Parable of the Wise Man
Marvin X at the University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference, 2015
photo Burrell Sunrise
Marvin X at the Cliff House, Ocean Beach, San Francisco
photo Adam Turner
A birthday parable for Rashid Easley, 78, my childhood friend
Some people never heard of the wise man. Never knew such a person existed above the plane of normal human beings, a man with triple vision who could read minds, reveal what the people seated before him were thinking, although some of them asked if he knew what was on their minds. Some confessed they sat before him, eating his food, drinking his wine, yet consumed with the thought of killing him. One person with pure evil on her mind said, "If I kill you, I will be famous, huh?" He acted as if he didn't hear her evil thoughts so said nothing, although he noted it down in the book of his mind.
When people entered the wise man's house, they were required to remove their shoes so they did not bring in the filth of the streets. And after removing their shoes, there was a bowl of candies for them to partake, something sweet as they proceeded into the main chamber of the wise man's abode.
When they seated themselves, the wise man spoke to them of linguistics and semantics, as this was his calling. He knew the chief academics in the genre of linguistics and challenged them when they came to the hood. He called one of the academic linguists in the field of semantics, "An oriental with an occidental mind." The semanticist proved the wise man was correct when the semanticist was appointed president of the college and repressed the student revolution for freedom of speech, academic freedom and the recognition of ethnic linguistics and literature.
The wise said, "I told you he was a fool, an oriental with an occidental mind. He cannot deconstruct the liberation semantics and linguistics of the ethnicities which he is a member. His occidental mind aligns him with the oppressors and he clings to them with every ounce of his colonial mental apparatus."
To those of us humbled before the wise man, though we were denizens of the hood, we had no doubt he was our sheikh. He taught us verb and predicate. Subject and verb. Noun and adjective. He taught us how to skim headlines to skip the body of articles.
He trained me to be a wise man in his honor. When I began teaching elementary Arabic in the hood, at a point I realized my people needed the deconstruction of English more than Arabic. I was thankful Arabic taught them parts of speech, but if they were able to grasp parts of speech in Arabic, let us then deconstruct English parts of speech and we proceeded to do so in our community classes with brothers hosting a class at their homes, serving refreshments, especially for the pleasure of the teacher, special refreshments they observed made the teacher teach better!
But we give all honor and praise to the wise man with whom we are his devotees. He was our Master Teacher and we praise him for delivering us from the dead, the deaf, dumb and blind. He was an outsider and so were we for associating with him, but we loved his free thinking wisdom that was beyond the religiosity of the mosque that did not allow knowledge on the spiritual level of the wise man, whom the mosque officials labeled a hypocrite and all those who associated with him. So, those of us who were free thinkers and sought knowledge that transcended the "supreme wisdom" of the mosque were called hypocrites. Our dear brother Ishmalah who made Islamic hats was labeled a hypocrite for making hats that later became accepted and fashionable, but by that time Ishmalah was broken hearted and settled for taking Polaroid pics at night clubs.
Thank you, Wise Man, Sheikh, Holy Man in the ghetto of our lives. You taught us Elijah sat you down for worshipping the golden calf, yet you enriched our lives with your boundless wisdom, Aaron Ali (aka, John Ashford).
The Great Mosque #26 Fisherman, Brother Edward, (Bro. Edward fished singlehandedly college students from throughout the Bay Area into the NOI, i.e., San Francisco State, San Jose State, UC Berkeley, and we, in our utter ignorance, treated Brother Edward in the most abusive manner imaginable) told us, as did Aaron Ali himself, Elijah Muhammad selected Ali because of his college education, his command of English made him in the tradition of the Biblical Aaron who was capable of speaking for Moses.
Allahu Akhbar, Sheikh Aaron Ali and Brother Edward
and all the "street Muslims" of the Most Honorable Elijah, who said,"My real followers are in the streets, not in the mosques, e.g., hustlers, pimps, ho's, drug dealers, paper hangers, robbers, gays, lesbians, et al.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
6/15/21