failed attempts, Saleh prints the document. He holds the paper in his hands and stares at it for a long time. Minutes tick by. He ignores a question about the content of the email. He ignores a second question, staring mutely at the paper. After a full three or four minutes, Saleh lifts his hand toward his face as though he might lick his thumb to flip a page. His thumb brushes past his chin ineffectually, as Saleh continues to stare blankly at the page. Finally, the doctor seems to shake his reverie. He looks up and hands the email across the desk. Such momentary lapses don’t slow down Dr. Saleh’s internal momentum. His plans seem ever more elaborate and fantastic. Although he and Graciela are splitting up, Saleh hasn’t given up on having a son. He says he will artificially inseminate a Chinese woman with the 99.9-percent-guaranteed-boy method. He needs a son to pass on a sword that has been in the Saleh family since the 14th century, but he wants a second son, so he’ll have “an heir and a spare.” He says his Chinese-African sons will be raised to be bilingual, which he says will open the doors of Chinese commerce to his five daughters. But these days, Saleh can’t catch a break with his children. He has custody of the three youngest girls — twin 3-year-olds and a 6-year-old — while his oldest daughters, 11 and 13, live with his estranged wife. Saleh complains that the older girls try to turn the younger children against him, and when they visited his psychiatric office in January, he decided to send them to his home. According to a report that Saleh’s assistant sent to the Department of Children and Family Services, part of the voluminous divorce file, Saleh’s second-oldest daughter was angered at being asked to leave. The report states that she turned to her father in his own psychiatric office, pointed her finger and shouted, “You are mentally ill.”
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hen Saleh explains his study of magic, it’s not the story of an amateur dabbling in a hobby. He has made monthly flights to Las Vegas for years to become a master magician at the storied McBride’s Magic & Mystery School. Interested in magic since childhood, he became passionate about it after 9/11. He was so rattled by the ordinariness of the day that he began to think a lot about death. After reading “The Myth of Tomorrow: Seven Essential Keys for Living the Life You Want Today,” by Jacksonville psychologist Gary Buffone, he spent 10 sessions with the author. One of Buffone’s techniques was to ask Saleh to imagine he had a brain tumor,
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ixing sobriety houses, Zen gardens and spa services might seem an odd mashup, but they’re actually all pieces of an idea Saleh was forced to put on hold. In 2008, Saleh planned to transform a two-acre lot on University
Boulevard into an addiction treatment center, complete with spa and meditation garden. He planned to put up patients at the nearest Hilton, then bring them to the facility he dubbed “Zen City” during the day. Assuming, as he does today, that Vegas would form his primary customer base, he planned a billboard that would read, “From Sin City to Zen City.” Saleh ran into trouble, however, when he sought to change the property’s zoning from residential to a commercial PUD. Neighbors complained that addicts would be roaming around their homes, and they were incensed that Saleh pretty much clear-cut the property before he made his plans known, while it was zoned residential (and therefore free of more restrictive tree-removal laws). Residents contacted district City Councilmember Don Redman, who pressured city staff to fine Saleh. They didn’t, but the city’s Planning Department recommended denial of the rezoning anyway. Saleh says neighbors fought the facility because of racist assumptions about him as an African. “I hate to use the word racial, but that was it,” he says. “Don Redman is the biggest redneck KKK guy around.” Saleh says he’s going sue the city for derailing his plans, and promises it will be a spectacular legal takedown. “It will have all the drama and excitement of a Las Vegas production,” he predicts.
Dr. Saleh’s income and self-mythologizing have given him impressive access, as this fundraiser photo for Barack Obama shows. “I’m the high priest of medicine,” Saleh says.
MAY 10-16, 2011 | folio weekly | 13