Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) Read online

  Father himself came to the roof and handed her a sealed wax-stick. “For you only,” he said, and his eyes danced with happiness, for he had been worried about his younger daughter.

  Sarai tremblingly opened the stick and exposed the two waxen surfaces. Very little was written there. But it was enough.

  I am almost two years early, Sarai, but I can delay no longer. I wait for you outside the walls of the city, with a gift for your father but none for you except my love and my faith and my future, which I ask you to share with me forever.

  Abram

  Sarai looked up from the stick. “Father,” she said, “I think my husband has brought an inconvenient number of cattle and sheep for you to dispose of.”

  “His message to me,” said Father, “spoke of plans to divide this herd and take the animals to a dozen other cities, where they will be sold and the proceeds brought to me. My only fear for you, Sarai, is that your husband will be poor, having given so much to me. And yet the gift does not begin to make up for the great loss to me when you leave and the light goes out of my life.”

  Sarai burst into tears and embraced her father. “He remembered,” she said. “He remembered me.”

  “No one, having known you, could ever forget you,” said Father.

  “Many men have forgotten me,” said Sarai, “and far more have never noticed me.”

  “Abram noticed you,” said Father. “And God has noticed Abram.”

  “And God has noticed me,” said Sarai. “Or I would not be so blessed, to go from the house of such a father to the house of such a husband.”

  Two days later, under a canopy that shaded the bright calm sun of morning, she and Abram were married, with Father, Terah, Lot, and Qira looking on. She did not know what the future would bring, but because she was married to Abram, she knew that her life would matter, that the world would change and she would be a part of it.

  Part II

  In a Dry Season

  Chapter 4

  In the desert, wealth was not measured in cattle after all. Calves were born, and kids, and lambs, but they didn’t live long without pasturage for their mothers, and there was no grass where it did not rain. And rain was rare.

  There were storms—plenty of storms, as many as ever. But there was no moisture in them. Instead, when clouds appeared on the horizon, people shuttered their windows and brought their animals inside so they would not be suffocated by the dust. The lands to the north were so dry that every storm scooped up their soil and carried it out across the land between the rivers, down through Canaan, choking cattle, burying fences and fields, blinding travelers, and turning the feeble drought-stricken rivers into beds of mud. Grasses struggled to rise above the dust, sheep to graze through it. The beards of goats were caked with mud, as if they had been trying to eat the very soil. In a dry season, storms brought no relief, they only forced the drought inside houses, tents, mouths, noses, ears, and eyes.

  Abram had not impoverished himself with his extravagant bride-price. Indeed, Sarai soon realized that his gesture had been wise. There wasn’t water enough or grass for the vast herds that Abram once had owned. If he had sold them all at once, the price would have been so low that everyone would have known he sold from desperation. The cruel laws of the marketplace would have guaranteed that he would be charged higher prices for everything, and paid less for what he sold. But by using the cattle as a bride-price, Abram rid himself of herds he could not feed while enhancing his reputation for wealth. His credit and reputation everywhere were enhanced.

  Early in their marriage, Sarai had moments when she wondered if that was the only reason he had returned for her. But he was such a loving husband that she could not believe such a thing for long. In all his labors, in all his traveling from well to well and herd to herd, in all his sending of servants and taking account of those who returned, he always had time for her. Nor did he keep her from knowing of his business. He would meet with his men or with his visitors at the door of his tent, so that she could sit in the door of hers, just across from them, and spin or sew as she heard all that passed. She kept her silence; they did not notice or soon forgot that she was there. But afterward, Abram would come to her tent and talk with her until she understood what she had heard, and it was not too long before she knew the work of a nomadic chief as well as she had understood the protocols of a king’s house, or the mysteries of Asherah.

  He included her in his life, and she in turn longed to include him in her own. But of course a bride had no life at first, except the gossip of her aging handmaid, Bitute, a Sumerian slave who had passed all her years serving the women of Sarai’s mother’s family. What could Sarai tell Abram of her day? “Bitute brushed out my hair and then we both carded wool until our hands were raw. Then we spun and spun until I see the distaff before my eyes even when I close them. All the while, Bitute kept reassuring me that I’ll have a baby soon, that it’s just a matter of time, some women conceive slowly but it means the child will be a boy, and very strong, don’t worry about it, your husband will love you at last when you give him his first son, and is that true, Abram, will your love for me only begin when I conceive a child?”

  No, she made no report to him of days trapped with a well-meaning old woman who did not know how her words cut Sarai to the heart. “And don’t you believe those who say that Asherah dries up the wombs of girls who break their oaths. It wasn’t you who took the oath, young mistress, and besides, Asherah has many priestesses, she can spare such a beautiful young princess, she’s not spiteful.” Sarai did not bother to explain to Bitute that there was no such god as Asherah, and therefore no possibility of her drying up wombs or filling them. Nor did Sarai ask Abram for reassurance—she already knew what he believed, and it would only trouble him to think that his wife was nagged by the worry that an imaginary god was wreaking vengeance on her.

  She did try to find out how he felt about it, especially after the first year of their marriage. “Does it worry you that God has not yet blessed you with a son?” she asked him. He looked up, distracted, as if the question were utter nonsense. “God has never failed me before,” he said. “Why would he start now?” And when he saw that this did not reassure her—after all, it was not God but Sarai who had failed him in this—he took her in his arms and laughed and said, “I married the woman, not the babies she might have. But there will be babies, lots of them I imagine.”

  He was sincere, but she knew that his words were false all the same. He might think he married the woman, but a man marries to have sons—all the more when he needs men- children to receive his priesthood and carry it on. God was tied up in every part of Abram’s life, this not least. Abram must want a child in his arms, a child on little legs, to be hoisted up to the back of a donkey and taken with his father to the hill to see to the sheep, or to the riverbed to watch over the cattle, or to the altar to witness the sacrifice.

  Sarai saw the servants’ babies, and every happy cry, every fitful squall, every greedy slurp at the breast was like a knife in her heart.

  Patience, she told herself. Have faith as Abram has faith. Qira has had two children—girls, it’s true, but it was a sign that her family did not have barren daughters.

  And thus she passed her days, and her months, season after season, until she could not call herself a girl anymore, could not tell herself that it was just as well, she was too young to bear children, being hardly more than a child herself. Girlchildren born the year of her marriage were ten years old now, eleven. When they began to marry and bear children the reproach would be unbearable. Maybe then she would have to tell Abram they could pretend no longer, that it was time for him to put her aside and marry a woman who could bear him sons.

  On nights when she thought such thoughts, she tried to pray, but found the words bitter in her mouth. I gave up all for you, God of Abram. But now my womb tells me that Asherah, not you, has all the power over me.

  She covered her mouth with her hands, but knew that God had heard her alre
ady. It was too late to call back the words she had spoken to a god, even when they had not come to her lips, for the gods could hear the words that were whispered in the heart. O, forgive me, God of Abram. I have faith only in thee.

  That was in the night. By day those fears faded in the heat of the morning. Each pasture was smaller, the grass shorter than it had been the year before, and even with far smaller herds the pasture was too soon exhausted. Years before, Abram and Lot had separated their herds, because their men had begun to quarrel over whose cattle were being allowed to overgraze. But now, though Lot had sold most of his herds and now lived as a man of land and wealth in the city of Sodom, Abram’s herds alone were too many for what grass remained. Little was said, but Sarai could see from the grim faces of the men how things were going. From their faces, and from the fact that they feasted on goat or mutton or beef every night. They grew sick of meat, and not just from having too much of it. It was Abram’s wealth, his future they were eating, because the rain had not fallen, and the grass was not growing, and the cattle were starving. They were devouring the inheritance of the children Sarai had not yet borne.

  “What if,” said Abram one hot afternoon, sprawling wearily beside her on the rugs piled in her tent, “what if we went to Sodom with Lot?”

  “You love the city life so much,” said Sarai.

  Abram sighed. “Sodom least of all. A vile place. But I don’t have connections anywhere else.”

  “My father’s city,” Sarai reminded him, then realized her error at once. “I forgot. He has no city.”

  “Ur of Sumeria is in the hands of his enemies, and Ur-of-the-North is full of mine,” said Abram. “Ah, Sarai, I’ve already written to him, asking what’s possible there. This drought is too much for me. Already we stray so far out of our range that the risk of war is constant. We’ll come to a well where they’ve never heard of me or my family, and those who think of the water as their own will draw swords, and what then? Will I spend my life with my sword against every man, stealing water from them in order to keep my own herds and house?”

  “Surely the drought will pass soon,” said Sarai.

  “I hear that often,” said Abram, “but it isn’t so. This drought has already lasted longer than I’ve been alive.”

  “No, Abram, there was rain often in my childhood.”

  “No, Sarai. I know what the rainfall has been for the past fifty years.”

  “How can you remember what happened before you were born?”

  He shook his head. “A woman who can read and write, and still she wonders.”

  “Your family kept records of the rain?”

  “So do priests in every city,” said Abram. “They learned their duties from my ancestors—how could they pretend to be priests if they didn’t do what we did? This is the same drought that killed my brother Haran, Lot’s father, all those years ago, choking his life out in the dust that filled the air day after day, month after month. This is the drought that killed the grasslands and drove the Amorites from the desert to conquer your father’s city. This is the drought that emptied the cities of Canaan and left only herdsmen to wander the half-buried streets.”

  He made the desolation of the land sound like poetry. “But there are good years,” said Sarai.

  “There are years not quite as bad,” said Abram. “My father remembers a day when the land was green as far as the eye could see. You could stand on a mountain and see herds of deer and antelope running free right along with the herds of cattle. There were even elephants then—giant beasts like hillocks. The most daring goats would take shelter in their shadows in the afternoon. There was land and water enough for all in those days, and no one envied the people of the cities, huddled in their little huts, digging ditches for the river water because their crops couldn’t live from the rain, even though it came as regular as daylight. In all our lives, we’ve never seen such times, because they’re gone. The world my father knew is gone. And I don’t know if we can hold on to such a way of life for another year. It isn’t about the cattle anymore. I have all these people in my house. I can’t hold them here, where their children live ever closer to the edge of starvation, of death by thirst when the next dust storm buries the last well.”

  “They’ll stay with you.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” said Abram, “for a long time, anyway. But when I say I can’t hold them, I speak of my duty, not of their obedience.”

  “What of the dangers of the city?”

  “I know,” he sighed. “What good is it to save the lives of their children, only to lose their souls in Sodom?”

  Sarai realized now why he had chosen this moment to come to her and say these things. “Eliadab is back from Sodom,” she said.

  “I saw his red cloak far off,” said Abram. “He’ll have letters from Lot and Qira.”

  “From Qira.” Sarai could not restrain a dry laugh.

  “It’s good that your sister can write to you,” said Abram.

  “Just because she can mark the syllables doesn’t mean she has anything to say.”

  Abram laughed. “What she says, even when she says nothing, is that she cares for you.”

  “Oh, Abram, must I be virtuous every moment?”

  “Virtue is supposed to be alive in the heart, not put on and off like a burden.”

  “Sometimes, my love, virtues conflict.”

  Abram raised an eyebrow.

  “Do I speak kindly of my sister at all times, or do I speak honestly to my husband?”

  “Just see to it that you speak kindly of the husband.”

  “So loyalty is better than honesty?”

  He roared at her, pounced on her, all in play, but it was a delight to see him light-hearted at such a heavy time. Soon enough the distant red cloak became a dust-covered man on a weary donkey, handing a bag to Abram.

  They read sitting in the doorway of the shadier tent—hers, at this time of day. Other men might have tried to conceal that their wives could read, but Abram was proud of Sarai’s learning, and so they set aside the letters from Qira and sat together reading Lot’s letter.

  It was bitter news.

  Strangers aren’t welcome here. More and more wells are failing, and we’re importing grain from Egypt. Every stranger is regarded as a thief, stealing water. I can’t bring you here, or to any of the five cities of the plain, not till we see whether the spring rains come. Indeed, I was about to write to you, to ask if we could take refuge with you until this drought ends. I see now that we are better off separated. At least my wife consented to leave the city. Thirst for water is apparently stronger than dread of boredom.

  “He doesn’t understand Qira,” said Sarai. “It isn’t boredom she fears, it’s loneliness. She needs faces around her, lots of them, and the sound of many voices.”

  “I’ve seen a tree full of monkeys that would do very nicely for her,” said Abram. “I’m glad I got the sister who doesn’t need chattering.”

  “Oh? And what do I need?” asked Sarai.

  “You are the lioness standing alone over the kill, waiting for her mate to come and dine before her, driving off the jackals and the vultures.”

  Sarai was not at all sure how she felt about this image of her, but she’d think about it later. “We aren’t going to Sodom,” said Sarai. “And we can’t stay here.”

  “I wondered about building a boat,” said Abram. “It worked for my ancestor Noah, when he had too much water. Why not try it again when there’s too little? Get out on the sea and float before the wind until we find a land that no one else has known.”

  “And do what?”

  “Create a great nation,” said Abram.

  “To do that,” said Sarai, “you would need children.”

  There. It was said.

  But he didn’t notice or didn’t care how fearfully she had said it. “We’ll have children,” Abram answered simply.

  She accepted his reassurance without argument. Until he understood what it meant to her, there was
no use trying to prolong the discussion. “Do you want to read Qira’s letter with me?”

  “Will you forgive me if I don’t?” asked Abram. “Unless I decide I’m serious about boatbuilding, I must find some more practical solution.”

  He got up and crossed the way to his own tent. To pray, Sarai knew, and between prayers to read the books that were unreadable, the ones he seemed to spend his life copying over, so that not one word would be lost. Unreadable words, for they were in a different script from the wedges of the Akkadian or the painted figures of the Egyptian language. He tried to explain it to her, that this language was written with only a few marks—one mark for the sound “buh,” no matter whether it was “bee” or “bah” or “boo” or “bay.” It made no sense to Sarai—how could you tell these syllables apart, if all the “buh” syllables used the same mark? “Bee-bah” and “bo-boo” would look exactly alike. Abram just laughed and said, “What does it matter? No one speaks the language they’re written in, anyway.”