The Window

(retold 1994 for my English pupils, from a story remembered from my childhood,
origin unknown to me)

“What do you see, boy, what do you see out there this morning?“ Every day in the primitive military hospital ward, far from home, and far from the world of battlefields, the hopelessly wounded who were brought there to live out their remaining days would ask this of the young man who lay beside the only window in the room. All were legless or just bedridden, and from their positions they could only receive some indirect light across the room through that window.

At any given hour during the day, on any given day, their miserable lives were brightened but by one little comfort. The boy who lay wounded by the window would raise himself a just a bit and and turn his head toward the glass pane and tell what he alone saw from his special vantage point. The soldier who had occupied the bed before had lain in coma. All came here to die, and no one stayed longer than a few weeks.

The boy opened his eyes, and then his mouth, and spoke; and from the grateful hearts throughout that room came a long, deep sigh of remembrance, from every eye a drop of bitter-sweet affirmation.

“The green meadow is especially wild this morning,“ he would say, this boy with half his body gone. “It may have rained last night, because the river is higher and faster, and the tall grasses very colorful, very new and proud – the sky is clear and blue like sapphire, and the tallest of the blue-green trees are like a forest of spears piercing it.

“The swallows are dashing back and forth by the window here, but the hawk that lives in the forest is climbing skyward on its way to a distant lake. The sun warms everything alive except me. I feel cold in my bed. ...“

Surely one can imagine what food this provided the dozen other men in the ward, what hope and what stretch of life it gave to them. Many weeks passed in this manner, and for all their suffering and medication, all of them still lived; not one died, as weeks turned to months in that dim hospital ward. The lonely, pain-wracked and forgotten soldiers began to think only of the boy's descriptions; they no longer had to ask him, he volunteered these reports of the wonders outside his window. And their wounds and their pain mattered less, and they struggled for one more hour, and for one more day, if at least to hear the boy's calming voice and to relive through it their most basic longings for something that is still beautiful.

At any time of day he could arouse their attention with a few well-placed words, whether it was to mention the first shafts of sunrise stroking the nearby hills in changing shades of color, or the variations of mood throughout the day, or the sinking of the last light behind those nearby hills.

He never seemed to grow tired of giving his daily reports, and these were always consistent without being redundant. He just grew tired and colder in body. And at night they slept. And one morning he was dead.

His bed now lay vacant and it remained vacant for some days. The aching soldiers grew restless and thirsty for the hearing of what they could not see out there, what they could not kiss. One of them was then moved into the bed by the lovely, coveted window, the bed of privilege. And he gazed silently out, gazed and said nothing. The men in the ward grumbled nervously, impatiently, and one finally called out, “Hey! So tell us already about the world out there, don't keep it all to yourself! Tell us all that you see, we're waiting – now tell it!“

But he only lay there with an expression of shock and defeat. He mumbled, then with a mixture of confusion and anger he spoke for all to hear, “For the love of Christ, man – why, it's just a wall there, blocking everything … nothing but bricks and bricks on … more bricks … it's all there ever was!“

The Suit, or The Truth About Santa

(as I lived it in Berlin, Christmas Eve 1990)

'Twas the night before Christmas...no, that would be leaving out too much. 'Twas a couple weeks before I entered the Army, living in San Francisco I made one lone attempt to live out a dream I'd often nurtured: to be a department store Santa just once in my life. And really BE it, express it, do an Edmund Gwinn on it, inspired by the old “Miracle on 34^th Street,“ but it was not to be. I called two or three large stores who offered this, and the answer was always: senior citizens only. They don't use 30-year-old Jewish Coloradan health-care givers, down-and-out in San Francisco. My luck. No sign of snow anyway, some cheer.

Berlin, 1990, five years after that disappointment in the City on the Bay. I'd just lived through City on the Wall, and a new era was in the making, hardly dared dreamed of – and now my own little dream was about to be realized, hardly could I have imagined.

Living in the barracks installation which had once housed Hitler's private HQ, I was employed on the side as masseur in a tiny rec center on this very compound. In a building where the Gestapo once tore muscles and shattered joints, there I was working at deep-relaxing muscles and helping joints bend better. It was called Hi-Light and offered a massage service as well as limo-rental, video-rental, ping-pong and a small library, whatever came to the mind of whichever military wife happened to be running it at the time, and was open to creative inspiration. I was available on commission by appointment, according to contract I also gave quarterly workshops. This all ran until the last American military installation was closed for The Drawback, 1994.

In December of 1990, Kelly from Texas was at the helm. She was a congenial sort, and as with her predecessors I often had a good hearty chat with her in the office after an appointed session on the bench. On this particular day she hit me with a volunteer request. Would I be willing to go house to house, flat to flat, for three evenings running, ending with Christmas Eve, in the military housing areas? Would I be willing to do it unpaid, although families responding to this clever little offer were paying a fee of five bucks for Santa to spend 2-5 minutes “dropping by“ and enchanting the kiddies? Would I be willing to have Kelly as a “Rudolph,“ sledding me and about four “elves“ in green from the Berlin American High School around in her van? My heart jumped.

I said, “Maybe. First tell me about The Suit.“ The Suit was grander than I could have dared hoped: the costume itself was totally alright, with enough room for pillows, and as only the boots were missing, I stuck with my military boots, the kids would just have to deal with that. The main thing, the beard and the wig, were as good as it gets, cotton would help the eyebrows, nothing was loose-hanging, it was perfect. As a pipe smoker with a nice collection, I would use my very long- stemmed number which was right out of the traditional illustrated poem – everything was set. So would I do it? I said, “One other thing. Snow. Tell me about snow, I want snow.“ It hadn't snowed a winter in Berlin worth mentioning. That year it would, and did, and how. I told Kelly, leaving the snow open to chance, “Yes. I'll do it, I'm in. Am I alone with this?“ No, it seemed there was one other Santa going on his own tour for the Hi-Light, a Master-Sgt., a tall and lanky, rather banal and colorless fellow who thought that just wearing the threads made the theme, as if just wearing the duds made the dream, and when I heard that he was all they had and they needed a second for another tour, I said, “YES KELLY! YES! I WILL BE YOUR SANTA!“

And so it went. I fit into the whole shtick like an apprentice to the Real McCoy. I went through every tour those three evenings with one thought: I am He. What would He do if He were Me? And what would The Universe wish to communicate to all these children, or to a specific not-yet-encountered child - in the form of a kitsch-traditional, warm'n'rosy Santa – this creative Universe so electrically resonating with compassion, with warmth and love, pregnant with joy like a Santa.

The effect was a complete outward transformation, and inwardly I was morphing into my interpretation of a divinely-dropped North Pole Messenger of love, of joy, of goodwill, of Christmas warmth and cheer at its best – no clichées, no bullshitting, no “acting“ but being it, taking my time actually paying attention to the kids, listening, playing, laughing and joking – and sharing that twinkle of the glance. And it worked. The ho-ho was heartfelt, and slipping into the role I rolled in and out of each visit feeling enriched and in more than a few cases tangibly enriching.

Among all the many various drop-ins, at some I was known by military co-workers, and for them it was “Sam-ta Claus“ - explaining to the young and inquisitive that the military boots were a logical gesture of solidarity with the troops – heaven forbid it should mean I was actually some seargeant- dude dressing up for a stint... Most of it all went pretty much according to program, I spent anywhere from four to five minutes per visit, and there were quite a few of them. And it was fun.

There were about four incidents which will always remain with me from the latter two evenings. I worked the crowd, as they say, on gut instinct and hunch, or call it intuition. My elves were sometimes nonplussed, trying to remind me that time was running, as five turned into ten minutes, ten into twenty. I reminded them with the sternness of a Papa Christmas, that we were on my clock, not Hi-Light's, not Kelly's, not the 5-dollar fee's. They gulped and must have thought, “Oh, shit, the dude's gone mental, he actually believes he's...“ And they dealt with it.

In one flat there was a young mother with her little daughter. Different than the other families I'd been seeing, the air semed laden with an unspoken blue-mood. It expressed the overall tension over the Gulf deployment, Desert Shield was close to becoming Desert Storm, and everyone was more or less on edge in the face of unknowns. I wasn't here for commercial purposes, but on quite other business: Being Christmas. After entering the kitchenette with a hearty greeting, I sat on the nearest chair and motioned the girl toward me, inquiring as to what was on her heart. If you can't do that, what are you doing Santa for? She hesitated, and her mother, leaning against the counter and reflecting this mood as well, courteously explained that they were both concerned about Dave, a family member or friend being in the Gulf, and what danger might await him.

Nodding sagely (Santa does that), I drew the girl to my knee, hugged her gently closer, and spoke very softly to her. Naturally we had one simple rule, if you happen to know what the parents had in store for the child you could “promise“ that – but you don't promise anything you can't, nor can anyone, deliver. So for warm-ups I asked her if she knew who I was, then I asked her if she knew where I lived. When she answered with North Pole, I told her, “No, that's what everyone says, but the truth of the matter is, I live in your heart, right there in your heart, that's where I live. And all year round I am there, loving you, watching you grow, and there is nothing, nothing you can do that could make me love you less. I am seeing everything, just like they say, only I am not thinking bad or good, I am just loving you.“ Well, good for the warm-ups, that got her up on my lap. Her mother's lips were already quivering.

“Now then,“ I went for the gold. “You're going to get this and that for Christmas, aren't you? I don't have to tell you. But you are worried about Dave, and we are thinking about Dave, now aren't we? There are things even Santa cannot promise you in so many words, there are things we just have to leave up to Jesus, and there are things we just have to leave up to God. So what to do? Well we can pray, can't we? You pray with me, with ol' Santa. Now see if you know this song, and anyone who knows it can sing it with us, right now and right here, and we will offer this song up like a prayer for Dave to come home safely. Alright? Alright, now here goes...“

I broke into one of my own most favorite childhood songs from Pete Seeger, also performed by Simon and Garfunkel, “Strangest Dream“ - the whole song from beginning to end, softly and yet with a penetration which carried the mood in that kitchen into a level of refreshed hope and wonder at the power of possibility. If that ain't Christmas. And the child was much more relaxed, and the mother was brushing away tears, and the elves dealt with it. My clock. In Sufism we call this: effacement-of-the-self-in-the-elf, in Arabic, fana-fi-santa.

Shortly after, the elves got a taste of Santa's irritation. We made a stop at one flat where the only child there was an infant, not even half a year old by my reckoning, and with web-cam running and the adults making jolly, I was supposed to gratify their selfish whims of scaring the living bejeebers out of a little one who had no idea what this massive red and bearded intruder bursting through the door was after. And the child burst into screams of terror, to the gaity of these perverse American idiots. Not even then did they have a clue that they were being stupid. I gazed very gently on the child, then growled at the parents and guests a sarcastic “Merry Christmas“ and beat it out of there in less than half a minute. Their five bucks. The elves, following me down the stairs, were shocked and bemused at hearing Santa muttering a very un-Christmas “such bullshitters,“ and “Santa don't play that shit.“

It was the third incident which most moved me. There the elves had to really learn some patience, and live with my Santa-wrath. While I was equipped with a never-empty sack of little brown baggies of goodies for each child no matter how many I encountered, it was part of the deal that a family could leave a bag with a present or two with a note for me to bring it into the apartment as if it was from the Great One himself, a nice touch when one thinks about it. I was not however, expecting what hit me at this domicile: One, maybe two wrapped little boxes, and a note taped on the door, addressed to Santa, requesting that he ask the girl “in which bed she's been sleeping“- in which bed she's been sleeping? They wanted to draw me into their twisted family dysfunction? My intuition was on alarm, I grimaced as I ripped the note off and crunched it in my North Pole fist, I growled with a side glance to my wondering elves, “Santa – doesn't – play – this – shit.“ And we went in.

There were the parents, with the boy, the older of two childen, dressing the tree it seemed, everything appearing quite normal, none of them actually moving toward me or getting into The Visit much, just carrying on with what they were doing. Then I saw the little sister, seemed not older than four, standing at a distance in the living room apart from me and from the family, standing and looking – well, for me quite clearly traumatized, if one looked at it. And that evening I was looking.

I dropped the rocks, and left the others who didn't even take notice, and sat my big North Pole ass down on that couch where she was, and gestured her to come nearer. My previous experience over Dave and Pete Seeger had prepared me for this moment, and I was dismayed to see that this precious child's clear inhibition, her blank stare unmoved by any little humor on my part, was too deep to just be distracted by grins and jests, it was a sign of trauma. What the game here was I could not for the life of me surmise. But with the same wrathful energy coursing through me toward her parents I radiated toward her in concentrated, attentive stillness, all the compassion I felt toward her, all the cherishment, all the joyous love and aching to wrap this little one in my heart.

I got her over to me and went through the same chat as with the other girl the evening before: who I am, where I really live, and it took twenty full minutes to get her to a normal child's responsiveness, a turning up of the lips, a glint in the eye again, a voice. I told her that I watch over her, that she is an ever, ever so good little girl, that I love her, that Santa loves her, that Jesus loves her, that she is loved by God every moment of every day, and that no one, no other person big or small, may tell her differently.

I had to work for those five bucks, I had to penetrate hard rock in what time I had, and I wasn't leaving till something gave. I addressed her with the authority of my office in The Suit, I addressed her with the sovereignty of love. And I stayed with her till she could return to normalcy, if even for that moment. And she got it. And the elves, I think they got it too. Her family got nothing, they were beyond reach. Had I seen anything tangible I could have reported, I would have alerted our youth services. I left there without a word to the others, but took one last lingering gaze at the door, toward the little sister still standing by the couch in that living room, still apart from her family who had missed everything and would still. And she returned my gaze and was back with the living, I hoped, to stay.

Kelly made a grand “Rudolf“ in all that generous Berlin snow, and we wrapped it up from there. A day or two later she asked me what all went on with my tours, several families had called her up especially to tell her they got far more for their five bucks than they'd bargained for. I said, “Oh hell, you know, Kelly, the Master-Sgt. probably had more goin' on in his bag than we'd thought...“

My tours were over, it was Christmas Eve, and I just wasn't finished, after waiting all these years to be The Fat One. I visited a five year old girl I personally knew, a fair piece away in Kreuzberg, not one of your better-heeled districts in town. I had some fun with Berliners en route waiting for the subway and while riding it, appearing as this totally American Clichée of Christmas walking around in an area uncharacteristic for this, being outrageous, greeting people in my still broken German and getting the jaded, seen-it-all Berliner or dour Turkish faces to break into bewildered smiles and laughter. If this wasn't fun, what the hell is!

En route back to my barracks, still in full dress and character, I left the subway and took a short bus run to the front gate. The driver and other riders seemed to know this American shtick, but sitting there as well was a very traditionally dressed, middle-aged Turkish Muslim couple, who checked me out and seemed to figure in a polite way, as I was reading their faces, “Well, yes, this is their Christmas holiday, it has nothing whatesoever to do with us of course...“ How wrong they were, as tonight Santa was there for everyone, and so was Edmund Gwinn, who'd spoken Dutch to the little Dutch girl on his lap, to a watching young Natalie Wood's astonishment, and the “Miracle on 34^th Street“ was about to be transfereed to “Finkenstein Allee“.

I waited till we reached my stop, made a belly-ho-ho, wished everyone “Frohe Weihnachten,“ this being, Merry Christmas, and directly at the shocked but delighted Muslim couple, a ringing “as-salaamu aleikum, wa-rahmat-ullah wa-brakatu-hu!“ - this being, peace be with you and mercy of God and His grace! An especially Muslim touch to this season of joyous love and renewal.

I wondered how the Master-Sgt. was holding out.

- S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin - Dec. 2011 

(Pir Vilayat Khan doing my Shtick, early '70s)