- Listen. You have a choice to make before departing. You may choose to lead a simple life, during which you will have to work hard for your progress. The other choice is this: to be extraordinarily gifted from birth, and able to remember though not to share.
- I choose the gift.
- Think carefully. It is the path of ache and loneliness. Great rewards await he who treads it, but one needs to be prepared for it. Is your mind set?
- It is. I feel ready.

"It's a boy!" The doctor's words made Asce Merit and his brothers leap straight off their seats and into a dance of joy. From the bedroom came the cries of the little being whose tiny existence was already fulfilling his parents' lives. It was a perfect moment, both a beginning and an end. "Make an artist out of him, Asce!" Giddy with happiness, the young dad could only grin.

Luke was curled up in his corner, silent as usual. The first two years of his life had been disturbingly quiet, as he was seldom agitated and cried even less. No toy aroused his interest, and he would sooner spend hours on end his back pressed against the wall, gazing at a great painting that seemed to fascinate him. His eyes that never tired of scanning the canvas were the only sign of his being awake.
- When will I be able to talk? Children younger than I are already able to. I can't. It's as if my body refused to. My parents are worried. What's the point of keeping my awareness if I am trapped in a newborn's behavior? I am so bored...
- Patience Your gift will soon manifest. Already you are able to appreciate this artwork in its smallest details.
- But that, no one knows it.

Isa Merit with a lump in her throat sat on the floor next to her little boy. He did not seem to notice. Stretched out on the rug, armed with crayons, he was covering a sheet of paper with colors. No defined shape offered itself to the eye, but whatever the boy meant to represent emanated from the paper in an ineffable feeling of peace. Isa could feel it as an almost-living cloud of joyful love that rose to hug her. The young mother leaned close to her son and asked, in a voice that had little hope for an answer: "Luke, what are you drawing?"
He did not even turn his head. With a sigh, she hugged him and left the room.
When he had first discovered the possibilities of crayons, Luke would answer this question, or at least attempt to. He would turn towards his mother or father a face that, though smileless, was filled with light, but despite an enormous effort he would only succeed in emitting inarticulate grunts. It would then be as if a flame had been snuffed: the radiant face would go somber again, and Luke would resume his work as if he were alone. In time he had stopped even trying to reply. Now, at the age of five, he had never uttered a word other than "ma-ma" or "da-da", and even those he seldom used. He had never shown interest in anything other than art.
- Why? Why? Why can't I talk, why can't I tell them But I know why. This is what I chose. If I had known the torment it would be! I'm not even trying to express myself anymore. My parents are miserable and I'm retiring even more inside myself. How can I break free from this vicious circle!
- Are you sure you do not know... Some things do not require words.
Luke froze and his crayon paused in mid-air. He rose awkwardly, still staring at his work. Hesitantly he turned away and ran into the kitchen where Isa was working. She was surprised to see him coming to her and thought he might have broken another crayon. "Do you need anything, honey?" Luke shook his head, his gaze expressionless, but he came closer and all of a sudden hugged his mother's leg tenderly. Isa gasped and tears sprang from her eyes. She crouched and held her boy close: "Luke darling, you can't speak but maybe you can understand: we love you my little angel, we'll always love you no matter what."

"Incredible." Asce's elder brother Sean was standing in the middle of the living room. All around him, on the sofas and against the walls, Luke's artworks were arranged. The boy, now fourteen, was seated between his mother and father. His face carried the usual lack of expression, but his parents' eyes shone as they waited for the verdict of his art-dealing uncle. The young artist had progressed by leaps and bounds since his early crayon works: he had tried and mastered every technique he had come across. Ink, watercolor, acrylics, collage, charcoal, transfer he used them one and all as if the fundamental difficulty of alternating widely different media dissolved before him, and turned to his advantage. As a result, no two of his compositions looked alike. The one constant, that branded them all as the creations of Luke Merit, was what Isa called their "song", like a vibrating promise that rose out of them and warmed the heart as between loving hands. Year after year this mysterious quality had moved the Merits to the core, and now they felt the time had come to let their son's beautiful gift be known.
Sean's moved silence showed that he could feel "it" as well. Nothing made Luke happier than to see his work brighten other people's day. Though he had never been able to smile, his face that seemed to light up from the inside was proof enough that his spirits were soaring.
- When I see them react, and feel the glowing stir of their soul, that's when I stop aching.
- You have seen nothing yet. Wait until they start reaching the people who need them. Then you will never regret your choice again.
"Do you think they're worth an exhibit, Sean?"
"Let me show them to a few people. If the paintings have the same effect on them as they have on me, Luke is going to go down in history."

Luke did go down in history, under the byname of Lugh. Isa had chosen it, after the Celtic god of light. Her and Asce had wisely taken this precaution before the young man's work had gone public in order to protect him from the hassles of fame that he was not prepared to handle. To the outside world, the Merits were a quiet family, subdued by the unfortunate state of their only child. Lugh was an entirely different matter. The hidden artist's masterpieces were affecting the public in an unprecedented way. They could not be compared to anything known for the simple reason that gazing at them was like being suddenly cradled in loving arms. Art critics would look at them and be too overwhelmed to apply any analysis to them. People who usually jeered at beauty would pay them the tribute of awed silence. For the first time in human history one event was unanimously acclaimed, because it reached straight down to the core of their beings where neither mind nor attitude could interfere.
The sensation he had been causing for nearly five years did not affect Luke much. He knew that his gift was spreading like the roots of a great, strong tree, and that was enough to make him feel perfectly content and, despite his young age, almost fulfilled.
- Almost but not quite I still hurt at times, when I get out of the house and I feel these people thinking I'm sick, a sort of thoughtless vegetable with a vague life. Is this the thing I am still waiting for, an awakening on their part?
- There will be no awakening, at least not within your lifetime.
- Then what is it?
- Trust, and wait.

"Look, dear," said Isa. She handed her husband three slips of paper. "They are tickets to a small concert. Mrs. Hatter gave them to me today, she has them from the pianist's mother. She said the young girl was quite extraordinary and that we should go and take Luke with us. She's going to play in the school amphitheater -- there shouldn't be too many people."
"Take Luke? You know he doesn't particularly enjoy music, and gatherings always make him uncomfortable""
"That's what I told Mrs. Hatter, but she insisted. It seems the pianist is is like Luke."
Asce looked up in surprise then nodded. He carefully folded the tickets in his wallet.

The next evening the Merits took their seats in the improvised concert hall. May Lovelace, the artist, was already in place at her piano. She gazed at it intensely as she waited for all to find their place. As soon as everyone had settled down, and though she had never even glanced at the audience, she started playing with no introduction. Had anyone been caught standing, they would have been rooted to the spot, afraid to move and break the charm.
The music shook every fiber in the listeners' bodies, working on them like a lapidary on a gem and soothing them until they felt they were vibrating columns of light. Asce and Isa recognized with wonder the feeling that overcame them every time they looked at a work of their son's. Luke knew it too, and blinked in shock.
May would have been very attractive weren't it for her neutral, expressionless face. It was not that she was insensitive: she evidently found great delight in creating music, and her fingers danced passionately on the piano keys, but just as was the case with Luke, her body refused to speak.
The final piece came all too soon. May rose and turned a face that glowed from the inside to the assembly. The latter was so stunned that the applause was slow to start, but it quickly escalated to a deafening roll Yet it could not drown out the silent soaring of all the hearts there. Two lifeless eyes scanned the crowd and paused when they met Luke's. An observer would have only seen an accidental exchange of blank stares, but Luke felt bowled over by a miracle.
- Hello, said the new voice in his head. You are like me aren't you?
- Hello, he replied as in a dream. Yes, I am I am.
She smiled radiantly somewhere in his mind, and he grinned back.
May's indifferent gaze continued to sweep the room, then a lady gently led her away from the stage. Her voice however was not leaving Luke's mind.
- We'll have to meet sometime, she chirped happily. We have much to talk about.
- Oh, yes! I've been waiting for something like this all these years I'm not going to let you go!
The still-dazed crowd was beginning to stream out of the rows of seats, towards the exit. Luke resisted the flow and pushed his parents towards the stage instead. "M... ayyy," he grunted as he pointed at the door through which the musician had disappeared. Asce and Isa exchanged an amazed glance and followed their son's lead.
- What happened? It's fabulous, it's I have no words.
- This is our gift to you, and to her. Know now the same bliss you have been spreading. You have both deserved it.
They passed the door. May was waiting, and her eyes shone.

Beirut, March 2000 (begun in 1996)

Written by Joumana Medlej, all rights reserved