Hazrat Inayat Khan
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Jemila was one of my two closest friends from around 1979 until her death in October of 1988. I lived with her for a few months in 1983.
She was strikingly beautiful, tall and dark with hazel eyes that captured one with their beguiling sense of mystery.
And she didn’t like being beautiful. She shared with me that men were interested in her because of “how I look, and not who I am.” She chain smoked and didn’t eat properly and talked so fast sometimes that it was hard to understand her, and, she was committed to her spiritual growth.
She came from a simple background; I knew her parents, who were country people and eventually moved back to Arkansas; I kept in touch with them until they too joined Jemila in the beyond.
Jemila was devoted, as were several of us, to attendance at Vasheest Davenport’s weekly zikrs in San Rafael. Afterward, I always went someplace with her, either to her home or to a restaurant to have a bite, and we talked long into the night, often with another friend as well.
In 1982, Vasheest took a group of us to India, Pakistan, Egypt and Israel, meeting other Sufi teachers and singing zikr in every city we visited. Jemila, Krysten Cogswell (Elbers) and I shared a room together the entire three months, which was challenging to say the least, but forged our deep friendship further. Three women in their 30’s with strong minds sharing small rooms that sometimes had mice or other problems! Her picture is here in my study as it has been in all my homes since her passing. Krysten and I still speak sometimes of what Jemila’s perspective would have been on this and that. Vasheest’s son Kevin, who also accompanied us on that long trip overseas, said at that time, “It’s easy to see why she got her name, because she’s a beauty.” She was one of the most generous people I have ever met, putting aside the faults she saw or even joked about to help any friend at any time, day or night, when she was needed. Her front door was always open, once she had taken you in as a friend.