Rami

“Did you ever see the movie Used People?” Rami asks me. “With Shirley MacLaine?”

“No,” I tell him, although I do remember that it was Shirley MacLaine’s book, Out on a Limb, that Rami once credited as having changed his life.

“There’s a dinner party scene where this old nun, hideously ugly, is sitting next to a little girl and all through dinner the little girl is looking nervously at the old nun until at one point the nun turns and smiles at her with this awful grin full of mangled yellow teeth, and the little girl bursts into tears. That’s how I feel about this town.”

“It’s like an old nun -“

“- and I’m screwing up my face and crying No!“

Rami is filling the office doorway, keeping an eye out for traffic wardens. He’s a big man, half American, half Iranian, bald beneath his baseball cap, with blue eyes and a face that reminds me of a friendly bullfrog. In the seventies he had been an aspiring film-maker living in New York. Then he read Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb and had, what he describes, as a spiritual awakening.

“You know that Inspiring Talks evening I went to the other night?” he continues. “The main speaker was an autistic transgender lesbian rapper.”

‘Talk about the cult of individuality.’

“There are a lot of people in this town who think they have all the answers.”

“There are.”

Rami doesn’t think he has all the answers but he is in contact with a representative of those who do, a spiritual being made of pure energy called Dhashen who is a member of The Council of Light. Rami periodically organises workshops where he channels the wisdom of Dhashen for paying participants. Rami is here to discuss the arrangements for his next event.

“I need a helper,” he says. “Do you know anyone?”

“For your event?” I ask him. “What do you need them to do? What’s the job description?”

“That’s a good question. It’s just having another pair of eyes in the room. When I’m channelling I’m not really present. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Could you put a post on Facebook asking if someone could be your helper?”

Rami frowns and shakes his head.

“I’d rather not,” he says, “there are a lot of crazies out there.”

“Fair point.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. I’m surrounded by angels.”

“Literal or metaphorical?”

“That’s another good question. Both,” he smiles. “Would it be ok if I went up to the room, just to get a feel for things?”

“Of course.”

Rami has held numerous workshops here in the past but every time is like the first.

“Are you busy?” he asks.

“Not especially.”

“Do you want to come and keep me company?”

“Sure,” I tell him.

Rami recently broke up with his girlfriend. Although quietly stoic and philosophical about it, he also confessed to being heartbroken. She was the love of his life. The love of Shirley MacLaine’s life was the member of The Council of Light that she was contacted by. They eventually got married. Rami doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Dhashen.  It’s purely spiritual.  Nonetheless, Rami is far from alone. On his website he explains that, along with Dhashen, he has a whole team of invisible friends he works with.

We don’t know what to make of Rami’s whole channelling thing. But Rami accepts that what he does isn’t for everyone. We have two channellers currently using the community centre. The other is a French woman called Babette. The other night she channelled Isis, Jesus and Mary, all in the same hour. What are the chances of that happening?

So far neither Rami nor Babette have acknowledged each other’s existence. I’m curious what might happen if we got them both channelling together in the same room at the same time. Could we use them as spiritual speaker-phones and get the deities communicating with one another? Has such a thing ever been attempted? Or could it be that Jesus and Dhashen know each other already. They might hang out together all the time. Or they could have met at a party once and disliked each other intensely. We have no idea how these things work, it’s probably best not to meddle in things we don’t understand. Like Rami says, very few people are conscious.

He follows me up the stairs and I help him set up a room with half a dozen seats for the audience, facing a single chair for himself, on either side of which he positions two tables. I take a seat in the front row.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Looks good,” I tell him. “What are you going to do with those tables either side of you?”

“They’ll have flowers and crystals on them. You’ll have to imagine those for now.”

“OK.”

“Do you want to hear a joke?” Rami asks me after a short silence.

“Go on then.”

“Let me remember how it goes. Ok. So, God gets a call from St Peter inviting him to a party. ‘It’s going to be great,’ says St Peter, ‘There’ll be dancing and drinking and feasting and oh boy you should see the chicks that are going to be there…’, ‘Sounds fantastic,’ God says, ‘Where is it?’ and St Peter tells him the party is on earth. ‘Forget it!’ says God. ‘The last time I was on earth I had a one night stand with a nice Jewish girl and two thousand years later they’re still talking about it!'”

“That’s a good one.”

Rami weighs me up.

“You have a very positive energy,” he says. “It’s the same sort of energy that most of my friends have.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It’s the kind of energy that has kept me sane all the years I’ve been living in this place.”

I know what Rami means when he uses the word ‘energy’ to describe how he experiences people. It’s not a word I would use myself  but I get its shorthand. We put away the tables and chairs and go back downstairs to the office.

After Rami has gone I look at the event posters he has left for me to put up in the building. They are titled A Magician’s Journey: An Evening of Channelling Dhashen with Rami Ramikayan, and I notice that his previous fictitious production company – Cascading Lights Presents – has been replaced by a new one called Golden Spheres Presents. I smile to myself. Golden Balls. That sounds about right.