The Sufi Remembrance Project

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5 Memories for “Mikhaiel Mekjian”

1. on 01 Apr 2011 at 9:42 pm1Sarmad Tide

   Mikhaiel was my first teacher in Zira’at. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to this great being who has been a shining light in my life. I join with all who have been recipients of his love and wisdom in offering condolences and prayers.
   Love,
   Sarmad

2. on 20 Apr 2011 at 3:55 am2Muizah (Malika) Rega

   Years ago, when I frequently visited California, I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Mikhaiel and Quan Yin, both amazing people, each in their own way. I was introduced to them by Qahira Qalbi. I particularly remember a walk around his property, and his gentle and loving teachings about the land and its creatures. We narrowly avoided a nest of rattlers. It was very exciting for this city-bred girl! He was a being of Light, and Heaven is now brighter for his being there.

3. on 27 Jun 2011 at 1:14 pm3Joseph Ayaz

   Around the time of his passing, I was thinking about Mikhaiel quite a bit, and calling him to mind always made me smile because he made the best hummus ever. Every time I eat hummus, it is measured against the Mekjian Gold Standard (and so far always comes up short). Oh, to have been among the gods and goddesses when he arrived bearing that ambrosia.

   Moreover, Mikhaiel was the steward of magical land in Topanga Canyon that was healing and a wonderful treat and re-treat, and which made Sheryl my partner feel comfortable/at home in the LA Basin for the first time ever, this some six years after moving to the Southland. That’s the power of place and the Green Man.

   But at the time of his joining the Great Caravan, I was (and still am) thinking fondly of him and being inspired by him because he crossed over around the time of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan; and I’ve been reflecting on what turned out to be the last time that I heard Mikhaiel’s voice. It was 1994 (I haven’t been back to LA much in the years since) and I had traveled to LA for a week on business, this a couple years after I had moved away. After finishing my business, which had been delayed a day owing to an act of God, I called up on Saturday morning to see if maybe I could go out to Woodland Hills and see Mikhaiel and Quan Yin. To visit and to see how they were, because it was the week of the Northridge Quake, which was a 7.1 and the quake that (I think) gave us the verb “to pancake”–as in apartment buildings built on pilotis over parking spaces and freeway interchange bridges. Fortunately where I was in MidWilshire only sustained partial damage, and I was able to move in with some unscathed friends. Although we all froze at every aftershock.

   When I called, Mikhaiel answered the phone with his usual gusto, said the family was fine and that the house was too, providentially the only one on the block left standing without catastrophic damage, and that although he’d really like to visit with me, he’d have to wait and see me on the next visit, because he was just getting ready to go over to a neighbor lady’s house and help her right her fallen-down water heater.

   So I’ve been thinking a lot about him in the time since this spring’s Japanese 9.0 earthquake, and the 2010 Haitian one, and the Chilean one before that. Every time, I think about how wherever one is, one would want to have a neighbor just like Mikhaiel. And I’ve been thinking just as much how to be a neighbor like Mikhaiel.

   Long live the twinkle in his eye and the love in his heart–here’s to keeping that alive in all of us fortunate enough to know him.

   Much love,
   Joseph Ayaz in W.Philly

4. on 02 Nov 2011 at 6:42 pm4Vakiel Pershing

   Mikhaiel Mekjian was a great treasure to the Los Angeles Sufi Community during the years I lived there. He hosted many retreats on his getaway property in Topanga Canyon. There were acres of wild chaparral surrounded by open country, and the haven it provided us who lived in the great surrounding urban sprawl was welcome and healing. One year he and Qahira Qalbi led us out into the night. Walking silently for a half hour or so until we arrived at a great ancient Oak tree set in a meadow where we invoked the dhikr and slept under the stars. On another occasion we sat in the pantry of his home in Woodland Hills eating olives he had cured and drinking Black Muscat wine from a vineyard he loved in northern California. Coincidentally, I now live about twenty miles from that vineyard and think of him every time I pass by.

5. on 04 Nov 2011 at 8:24 pm5Cyrus Carlos Yanez

   Mikhaiel was first and foremost an earth spirit. Having known him since the early 70’s when he worked as a landscape architect and took part in many of the same Sufi activities I did. He was Pir Vilayat’s first Zira’at initiate. At the Big Bear retreat in 76 or 78, Pir asked me to find some cotton rope and dye it with turmeric and tie it into a loop. He didn’t tell what it was for. Near the end of the retreat Mikhaiel was wearing the loop. It became the symbol of being a Zira’at initiate.
   He taught me a great deal regarding planting and symbolic relationships. I too remember the Topanga land. We stored the Banner Booth that we used at Renaissance Faires there and held Sufi picnics and retreats on his land. He enriched my life and I am grateful for having been a part of his.

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