35 DOHA

 They awoke Tuesday morning, packed, and getting into one of LaJade’s cars when they were told that New York was under attack and that no flights were allowed into, out of, or across North America. 

Like everyone else, they were stunned as the horror unfolded. But unlike everyone else, they could sense and feel the emotional fear and dread of more than three hundred million Americans.

Eve reached out and squeezed John’s hand.

Three days later, they noticed a few more police standing around Queen Beatrix International Airport. At Norman Manley Airport in Kingston, the police were in body armour with assault rifles.

But JFK in New York was like an armed camp in a war zone: New York police, Port Authority officers, Military Police, National Guard, out-of-state police, and called-up regular forces, with Humvees and armoured personnel carriers visible on the tarmac. 

There were delays in leaving their plane, and it took over an hour to claim baggage. Moving from one terminal to another required two or three identification checks.

And before boarding their flight to Qatar, they were questioned almost half a dozen times as to why they were flying to the Gulf. Once the plane departed, it was without an empty seat. Arab nationals fearing a cultural backlash in the city and the States were leaving,

Both flying into New York and out of the city, they could see the smoke from what was called ‘the pile.’

The pilot of the Qatar Airways flight warned the passengers that he was going to bank the plane to one side and then the other, as waggling wings were a visual signal used to acknowledge another aircraft or ground control. In this case, the loss of life.

The flight took just under thirteen hours. The entire trip, starting in Aruba, took 27 hours, and they made every effort to enjoy the fully reclining seats in the Executive Class portion of the plane.

The airport in Doha was also heavily protected. Guards were also outside their hotel. 

The room had a fruit basket, which they took as a complimentary item from the hotel. Later, they noticed a card in the basket.

The note said, “Monday, 1:30 IAC, Diplomatic Club, we will find you.” 

Although the Diplomat Club had only been in Doha for eighteen years, its style and luxury spoke of an older, more elegant time with all the modern amenities.

“Jonathan and Evelyn St Croix, I believe you have a notice of who we are to meet here.”

“One moment, Sir," the concierge said as he checked his notes.

He looked up at Jonathan with a surprised look and quickly summoned on of the other employees.

The concierge stepped out from behind his desk and said he would personally take them to their appointment.

They were led into the sumptuous Members Lounge, overlooking the club’s pool deck. At the far end of the room from where they entered sat three men, two of whom were in western business suits and one wearing the traditional Arab thobe, with a white Shemagh,

Evelyn walked halfway down the room and stopped with the Diplomatic Club’s concierge. Jonathan walked toward the man in Arab garb and stood a short way behind him.

The man stood up and was over six feet tall. He turned and said, “Alsalam ealaykum warahmat allah wabarakatuh. Peace and blessing be upon you, Nontha Saqat, Jonathan St Croix.” 

Jonathan stood motionless, trying to place the man, the face and the voice. Suddenly, he fell to his knees before the man. “Akshamsaddin, 'ustadhi waqayidi,” 

“I am no longer your teacher and leader.”

Please invite your wife to join us.”

The two men in the suit left the table. 

“He introduced his wife to Akshamsaddin. “If I remember correctly, Muhammad Shams al-Din bin Hamzah.

“You still speak with an ancient inflection. I was told that you had questions for me, or at least questions that I may help you find answers to, or where to look.”

“Teacher, I only seek to know where I am from. I remember nothing before the great victory of Mehmed II against the Byzantine.”

 “I expected that, and I am surprised that it took you so long to find me and to ask.”

“Mu'allim, you can help my husband find his past?”

“Yes, "Rabbaitul bait, I can, and I commend your mastery of my language. Please, Jonathan, as we are very old friends, very old, please call me Akshamsaddin, and I extend that courtesy to your wife.

“What can you tell me?” 

“I was a long-time advisor to Mehmed. When he ascended the throne for the second time two years earlier, I was appointed as his closest official advisor. When he decided to liberate the so-called Western Rome, I suggested, that you be a naval commander, because of your knowledge of ships and more so your knowledge of Christian tactics.

In the Christian years of 1449, I will use Christian dates to more easily frame your story. You brought to the Sultan a woman who was the daughter of King Peter II of Sicily to be his second wife Gülşah Hatun. She was also the daughter of Eleanor of Anjou.

As you were not under any flag, Mehmed, ask for your services. To which you agreed.

There were stories of great, long-lived men. I had come across references to them in my study of religious sciences, medicine and, pharmacology. Everywhere was the word Devi. What I could ascertain from my research seemed to apply to you.

As for research, Evelyn St Croix, did you know that I first wrote that ‘Diseases infect and spread from one person to another, through what I called seeds so small they cannot be seen but are alive.^? More than two hundred years before the Dutchman Leeuwenhoek.

But I digress.

I confronted you with my assertion that you were Devi, and as we established trust, you shared your secret and the ways of your people.

Shortly before the battle, I was mortally wounded in an ambush by the Venetians. You saved me; You granted me your blood and your life. You offered me too much of your life and may have entered Paradise briefly.

You had told me that you would need the blood of others to replenish you. We had not yet killed the interlopers, and they did die in the service of the Sultan and for you.

For a week, you lay in bed, your body as cold as a corpse, but you still filled your lungs with air. Within three weeks, shortly before the battle, you could stand on your ship. You created the oiled road we used to bypass the Chain of the Horn.

You could recall that you were Devi, but you were not fully aware of what it was, so I taught you what you knew.   

“Thank you, but that only moves my memory back less than a dozen years. What was I before?

“I do not know, yet I do know.”

“What does that mean?”

“To use modern parlance and explicit, direct words. When you fed me and turned me, I received not only your blood but part of your soul and your memory.

It is known that this usually happens in lesser form with simple turning. But when you turned me, you gave so much of yourself, that it was as if your body and mind panicked and entered my body for safe keeping.”

 

Evelyn said, “Jonathan turned me, so would I have part of his soul and mind within me?”

“No, if he turned you without excessive damage to himself, the answer would be no. It only occurs if the giving Devi moves too close to death.

And Evelyn, I thank you for being here. We now share a great bond, for you and I are brother and sister, and I greet you.”

That statement shocked Jonathan, as he never considered Eve his daughter. Nor himself, her father.

“Is there a way to learn more about myself?”

“Yes, and it is both simple and not simple. You must feed on me and bring me close to death, but not as close as you travelled.”

“Is that the only way?”

“Yes, and I know what your next question is, and I will agree to it. You granted me a great gift, and if this is the only way to repay you, I accept the risk.”

“How do you know all of this? I asked the Authentic in Paris, and she said nothing was to be done.”

“That is a straightforward question to answer; the Authentic is not as she seems, and you did the correct thing in asking LaJade, as many more families and groups question Her authority than you know of. And I confidently say that to you, my sister, and here before our father.

In Oman, a clear and clean twenty-first-century medical clinic was found in the cellars below an ancient mosque, possibly below the level of the Gulf waters.

White tiles, lab coats, rows of fluorescent lights, and hallways with dozens of doors.

These were caves, some flooded and some not. They were brothels, storehouses, armouries, refuges, and homes. They are the world's finest and perhaps the first Devi medical centre. Here, I will give you back your memories.

I do not know what they contain, but when I am tired or overly stressed, I see flashes of things not part of my life.”

 

Despite the clinic's 21st-century design and futuristic look, when Jonathan's revival process was about to begin, Evelyn thought things were taking on a very “Frankensteinish” air.

Jonathan was strapped to a table, two straps across each of his arms and legs, a large one across his chest. The doctors had shaved six areas of his head for electrodes, and the needles of four tubes were poking into his body. His head was restrained, and he had a large rubber mouthpiece.

Before they did this to him, he was placed into a chemically induced coma, which lessened his brain activity and allowed the medical team to monitor activity in the hippocampus better. The hippocampus is the primary brain structure for forming and retrieving memories, like episodic memories from specific life events. 

She thought it was eerily fitting, as he had known Mary Shelly, and she half expected a flash of lightning and peals of thunder.

Akshamsaddin was lying on a table next to him and reciting passages from the Koran to stay cognizant and awake. He had three needles in him: two to withdraw blood and the third to administer a mild sedative.

Jonathan’s body convulsed, his back arched, and his legs and arms quivering and shaking, and within ten seconds, the room was silent.

“Completed,” said the doctor in charge. “Now we wait. It may take only ten hours or a few days, but his mind and, to an extent, even his body must adapt.

This works because his memories will return over the next period once he is awake. How long it takes is unknown, but like an onion, each layer will be peeled before going further back. The first recovery is for him to wake up; the second recovery is being able to access his memories.  How long the process will take depends on how old he is.”

 

Evelyn tried to sleep in a bed beside his room, but she kept looking at him, worrying, wondering, and wanting.

The first ten hours passed, then fifteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight. At this point, the medical team intervened to check on his vital signs and overall health. Everything seemed to be within the expected parameters.

Two more days, while Evelyn was out of the room, he awoke with a loud, hoarse, muffled scream. His temperature spiked, he broke out in a cold sweat, and he voided himself.

The medical team ran to the room and blocked Evelyn from entering, assuring her this was normal.

When he woke up, she held his hand beside his bed. She first said, “I love you,” as she kissed his forehead, and he replied in a fractured voice, “Forever.”

They were sitting in the shade of an elevated terrace, overlooking the skyline or lack thereof. With its oil wealth, Oman decided that rather than build Western skyscrapers, it would use its money to preserve the past.

“I remember Sicily and Peter II. I was a sailor, flying a freelance ship under no flag as a neutral, allowed into most Christian and Muslim ports.  I think I was based or living in Naples, as Sicily and Naples were united as one kingdom then.

My ship was a carraca, or carrack. Its name was… was the Luna Rossa, or Red Moon. Strange fact, and unrelated to anything, red for the blood of Christ, and the moon for Islam?”

“Jonathan, it is working; you are remembering. A lifetime of new stories. Many lifetimes of new stories.”

“I need to sleep, my love.”

 

A week later, Akshamsaddin arranged for a private jet to return them to Brazil to avoid problems and delays at the airports. But he had one condition: he asked them never to tell the Authentic Colette of the procedure, as he saw her as too much of a traditionalist to embrace this type of Devi medicine.

“I recall the Atlantic and crossing it.”

“Yes, Dear, we crossed it dozens of times, and you did as well from Lisbon with Orlan in the Caribbean. “No, I mean from the before times. I mean in my new memories.”

“Before Columbus? Were you a Viking?”

“I briefly was a Basque fisherman. We had the knowledge and skills to know the North Atlantic, but there is something more. I recall the town of Donostia-San-Sebastian. I lived there and vaguely knew that from when I fled Paris in 1940, I instinctively seemed to run to that town.

It hurts my head to think of it. The memories are like the dreams you had the night before, and when you wake up, they begin to fade, and the more you want to remember, the more they recede. But now, it feels a hundred times as vacant.”

She rested her head on his shoulder as they flew west into the setting sun.