Desta-5-Chapter-One

Fresh out of high school, guided by mystical talismans and an ancient prophecy, Desta, at five foot nine inches, slender young man with fine features and curly hair, had finally made his way from Addis Ababa to New York City. The journey had taken nineteen hours; he’d never imagined it would be so long. Nor had he thought he would feel this afraid and alone or that the dull, intractable pain in his head would follow him here and resurface with a vengeance. He felt unprepared for this new world. He had only murky impressions of America, gleaned from magazines and the foreigners he’d met as a tour guide in Ethiopia. No one back home could have told him what to expect when he stepped off the plane onto American soil, and into a society so far removed from his own. Everything had happened so quickly, it seemed he’d barely had time to blink or think.

When his plans to start medical school on a full scholarship in Bulgaria fell apart, he’d felt compelled to seize the unexpected opportunity to come to this dreamland to start college at the end of August and continue his search for King Solomon’s Second Coin of Magic and Fortune.

He still lamented what should have been. He wanted to scream Why me?! A twist of fate had taken him from his Bulgarian mentor and benefactor, Dr. Petrov, who had inspired his pursuit of medicine to help his country.

The prophecy had compelled Desta to follow the sun westward to find the missing magic coin, twin to one Desta had inherited from his family. Its image was tattooed above his heart by his grandfather’s spirit for his protection and counsel.

By the prophecy, he had to find the missing relic and unite it with his own to benefit all humanity, and so he’d followed the historical clues and omens to America, as his conjuring rod had forecast.

David Hartman, a Peace Corps teacher who’d befriended Desta in high school, had helped salvage Desta’s shattered dreams. David had arranged Desta’s trip to America, found him a host family, and helped him enroll and finance his first year at Abraham Lincoln Junior College in Rye, New York.

Desta had crossed Africa, the second largest continent, and the Atlantic, the second greatest ocean, which Desta thought was a good omen. In flight between catnaps, Desta’s mind had been a cauldron of thoughts and emotions. He’d gazed out the plane’s window at the clouds, sun, land, and sea by day, and the plane’s wingtip light and the brooding darkness at night.

These formed the backdrop to a stew of fears, disquiets, and fleeting excitement about what he would see in America, especially New York City.

His friend David had driven Desta home from the airport in New York and fed him his first pizza and Coca-Cola. They’d talked until Desta couldn’t keep his eyes open, and he’d gone to bed, hoping he wouldn’t wake until noon the next day.

But he had woken at 4 a.m., the time his body clock was set to, no matter where or how tired he was. A knife seemed to needle his head from the inside. Pain radiated to his fingers and toes. These familiar sensations had resumed after Desta’s abusive brother Damtew visited him a year ago, and now it seemed his affliction had followed him to the new land. Before Desta woke, he’d dreamed Damtew was chasing him, threatening to kill him.

With the help of the magic coin’s image on his chest, Desta quieted the pain to a dull ache. As he lay with a soft cotton sheet on his face, Desta thought about his new life, and all the concerns he’d had the day before on his flight across Africa.

It all seemed precarious. He had no financial security beyond his freshman year and didn’t know how he would find another family to support him after that. He didn’t want to rely on his friend David again. And he still had to face the vast, daunting task of finding the coin.

He fretted that his high school education, without books, library, or laboratory, hadn’t adequately prepared him for college.

He had expected to return home from Bulgaria at the end of his education there, but now that he was in America, he couldn’t return home before finding the second shekel. And he wouldn’t ask his friend to pay for his return plane ticket if his adventure in America proved unsuccessful.

He’d been used to visiting his family over holidays, or for a break from his problems in his school town. But there was no bridge over the Atlantic Ocean, or a highway to walk or ride on from Rye, New York across Africa to his home in Ethiopia. Many thousands of miles lay between him and his family, and he realized there was no chance of seeing them anytime soon.

Desta felt like an orphan in America, and his heart sank in despair.

Desta would face all the hurdles that awaited him in this new land without the support of someone who understood his heritage and his challenges, to share his joys and sorrows with, and to rely on if he got sick. All Desta’s worries settled in his chest like a winter cold. He tightened his arms and pressed on his heart. His eyes brimmed with tears.

Desta felt stripped of his resolve. The confidence to overcome all adversity that had been his bedrock was now shifting sand. Terrified by the very image, Desta squeezed his eyes shut to make himself sleep.

He woke an hour later when he felt the bedsheets slipping off his face. He opened his eyes but saw nothing in the charcoal-deep shadows of the night.

“Uhh!” Desta uttered, realizing he was not alone. A form white as cotton, tall as one on a stilt, stood at the foot of his bed.

“You have yet to see your first sunrise in this country, and already you worry about a future you can’t know,” the figure said.

Desta lifted himself on his elbows to better see the stranger. Human in form, insubstantial as a cloud, with definite features of nose, mouth, and eyes, an oval face below a round head. He had an enveloping aura that instantly put Desta at ease. “Who are you?”

“I will wait for a better time to introduce myself,” the stranger continued. “I came only to relate an important message.

“Treat your time in America as a gift of opportunity, not one of insurmountable difficulties. You are still capable of applying your fine qualities of determination, perseverance, and ingenuity to accomplish your purposes in this country.

“The pain that afflicts you is neither a disease nor bodily injury, and nothing can be done for it just yet; you must learn to cope with it.” The white figure abruptly vanished.

Desta fell back as if in a trance. Could that have been Tsadok, his spiritual guide and King Solomon’s high priest, in disguise?

He went to the bathroom, mind still reeling with the strange man and his cryptic message. From a small porcelain tray at the sink, he picked up a green bar of soap with a soothing herbal scent.

He opened the faucet and let the water run warm. He lathered his hands and gazed into the mirror. Dark circles surrounded fearful eyes, and his pale skin and ashen lips disturbed him. He poured water into cupped hands and dowsed his face with it, massaging his cheeks and brow.

He dab-dried his hands and face with a towel and returned to his room. He got back under the covers, begging sleep to come, but he still thought of his worries and the encounter with the strange spirit.

WHEN HE WOKE two hours later, morning light had seeped from the edges of the curtains and brightened the room, a comforting change from hours of darkness.

Desta’s eyes roamed the walls. A bookshelf stood to his left, and a round table and chair sat in the corner. Carpeting, curtains, window seat cushions, and a lampshade, all in tan, contrasted with pristine white walls. A light on a silver stem and stand shaped like a tulip, stood alongside a built-in desk and chair.

Would his new family give him a room like this? What would they be like?

And his schoolmates? Desta made an educated guess. From the Newsweek and Time magazines he’d read in high school, he knew that five kinds of people lived in America: Whites, American Indians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Orientals.

If the family he was going to live with was Black, would they reside in a town like David’s, or Harlem, where Desta had heard most Black people in New York lived. Then a strange thought came to him.

Abraham Lincoln was the president who had freed Black Americans from slavery. Desta’s new college had been established to honor the man, and Desta imagined most students there would be Black.

Lincoln College was in a town called Rye, which reminded him of his favorite bread his mother used to make. His lips tightened in a thin smile at the memory, surprised by the connection.

The white bookcase caught his interest. He wanted to browse its volumes but felt he should first get David’s permission, a rule he’d learned at home. So, he studied the shelves from afar.

Some of the books stood in rows, others lay on their sides. The model of a white-haired man in gold-rimmed glasses, a black coat, and a white shirt perched at the top right corner of the bookcase, like a high chief presiding over his domain. A miniature guitar on the second shelf from the top looked out of place, like me when I step outside today, he thought.

He dropped his eyes to the second shelf from the bottom where an old round-bellied straw basket with a conical top sat between half a dozen standing books. It reminded him of the simple baskets woven by beginners in Ethiopia.

He rose, walked to the window, and parted the curtains. His spirits brightened at the ethereal glow of the early day that fell across the manicured grass and hedges. He looked across the street to the large, beautiful homes with pitched roofs and projecting windows, some with columned entrances. Lush trees rose high above the houses; Desta was struck by how green the neighborhood was.

His mind reeled again. “It’s been an incredible journey,” he said to himself, thinking of his trip from Ethiopia, and the journey of his whole life.

In his mind, he traveled back to the beginning. A little shepherd boy in a remote village of round, dried mud and wood buildings with grass roofs and dirt floors, who’d trained to be a farmer, and dreamed of climbing the mountains encircling his valley to touch the sky. Ultimately, he’d discovered a bigger realm, and a chance for a modern education.

That was the start of Desta’s epic adventure in a more expansive world. Now he was somewhere entirely different, his purpose far from what his family intended.

In his mind’s eye, Desta returned to that first trip he had made to the mountaintop with his oldest sister, and all the discoveries and adventures that followed.

Desta sighed. He had seen and done so much in ten years; it had been an extraordinary journey for an ordinary boy, he mused. He returned his focus to the present and caught sight of a couple in T-shirts and shorts strolling up the sidewalk alongside a dog with a golden coat.

Suddenly, everything around him felt like a dream, and he felt dizzy. He sat down on the window seat. Resting an elbow on his knee, he pinched the insides of his eyes with thumb and forefinger to hold back a surge of emotion.

“I may be unremarkable in many ways,” Desta said, “but I’ve also been given extraordinary abilities to connect with ghosts and spirits and uncover secrets hidden from most people. Through these gifts, I found the remains of my missing grandpa, and our Solomonic Coin of Magic and Fortune.” He felt his cheeks pull into a smile.

He’d endured his family’s wrath and physical abuse and, later, by people in the towns where he’d studied. He survived privation, abandonment, and homelessness. Desta’s lips hardened, and his pulse quickened. He dispatched his dark memories with the toss of a hand over his shoulder.

How was it possible that only months ago he’d had an entirely different plan, and yet ended up in America, where he knew little of the people, land, and culture, to look for a coin that had gone missing thousands of years ago? He felt like a bird blown off course by a strong wind. Desta shook his head in wonder.

Desta sought inspiration and courage from his past to face his future boldly and do his best to accomplish his goals. He needed to take the white figure’s counsel to heart. It was up to Desta what he did with it. He sighed again, closed his eyes, and tried to envision his prospects.

He heard a knock on the door. David poked his head in.

“Come on in!” Desta said. He rose and headed toward the door. They shook hands.

“Did you sleep well?”

Desta said that he’d slept as much as his body wanted.

“Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll take a quick shower and be down shortly.”