Cowards and Angels

By Aileen Muhammad

In the early 1930s, young Ace Smart is eight years old when his father, a physician, is found hung in his office, and his mother, a writer in the Harlem Renaissnce, dies soon after. He grows up bitterly, marries, and raises two daughters. This is the story of the spiritual journey of one of his daughters. Evidence of the past and feelings of the famiy emerge as Mia is hospitlized in a mental hospital.
Aces secret affair with Vanav weaves suspense when Ace discovers that Vanav was his wifes best friend in childhood. Vanav has only known freedom and has kept the knowledge and science of her people from the island of Sokotra in the Indian Ocean. She is close to Mia and shared her knowledge with Mias mother. Ace later finds that his father and grandparents were affiliated with people from that island who settled in Steelton, Pennsylvania, and worked with the underground railroad. Quakers, Muslims, and Jews were involved in the movement.
Family ideas about the African American experience are an issue as is the remedy for Mia. The family has ties with the struggle for honor and with an ancient healing that comes from knowledge of the blood or red resin from the dragon tree of Sokotra. Unexpected events occur when Ace finally gets rid of his hostility and Mia fights for her mental and emotional freedom.
This story is woven with poetry, in an out of time as its powerful messages leave an important imprint on the heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466955325

Aileen Muhammad

Nathan Ross Freeman is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Authoring Action. A Philadelphia native, Freeman is a graduate of St. Joseph's University. He came to Winston-Salem in 1985 to serve as the first Resident Playwright of the NC Black Repertory Company. Award Winning Script Writer, Filmmaker, Intensive Spoken Word Educator, Nathan Ross Freeman, an Impact Communications Specialist,was awarded 2007 B.E.S.T. Outstanding Faculty as Member of the Intensive Writing Faculty teaching Screenwriting/Playwriting at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Mr. Freeman was the 2008-09 Visiting Writer at Salem College: Upper Level Screenwriting, Introduction and Intermediate Poetry and Creative Writing. Mr. Freeman is a member of the NC Humanities Speakers Bureau, Founder of Montage Showcase Ensemble, Assegai Film Group, Mr. Bones Film, Llc, The Quad Films, Llc. As a statewide resident NC Playworks Playwright Mr. Freeman is a key co-developer of the NCEdTA state wide curriculum for Playworks in the Schools (K4-12). Mr. Freeman was a Panelist for the 2009 NC Arts Council Playwrights/Screen Writer Fellowship. Nathan Ross Freeman, Author, Director, was Awarded the 2005 San Francisco Black Film Festival Screenplay Contest Second in Overall Scoring for “Hannah Elias”, Awarded Third Runner Up, 2005 Great Lakes Film Festival Screenplay Contest for “Geist”. Feature Films include: Mr. Bones, Godly Decisions, Authoring Action (documentary). Mr. Freeman is the Writer, Director, Producer of the Independent Feature Film, Mr. Bones the official selection of 12 National and International Festivals, to include 5 Invitations and won First Place awards at the following : Best Drama, Editing, Scoring, 2007 Southern Appalachian Film Festival, TN State, Best Feature, 2008Auburn International Film Festival, Atlanta, GA.; 2009 Distinguished Film of the 15th Anniversary Santa Barbara African Heritage Film Festival, CA . 2009; Best Feature, Philadelphia International Film Festival. Aileen Muhammad began writing short storis in 2007 and received awards for “The Front Porch”. Her “Conflict in the Sixties” was a finalist in the Glimmertrain very short story competition. Her stories were finalists in several North Carolina State Literary Competitions in 2008 and 2009. This collection of short stories follows Cowards and Angels, a novella and Sustained, a book of poetry and art, and Born to Exhale the Mundane, a chapbook. Aileen Muhammad received her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Salem College and a graduate degree in education from Northcentral University. She is currently seeking a graduate degree in Creative Writing from South New Hampshire University. In the 1960’s, Aileen’s poetry was published in Journal of Black Poetry, Muhammad Speaks, Black America Magazine and many anthologies. Aileen was born in Philadelphia and resides in Winston Salem, North Carolina.Her father’s mother Ottie Graham was a writer in the Harlem Renaissance.

Book preview

Cowards

and

Angels

Aileen Muhammad

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© Copyright 2012 Aileen Muhammad.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5531-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5533-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5532-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916527

Trafford rev. 09/17/2012

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Contents

1.   Birth

2.   A Million in One

3.   1880 Island of Sokotra

4.   Mali

5.   Fjelland

6.   Steelton, Pennsylvania

7.   1969 Philadelphia

8.   Ace

9.   Vanav and Ace

10.   Vanav

11.   Family Talk

12.   Inside Mia’s Head

13.   Ache

14.   Sokotra Serande

15.   Younger Days

16.   Turning Tide

17.   Search

18.   The Patient

19.   Visitors

20.   Time Up

21.   The House Where I Live

22.   Health

23.   Joined

24.   Group

25.   Ace’s Dilemma

26.   In Sync

27.   Ace Meets Solomon

28.   Sokotra, 2014

29.   Time

Appreciation

I thank my sister, my editor, Gloria Washington whose advice and concern are as good as it gets.

Special Appreciation to Dr. Amy Knox Brown, Salem College whose inspiration is over the top.

Thanks to my sister Angela Ormond, who has inspired me through silence. Thanks to my husband and patient friend, Ras Still Bill….

To my Children:

John Robert Jefferson,

Michael Jason Jackson,

Vera Mae Jackson,

Edgar Ammon Jackson,

Karma Sherebah Alain,

Hameeda Patrice Chambers, and

Aileen Imana Lassiter, author of I Got Issues

Gratitude and Love to my Mother Aileen Surrey Fickland Jefferson, and my father Michael Graham Jefferson and his mother Ottie Graham Jefferson, writer in the Harlem Renaissance and her husband Dr. William Gus Jefferson.

Foreword

A New Perception of the Earth (March 9, 2012)

by Aileen Jefferson, born 11/1/25

Is this the same green tree I saw yesterday when I went to bed?

Is this the same blue sky I saw when I closed my eyes?

Is this the same azure expanse that said good night to me?

It can’t be the same moon shine that resided in the atmosphere.

But as I gaze at my surroundings I believe it is.

O happiness! I am in Philadelphia, but it’s a new Philadelphia.

I hear a new bird song

I’m listening to a wealth of new sounds and vibrations…

A feeling of excitement. Where am I?

A new abode, new sensations with the same charming harmony….

My own peaceful sanctuary achieved by my own wit and industry.

Birth

Out of the darkness

Passed through the light

The circle eternal

Forces the right

Bringing a word

The law of design

Carrying silence

The voice that’s divine

Out of the shadow an eye that is time

Out of an organ a life and a sign

A Million in One

All in an instant the harmony of one million crickets at seven pm on Thursday in the middle of a hot summer day, knowing their parts, in a musical symphony began to chat with me. Listening to the chiming decree, I knew the missing consonance,

An order for my distant love of Peace, a broken word

A piece of shadowed dark corrupted scales

A rhapsody was needed all at once.

There was I listening to their symphony without the sounding crater broken forth when the universe announced itself. That cracking easing melody might be a song.

But this was a cheering for a decision I made.

That trouble in the heavens came down here after me. It is a transmission that is not known. There are ones that dance beside me.

Alive without delusion.

1880 Island of Sokotra

This morning there was an announcement. It was more than wind that blew up on that shore. When something new was coming, waves rocked the fishing boats, heads looked out to sea. Children looked at their fathers and back again at the sea waiting for the horizon to give a sign as the grey and white seagulls agreed this was the place to merge.

Children ran from the sea through the village and up the hills. They ran up to the plains where the groves of dragon trees provided shade in their peculiar thicket. Children copied their parents and carefully withdrew the red resin from those precious trees.

Amadea sat a quarter of a mile from the opening of the holy cave that was high enough to see patterns of mountain tops below her. Sitting far from the entrance, she could see the ocean the sky and a massive arch where light exploded into darkness. This cave spread under an arch of mountainous terrain. She sat where she always sat and waited to see a sign of his coming.

Heaven will meet you while you live.

She sat where he sat and watched all she could see. The view from that place was the purple sky meeting a turquoise shimmering sea with every ripple under light.

Have you learned yet, Amadea, the power of those clouds? Have you seen yet, Amadea, the healing of the dragon blood?

She watched the flood of birds land on the sea and hover together. Amadea rose from that sitting, wanting Shaheed to appear. She let each step meet that solid ground and walked through the tunnels past the inscriptions on the wall in Aramaic and Hebrew, in Socotri and Arabic. There were clay tablets set on large rocks and carved wooden tables with the Vedas engraved in Sanskrit. She passed through to the other end of the cave that led to an opening on the plateau with thousands of dragon trees standing like massive mushrooms and their giant trunks loaded with medicine. Held at the base of the sprouting of green were branches that formed sacred knots and twisted symmetrically. On the right side of the cave were the trees of laughter, their roots dug into stone. Their trunks were wide and oval like the belly of a woman’s body with small slivers of branches opening up to pale pink delicate blossoms overhead.

Shaheed and Amadea loved each other there, as children. And when they became old enough they reached into each other’s souls and flesh and loved in the solace of that place. Shaheed showed her how to cut the trunk, allowing the red blood to come out, his pouch always ready to collect the red resin as he taught her the healing of that sap. Then he’d find the blue aloe and take it to his grandmother to cook, and then he would find the frankincense trees. She watched the milky white sap flow out and harden with the air, when he opened the trunk. He travelled with his father on a ship to Europe along the great incense route. He often returned with news, books, and lapis lazuli.

The world found that place when Thomas walked with Jesus and then decided to travel. Thomas shipwrecked there and found people who loved to hear him teach. And that’s when the world found out they were there, those men and women who still hide in those mountains, in elaborate structures designed with intricate carvings of pictures and symbols, built high within the stone shields. Amadea was the young girl listening, the young girl watching, and in later years, the one they turned to for translations, and for explanations of the healing arts of Sokotra. Amadea and Shaheed under the dragon trees brought Vanav into the world. They brought her forth at a time when the crumbling empires scrambled for power, wealth and labor and when the angels came to guide those who kept peace in their hearts and who hid to protect their way and their lives.

Mali

In 1825 the local members of the Twelve gathered in the heart of Mali and exchanged the results of their investigations. Their light and searchers informed them of the next move. They must meet their brethren in the land of the west. They must meet the ones that had already gone and establish a city there with the ancient ones that were expelled from the east who lived in peace there in the west. They must hurry because the land would soon be invaded and rebuilt. Their own would be stolen and altered. The kingdoms had their way and these men lived by the sign of peace. They saw no barriers in land and by tradition had hidden their treasures, their wealth and their loved ones.

Their hiding places were beneath the earth. Their hiding places were above the earth. And their hiding places were beneath the ocean through the elaborate under water mountain regions and into the center where they met twice a year and exposed those who would attempt to take over the earth.

After meeting they returned to their sources and passed the gift to the kings. This rising was the way of the ones that Live. They did not know the word death and they joined with their own. They developed their instincts by nature and they taught each other the way of living and the way of healing and the great exchange of the medicine wheel. They educated themselves at the University of Sankore and when the slave traders came they planned a plan that was in accord with Life.

The Twelve met as the leaders of the 5th Division of the beginning cycle of the 25,000 year cycle. They gathered their men and boarded the ship to sail to Sokotra and then to Europe with the destination the West Land. When they arrived after much labor, at that time the nations on the earth were stealing cargo, ships, wealth, men and women. But these men had neither. They sailed with 12 men from the Tribes of Life and they landed on the shores of the West Land, now called America.

They labored with the Moors to put every measure of their plans in place. They had knowledge of the common languages and the mystical languages. They knew the ways of the Hebrews and the Moors and the languages of the nations taken into captivity. They understood the organization of labor and they understood the demands of the great slave trade.

But their requirement was to live by a rule of their origin and that is to create peace when possible, restore the ancient healing methods and to free a captured slave.