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("Fur Elise" plays in the background)

A NEW INTERVIEW WITH THE OUKAH

November 19, 1998

Once again I was interviewing the Oukah. "Sir, several people have said that you are the greatest man they have ever met. What do you think of that?"

The Oukah shook his head in wonderment. "That always makes me feel very humble," he said. "Very unworthy. I know I stand for something important -- something great from the past, and I try to do my best. But to have someone see it, and appreciate it, is almost more than could be expected."

"And yet some do. And say so. What do you think is the difference?"

"I don't really know. It's just something they sense, I think." He squirmed in his chair a little, then said: "Let me tell you about becoming an Oukah. It was a strange experience, and one that nobody else on earth today has ever experienced."

"I want to hear about it," I said, urging him on to tell me what I sensed was a very significant, but highly personal matter.

"I don't know why I thought it was important to carry on.. you know, some people have said that I am carrying on long after the carrying on is needed. But I haven't found it that way. I have found that I do have a place, and it is just between me and God."

He laughed. "I learned about my past in a strangely quiet, easy way. It was like osmosis. I just absorbed it, like through my skin...but I felt it clear into my bones. I don't know what I heard when I was just a small child...how I knew, or learned, that I was a prince of my people. We certainly never sat around and talked about our glorious family history. Never. But whether it came from great-grandmother, or from the neighbors around us, I don't know. Certainly I was the oldest male of my generation, and maybe somebody noted it and cared.

"But something happened when I was about five years old that I have never told anybody about. I was outside the house, and somehow I cut my finger, and horror of horrors! my blood was red! And even at that age I knew I was supposed to be a blueblood (somebody must have used the word in my presence). But here it was -- and my blood wasn't blue. I was terrified, and horribly afraid that I did not belong to my family, that I must have been switched on them in the hospital. Now, of course, that is funny, but at the time I remember that I was terrified. But I guess I lived with it. I know I became a very good little boy, so they wouldn't throw me out!"

"And how did you know to become an Oukah?"

"Again, I don't know. When the time came I just accepted it. By that time I was 38 -- old enough to have found myself and accepted myself, with all my faults, as a person. But there I was about to enter onto a journey where no one had travelled in nearly four generations. And I knew that an Oukah was a very important person.

"I have asked before -- how do you become an Oukah, when there are no schools to go to, no one to tell you how? Well, I just went on with it, knowing only a little, but sensing a lot. I guess that God just led me.

"I knew that it was a lot bigger than I was at the time. I was acutely aware that most people are little bitty beings, because there has never been any reason for them to grow bigger. I knew that some people were five feet tall and weighed one hundred pounds, and some people were six foot three and weighed three hundred pounds. But how big was an Oukah?

"I knew that an Oukah occupied a very large space -- bigger than anybody, bigger than all of us little people. And I had to grow into one. Well, I'll tell you now, I feel sorry for most people. They've never had the experience of getting over their 'little selves' ... or having to expand into a space that was vast and beautiful. It took a lot of reflection, a lot of meditation, thinking, feeling, expanding -- like shaking off an old shell that was too small for you, and growing into a new one.

"I knew that I had to get over myself in two ways -- to get over, and overcome, that is, my little personal self, and to get over -- rise above and look down on with some controls -- a much bigger entity. It took some years. Then, one day I was taking my usual daily walk around the neighborhood, when it was a clear, warm, sunny day, and about a block from home I felt a great warmth fall upon my shoulders. It could not be ignored, and I instinctively knew what it meant. It was like God had just draped onto my shoulders an old, warm, yellow-feather cloak, just as our high priests and kings used to wear. It was such a compelling, positive feeling that I knew exactly what it was, and I have never forgotten it."

"How else did it change your life?" I asked.

"It subjected me to more meanness and hatefulness than anyone should have to endure. You know, some people like to think that most people are good and kind, but I have never found it that way. It has been my experience that MOST people are mean, hateful, spiteful, jealous, covetous, ambitious (for themselves -- oh, they don't want anything for you!). That sounds negative, I know, but that has been my experience.

"Many times I have thought that people act like chickens I have seen in the chickenyard. When one is different, or when one gets hurt and is bloody, the others will pick it to death! In people, is it the fear of someone being different from you? I guess it is. But I find no excuse for it. I must condemn it, not only because so many have been so mean to me, to my face, making insulting remarks about my race and heritage because I was different, or maybe because they thought that I was better than they were. Well, thank God I WAS better than they were. We are what we do, you know.

"When I was between the ages of 25 and 35 in particular, I don't remember how many times I arrived home, threw myself across the bed, and cried my heart out because of the cruelty that I had just been subjected to. A grown man -- crying his heart out in despair!"

"And this was the time you were being written about so much in the Dallas newspapers, doing TV and radio interviews, making speeches..."

"It shouldn't have been that way, and I didn't deserve such treatment. But I received it in great abundance. So much for the goodness of most people. And they object when I refer to some of them, even today, as "piss-ant little peasants". That's almost a compliment. They're really even worse than that."

"But that was when you were a prince. Let's get back to being an Oukah."

"Yes," His Majesty said. "Let's get back to being an Oukah. And I think I shall do just that, right now. But it has been nice sharing a few experiences with you."

The End.

Note: In the future we hope to tell you of the Oukah's influence in various events of the past 30 years, including the revolution in Iran. The Oukah told them not to kill the Shah.

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