“Gibran Unmasked” is a laser image of Khalil Gibran engraved on a fillet mignon, a creation inspired by a powerful image of Gibran staring out of the destruction onto his city. “I have always been fascinated by his reference to masking and unmasking and remembered the poem where he says.”

How I Became a Madman

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

 

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

 

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

 

Thus I became a madman.

 

— Khalil Gibran

The wall or mask as I look at it, is finally broken and now Gibran image on the wall is unmasked and he can for the first time see the sun….the truth of his existence and the destruction of the city he loves.”