The Billionaire Interview

What you are about to read is all base on factual experiences with the ramification that would have driven most to suicide but has made me stronger.

As we fly into sunny Palm Beach on the Citation I look out the window and see the Bentley waiting. I think for a moment how great it is to fly on a private jet and have a driver on the runway to pick you up. No lines to follow, no waiting to see if my cases arrived. The crew unloads the luggage into the car and off I go once again realizing that it was a job interview that I was not qualified for but could easily do. I am just part of the fraternity that no one sees a face to call unemployed. On the way home, although I have no real home just places we stay until we are asked ever so politely to leave, I stop off and get what is on sale at the grocery store using my EDT card and thinking just a few hours earlier I was being served as if I was the billionaire. Going down the aisles of Publix was not the same as earlier on the jet where I am met up with a bar full of the best spirits. Back to reality I notice people are watching me after all I am wearing a suit and tie, shoes shine to a mirror finish, and hair all in place. Little did they know just two days before I was sleeping in my car at the rest area on the turnpike? How we judge people often is misleading for I looked the posh and polished when in fact I was in dire straits. Stopping to look at the razors I realize that my EDT card won't pay for them so back they go unto the shelf even though it had been over two months since I have replace my last razor. What a challenging experience thinking of your self worth that to buy the simplest thing of need and not having the funds. How can anyone looking for a job living on food stamp look fresh if they can't buy razors? It would be nice to have but I need what little cash is left for gas. As I waited my turn checking out hoping there there is enough left on my EDT card reminds me of days past that I would slip a dollar into the slot machine at Vegas hoping to win that big jackpot. The cashier at last hits total and feeling like I have won the jackpot I have enough left to pay for it all. There has been time that hasn't been the case and I would go through taking things out but today it all balance out. Suddenly my head is flashing on going to get more of the buy one get one free or the sales that seem to draw my eye in. The fresh cat fish that was on sale that I passed on, I think would it had last a few days or is it so near to the end that they put it on sale just to move it before it begins to smell? The avocados that were buy one gets one? Should I go back, should I, as I get into my car that now has barely enough gas to get home?

As I drive up the driveway to my son house my mind once again races pass the last 3 days. For I have driven to Palm Beach had an interview, pass that, spent the night at the rest area on the turnpike, flew to Boston, went to the Principal penthouse only for her to change clothes then drove to her estate on Cape Cod and spent the night. It was like the movies private jets, Bentley with a driver, staying in an estate worth tens of millions that neighbors are send on the news or in the movies, after all it is Cape Cod on the beach. Now I am in the driveway getting out of an eight year old Lexus while opening the door my wife runs out to asked how it went. She immediately knows from my face the hope that I left with has shattered but not given up. How many interviews does this one makes I think and can't even count them all.

Who would think someone that was a Fulbright Scholar, holding a PhD and two Masters would not be able to find a job? How many times can I do this, at 66 most people would give up but with nothing left but bills what are my alternatives. Death, I think has given me an open invite, for the only one payment I have maintained is my life insurance so death would leave my family missing me but secure their future. Should I be heroic and take my life to feed my family? I look back on a life that few would believe and even fewer would venture to travel. I have ridden across the Sahara with the Bedouins, dine with Sheikhs, drank malt scotch with Princess Margaret and even had dinner with Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. Once I even loaned my car to Mick Jagger. I have walked away from bombings that left other spread across the road. Sat and talked with drug lords that name would send shivers down ones back. When people ask me off accomplishments I state proudly I was once on a panel that changed the minds of a nation views on art by writing the National Art Curriculum for all Public schools in the country and didn't even speak the language. But today as I have done so many time before needed to reinvent myself showing my wife that it takes tenacity to try and who knows possibly I will get the call that changes our future by the end of the week.

She didn't mind when I sold her wedding band, she didn't blink an eye when I put all our things in a storage unit, but she wonders at night as we lay in bed if tomorrow will come another day of despair. As I lay next to her, I think is the end of a life that has given so much too so many finally met the reaper. Shakespeare said the valiant never taste death but once and a coward dies a thousand deaths before his time. Do I give to others and have this as the end of my adventures? Is life worth the daily challenges of defeat when I have tasted victory for so many years? I lay looking out the window into the heavens feeling defeated but not giving in. At last I fall into a sleep that challenges me to life and death. If I gave in to death my insurance would surely suffice for her to find another husband and for my children it would bring in an end to the concerns of possibly having to support us. The fear of death was not stopping me for I have tasted it in the jungles of Columbia, on the borders of Israel and Lebanon, at a temple in Kashmir, in the streets of Karachi. My belief in God has never faultier for I have learned from being engulf in many religions that God no matter how you reach him/her is not on the road you travel but the way you travel.

Lying in bed in and out of sleep I remember a time when I went to hike the Himalayas and was staying in Srinagar for awhile. A few days after a bombing I went to a barber shop and told the owner I would pay for everyone hair cut that came in that day. Mind you it was about twenty cent for a haircut. Within an hour a line had occurred and the faces was beaming with joy. Just two days earlier in the town center a temple had been taken over and people executed inside as I had walked out of its very doors. But now with just a few dollars I was changing people lives. How little it took to make a difference.

Then there was the time I was in Sharjah during Ramadan lecturing to the Emirates Fine Arts Society to participate in the first major International Art Show that I had been a part of organizing that no one wanted to enter. But because I read the Quran before coming to them they knew I was asking nothing for myself and trusted that I was there to give. It was a moment that later was highlighted by being the first non-Arab brought into their society in its history with honors from the Ruler.

As day breaks the flirtation of death broke away, for it would be an easier avenue to travel then what laid in front of me but I felt I had more to give before my time passes on. 

To be followed in my next entry how a Cinderella watch taught me sex education at the age of ten. This will be  a read for all ages, not to worry.