Repair Man

When I walk inside, Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad — Islamic mystic, artist, and auto mechanic — is hovering over a samovar. A compact man with a gray-shot beard, he bustles with frantic energy, as if he's the host of a party that's continually just about to begin. "Tea!" he proclaims. "You must have tea!" And he offers a steaming cup. Then Rezaei-Kamalabad, 52, finds himself under a Buick that hangs on a lift, explaining how brain energy affects the fuel injector and telling me about his inventions-in-progress that could help bring the major world religions into harmony. He plans, for instance, to glue a Torah, a Bible, and a Koran into one big tome but has been stymied because the religious texts come in different sizes.

"All my thinking is 'unite, unite, unite,' " he says, gesturing emphatically with grease-blackened hands, a loose Band-Aid flapping off of one finger. He's tortured by contradictions and schisms, so tortured that he spent 17 years and — he estimates — $90,000 to build his masterwork, the Sense of Unity Machine, which he stores in an unheated room behind the auto shop. When he flips on the light to show me, my first thought is "electric chair." A gurney hangs suspended from a steel frame that soars maybe 12 feet in the air. Old seat belts dangle, ready to strap you to the stretcher, and there's a stained pillow to cradle your head. Rezaei-Kamalabad explains how the machine simultaneously spins you around and flips you head over heels, giving you the advantage of two prayer motions in one: You're bowing and also whirling like a dervish. This combo, he says, brings about inner harmony and also cures diabetes. He turns a switch, and the gurney flings itself about in midair, seat belts flailing, while the motor screeches.

In the interests of journalism, I know I should volunteer to strap myself into that thing and see whether or not I come out realigned. But I can't work up the nerve. So instead I scream at Rezaei-Kamalabad over the thunder of the machine: "So, you probably use this machine every day."

He flips the switch off. "No, dear," he says, in the sudden silence. "I used to. But I don't have time now."

I'm startled by this answer: Why would anyone spend more than a decade perfecting a machine and then not use it? But before I can press him on this, the door to his shop tinkles — someone coming for tea. And maybe that's the answer: This garage is also a Sense of Unity Machine, a crossroads for artists, cabdrivers, friends from the public housing development nearby, curious kids, techies, skate-punks, and spiritual seekers. In the hours I spend hanging out at the shop, visitors include a teacher who leaves a silk scarf for Rezaei-Kamalabad's wife and an Indian-born customer who expounds on the history of Christianity in Madras. I find a book on his desk — DNA: The Secret of Life — signed by one of the authors, Andrew Berry, a regular at Aladdin Auto Service Center. "I drink tea here," says Ethiopian-born Yohannes Joseph, a neighbor who came that day just to hang out. "I have tea in my house, but this tastes better. This place is like our home."

In the 1970s, Rezaei-Kamalabad worked for the government under the shah of Persia, overseeing the repair of palace buildings. In 1978, he left for Boston, inspired by a message from Allah — who directed him to pursue an American education. He got out just in time. In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution ripped Persia apart. "If I was there during the revolution, I could be dead," Rezaei-Kamalabad says simply.

He drove a cab and studied at Mass. Art, where he fell in love with a fellow student, Marianne Murphy. They married in 1984. He wanted to return to Tehran and live there. She didn't.

One night, he says, he prayed for guidance — should he stay or go? — and God sent him a dream: He found himself gliding down the Charles River in Noah's ark, fog curling off the water. In the gloom, he could just make out the lights of the Hyatt Regency hotel. He knew the place well; every day he picked up customers there in his cab. The ark stopped in front of the Hyatt. Its door opened. He was sent out onto the shore, alone. When he woke up, he knew he had to stay in the United States. "I start to cry," he says. "I did not have any roots here. Everything was in Persia."

A few years later, he began building his Sense of Unity Machine, which would rock him in the air, would cradle him in its curling prayer, bringing harmony to a man living in exile. When I think of him hunched over those plans, I'm reminded of Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic and Colorado State University professor of animal science who invented a machine to hug her, because she could not stand the touch of another person. Did Rezaei-Kamalabad hope for a machine that could soothe his particular pain?

Maybe gyrating through the air — as he used to do, back when he had time to ride in his machine — worked some kind of magic on him. He exudes a rare sweetness.

"Do you have an e-mail address," I ask him, "so I can send you your quotes? I don't want to misquote you."

"Oh, no, my dear!" he replies. "I would never interfere with your art. You can have me say whatever you want. Have me say swear words!" He laughs uproariously at his own joke and then hurries to his samovar, to pour in more spices.

Pagan Kennedy's most recent book is Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo.