. I went to bed that night quite happy.

  A few days later, I was talking to my younger brother on the phone, updating him on all my news. There was a slight pause, and then he said, “I had no idea that yoga would have you teaching the stars. We all thought you were crazy for quitting your corporate job.”

  During the course of the next six weeks, I gave some private, one-on-one classes to Salma and Linda. Linda invited me out to dinner at a local bar and grill, and then one evening she made me a home-cooked meal. I learned that even though she and Salma were rich, they didn’t waste money. They didn’t always order room service. They didn’t always stay in expensive hotels, and no one was afraid of hard work or domestic chores like laundry and cooking. I felt strangely privileged to receive this insight. It balanced all the tabloid hype I’d heard about celebrities. I realized they were human; they suffered, just like me.

  * * *

  Girl, I just got my June copy of Essence today in the mail, and you are in it! Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to be in Essence?” It was May 1998. Ly was the same friend who’d asked me, in January 1995, “Where are you? I looked through the entire issue and you’re not in it. What happened?”

  “Girl, I learned my lesson the last time. Magazines can interview you, fact check, and still not have room to print your comments. This time, I decided to let the pages speak and keep my mouth shut.”

  “Word!” Ly affirmed, fully understanding my situation. We were roommates in college, where she’d majored in journalism. As a successful Olympic track-and-field star, she understood both sides—the interviewer and the interviewee. We cheerfully shared this moment of success.

  “Life is starting to look up,” I said, smiling, as I put down the phone.

  * * *

  Things were going well for me. I was eating well, doing yoga, teaching regularly, working steadily, meeting weekly with my spiritual group, spending time with friends, and progressing professionally.

  Yet whenever my phone would ring, it had the spirit of a Las Vegas casino roulette wheel.

  Where was my sister? Where was my older brother? How was my younger brother really doing these days? Every time I received painful family news, I felt personally assaulted, ashamed, and mad. It was like something inside of me died again and again. I was afraid of becoming a shell of myself. I wanted to prepare myself for any great changes that might happen, whether they might be tremendous highs or rock-bottom lows.

  Now that I had taught a few movie stars, was my name on the list as the one to call when making a movie in Pittsburgh? Many big budget films set in New York City were filmed in Pittsburgh as a cheaper alternative. Was I now part of this culture?

  Was I a Super Role Model or just a person grappling with her own humanity in public? My yoga practice was not about taking a drug to feel numb or denying my family’s past situation; it made me face my entire story: the good, the bad, the really bad, and the ugly—the really ugly.

  One essential thing I learned in my holistic health food classes and
my Sivananda yoga training is that healthful food and yoga can be a gateway to helping an individual define for his/herself what good health is. Yoga taught me that asanas can go beyond the muscular and the skeletal adjustments. Sometimes the poses can open up emotions and psychic experiences. We were trained to refer students and ourselves to good therapists when the mind is disturbed. We were encouraged to seek professional advice when and if we needed or wanted to take a deeper look at life. Even my cooking teachers spoke of having a team of people help us fully heal. “Food is only part of the story,” said chef Tim Atkins, an instructor at the Natural Gourmet Institute culinary school.

  Knowing this, I felt ready for psychotherapy. I actually felt strong enough to look at my family issues a little more closely without them overwhelming me. It also crossed my mind that going into therapy was considered a “white” thing, but I didn’t care. Perhaps this was why my mother didn’t want to go with me, even when my auntie recommended that we see an African American therapist that she knew. I was hopeful about therapy. I wanted to be prepared to handle the unexpected, since I never knew when the family’s drama would surface.

  Dr. Tory Butterworth was a therapist who rented office space in Gia’s building. I’d see her repeat clients come in and out of her office, and their physical bodies seemed lighter each time they left. I surmised that Tory might be able to understand the multifaceted Saeeda. It seemed that she had a spiritual acumen and a clinical grounding that wouldn’t make me feel like a freak. I felt like Tory could listen, without judging, to a black woman who was raised as a Muslim in poverty by parents who engaged in domestic violence. I felt confident that she might be the one who could process that I was finding my inner wisdom through holistic food and yoga practices without boxing me into a prescribed way of being. I hoped that she could see that I was earnest in my journey and that I needed a nonbiased partner to assist in my restoration.

  In our first meeting, I explained to Tory, “I want you to help me define what good health means to me. I want a life that can merge the past with the present so that my future can be better than what my siblings have created. I want to prevent the destruction I see around me. I want a full life and a fulfilling one.” I explained to her that I wanted life to be abundant in time, money, friends, pleasurable work, and romantic love.

  I left her office knowing that I had to work on reconciling the past into the present, but feeling that she and I were on the same page. We both knew that this work would be complicated and messy.

  CHAPTER 16

  Samir

  ON A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER in spring 1998, I came home from work, prepared dinner, and settled in for the night. The phone rang and I picked it up. On the other end, the operator said, “Hello. I have a collect call from Samir Hafiz at the Petersburg City Jail. Will you accept the charges?”

  “Yes.” I said, thinking, “What now?”

  “Sy, I’m locked up.” My older brother explained how it wasn’t his fault, but I thought to myself, “It probably was.” I was kind of relieved that he was in jail, because this meant that he just might sober up from his crack addiction and stop living on the streets. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually heard from him. We talked a bit about his situation, our family, and the fact that he had missed the news about granddad passing away. I filled him in on my time in Atlanta, and what was happening in Pittsburgh. The conversation ended with, “Can you send me some money?”

  “Why do you need money in jail?”

  “They give us some of the basics here, but there are still things we need to buy. I want to write people, so I need stamps. I need a new toothbrush. Also, there is a guy here who is teaching me how to draw and I want to buy some art paper.”

  I exhaled and asked him how much he wanted. I wasn’t making that much as an office manager and yoga teacher, but I felt obligated to help my brother, even if my financial state was poor. I thought, If I don’t help, who would? I didn’t have confidence in the fact that my mother would support him. In fact, she had always said, “If you go to jail, don’t call me.”

  I hung up the phone thinking about what it had been like for me having my two siblings addicted to crack. I realized that I had a special pocket in my heart that loved them. But I also had a special place in my brain that grieved for them as if they were already dead. I was always preparing for the worst news, and I recognized that I had to work on that final stage of death and dying—acceptance. I had always hoped that it would turn itself around, but studies show that kids with our kind of upbringing don’t do much better than our parents did, or do worse. I was prepared for their death so much that, when I got a phone call from one of my siblings out of the blue, I spoke with caution and not too much excitement. I didn’t want to emotionally get too reinvested.

  I was always happy to hear from them, but I also knew that the connection wouldn’t last. The return of my siblings was like seeing an apparition. This was a weird place for me to be; nonetheless, when it came to my older brother and sister, this was where I lived.

  * * *

  Days later, I sent my brother the money.

  One night after teaching a yoga class, I collected my mail and walked into my house. I noticed a letter from my brother. The return address said “Petersburg City Jail,” but what I noticed on the ultra-thin envelope was my brother’s stellar penmanship. I’d always admired his clear handwriting, the curls in his cursive r’s and n’s and the confidence in his capital H’s and lowercase z’s. It was definitely a younger sister’s admiration for an older brother’s ability to do things better. Weird, I know, but his penmanship was something I had always aspired to. I always thought, “How does a boy write so neat? I thought boys were messy.”

  I put my things down. I went to my window ledge. I liked sitting on that ledge and looking out on to the street. It made me feel like I was sitting on a tree branch, up nice and high, like a bird. I cut the end off the envelope like I had watched my dad do with his letters. I’d always thought that was super cool.

  His letter started off by saying that he never thought he would end up a “bad man.” I stopped reading, looked out the window, and thought, “I didn’t think of him that way, either.” This was the same brother who wanted me to be an orthodox Muslim when he was embracing our childhood faith on a deeper level. This was the same brother who was recognized in the Petersburg community as the next Iman (the holy man in charge of the mosque), who had a good wife and two children that all followed his leadership. This was the brother who sent me letters when I was in college in 1985, about how some Essence readers were finding peace through Islam. We had friendly discussions about my feeling a deeper connection to the woman meditating than with the woman making Salat (the prayer one does five times a day). My conversations with him let me know that I was capable of making a compelling argument regarding why it is important for an individual to be able to choose his or her faith.

  Thirteen years later, who would have known that I would be sending the very same article and letter to him in jail with the hopes that his own words would inspire him to clean up his act?

  He wrote back and, to my surprise, he started telling me his story in the form of a memoir:

  CHAPTER ONE

  When I first got to jail after being busted for possession of cocaine in 1991, I was mentally and emotionally traumatized. There I sat in the Petersburg City Jail in an isolated cell-block for twenty-four hours thinking my life was ruined for being a “bad man.” I considered myself a loser, a total failure, a disgrace to everything I had previously represented. It was hard for me to accept that I was a well-known drug addict, an accident waiting to happen in the eyes of local police officers. The visible job I had as a firefighter had accentuated my drug habit and the lifestyle I was living. Like a man riding on a white horse dressed in white attire, I naively had been riding and stopping at all the well-known drug areas, buying and smoking cocaine, thinking that I was not
being noticed. Meanwhile, fire officers, the city police and even my wife and neighbors knew what I had been doing. I’d been on and off the stuff and back on the stuff since late 1987 after being turned on and turned out by an ex-junior high school teacher who had become a so-called “trick girl.” I will never forget the day….

  It was a hot, humid, and sticky Friday evening in July. I had just received my semimonthly paycheck. The sun was threatening to disappear, but it hung on the horizon appearing as a smooth gigantic basketball with no lines. I was driving a new and shiny two door navy-blue escort complete with air-conditioning and an AM-FM cassette stereo. When I rode through the city in it, I was as confident as Nat Turner was when he mounted and rode his horse, convinced that his mission was backed by GOD against what was perceived by his contemporaries as insurmountable odds. Unlike Nat though I preyed on prostitutes who, in desperation, and most of the time of my race, did whatever I wanted them to do for ten dollars, or sometimes less. Most of them were crack-addicted women who hung on street corners flagging men in cars hoping for a catch to feed their habit. I had already been with most of the ones I had seen on this day, when out of nowhere, or so it seemed, appeared a shapely, fair-skinned woman from a flower shop who I had not seen before. She looked far more well-kept than all the other women I’d done business with and when she flung her arm in the air, lifting her hand like a woman needing a taxi-cab, I brought my buggy to a screeching halt.

  “Damn,” I said silently, “she’s a sexy mother.” Smiling like a Cheshire cat, I reached over and unlocked the passenger-side door. She jumped in the car and flexed a soft feminine look at me.

  “You looking for some pleasure? I hope so, cause I aim to please,” she said.