Aluti

ALUTI: MY WORK AND THE OLD MAN

The old man has a mind of his own. Certainly he is not at my beck and call. Usually he appears unbidden in my mind's eye, sometimes at the most unlikely time, but when I am deeply troubled he is always with me.
He dresses in contrasting styles. Decades ago, when I first became aware of his presence I was a troubled teenager. He was wearing rough working clothes, homespun in appearance, yet familiar, for I was a farmer's daughter in a dry and distant land. He also wears the flowing robes and headdress associated with Arabs. The desert is clearly important because wearing his robes he always appears in a seemingly parched landscape with distant jagged horizons.

Another manifestation is as an Indian Holy man. It is in this form that I can describe him most clearly for he wears only a Gandhi-like loin cloth. His skin is dark from the sun. He must be tall, he always towers above me, but his gaunt frame is upright, showing no sign of his obvious age, for his long hair is snow white. His face is at first intimidating, with heavy brows and a large nose but his eyes are fascinating. So incongruous with his dark skin his large wide spaced eyes are pale blue. It is his eyes that hold you, almost hypnotically.
With a gentle smile his face is transformed. The eyes, the gateway to the soul, are so serene yet compelling, compassionate yet wise, friendly yet distant.

I was frightened on his first appearance, desperate to flee, I was held rigid by his gaze. Then he smiled, sat at my feet and started talking. he spoke the language of my forebears, but now nearly half a century later he speaks my adopted tongue. I believe he would converse with me in any language that I could master.

WHEN THE OLD MAN GIVES ME DETAILS

I have a friend who came into my life a few years ago. Our paths touched over a transaction, and there it could have ended. But there was something about this women, her striking personality, her frankness and outlook on life must have struck a cord. For we became firm friends. It wasn't a long time before she appeared in my dreams.
One night, I can't say if I was asleep or not, I was thinking of Adrienne when the Old Man materialised quietly sitting beside me.
"I like Adrienne," he said. He told me many things about Adrienne and ended saying: "She is very far away from the name she was given at birth."
Apart from my husband, who is always sceptical about anything that he cannot absolutely prove, I had never shared the Old Man with anyone, but a few days later, I touched on this topic with Adrienne and explained what the Old man had told me about her and how the Old man had touched my life in so many ways.
"It's probably nonsense," I continued still doubtful, "but he told me that Adrienne was not the name you were born with. That you were very far away from the name you were born with."
Adrienne smiled and acknowledged. "Now I have the proof that the Old man's readings are truly wonderful!"
It turns out that Adrienne, had changed her name many years before I met her.