Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (7 page)

“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.”

“Then why do you copy it?” she asked. “If no one can read it?”

“Because the words of God can be written in any language, and he will give his servants the power to read it,” said Abram.

“So you can read any language?”

“When the words are from God,” said Abram. “And when God wants me to read.”

“Why don’t you write it down in Akkadian? Or Sumerian? Or Egyptian, so many could read it?”

“I will if God commands it,” said Abram. “And not, if not.”

It made Sarai feel like an illiterate after all, because she could read common messages, the tallies of the shepherds, the laws of the temple, the tales of great deeds that must be remembered. But she could not read the words of God, and Abram only sometimes read to her what was written there. “The hand of Noah wrote this,” said Abram once, and then read her something that did not sound like the words of a man who had watched the world destroyed around him. When she said so, Abram answered impatiently, “This was written before the flood. When he was still trying to save the people from destruction.”

“When he still had hope,” she said.

“When he still had hope for
them,
” said Abram. “He never lost hope for himself and his family.”

Sarai laid out the tiles of Qira’s letter. As usual, Qira took no thought for the quality of the clay on which she wrote. Or perhaps water was so scarce that they used less of it for clay-making. Three of the six tiles had cracked, and one had crumbled. It was hard to figure out in some places what she had written. Large pieces could still hold syllables, but once the clay became dust, the syllables vanished. It was a good thing that she never said anything that mattered. Sarai murmured her sister’s words, uttering them in the same pitch and at the same speed that Qira herself would use.

Beloved sister, I write in a rush because the girls are such hungry birds, and even though I refuse to give them the breast the moment they have teeth they still will take nothing except from my hand. The burden of motherhood is a heavy one. There’s never time to yourself.

Sarai’s eyes stung at this. Qira had no thought of how her words might affect the one who read them. And it would only get worse.

Your messenger says you still have no baby in you, but I think they have no business calling a woman barren when for all you know your husband is casting dead seed into fertile ground, why should the woman get all the blame?

The disloyalty of this was unspeakable. Did Qira blame Lot, then, for the fact that they had only daughters?

After all, Lot’s the one who planted girl seeds in me.

Apparently yes.

And the way people look at you in Sodom, I sometimes think it’s better to be barren than to have only girls to show for all that fattening up and screaming and bleeding and stink. It’s a lot of trouble to go to, and I don’t know how Father put up with the comments people make. You wouldn’t believe how insensitive people can be.

Yes I would.

Of course Father is a king and people don’t speak to him the way they speak to women. I swear in Sodom you’d think women were made of sticks the way we get ignored. There are festivals for men every night of the year, while the women sit home and spin. And the fine fabrics from the east and the bright colors from the north, those end up on the men’s backs, like peacocks they strut. I understand it though because the women really are dull. I miss my dear sister because you were never dull. Well, you were often dull but not as dull as they are, I can’t even make them angry by saying outrageous things, they just look at each other as if I were a silly child who doesn’t understand a thing that’s happening, when it seems to me I’m the only one who even notices the world around me; they just stay indoors and take care of their babies. Those that have babies, because you’d fit right in here in Sodom, so many women are barren, only nobody ever mentions it, even though it’s as obvious as can be, not a baby in the house, and these women aren’t even ashamed of it, can you imagine? Not that there’s any shame, but you know what I mean.

How many times can barrenness be mentioned in one letter?

Lot says you shouldn’t come to Sodom after all even though I think you would get along just fine here, it’s Abram who’d get in trouble, he can’t ever seem to keep from pointing out sins even though everybody knows about them anyway so why point them out? Lot is finally getting used to city life though I think. He doesn’t make trouble by accusing people, he just gets along with everybody. They all like him. I think I got the better bargain in husbands, thank you very much. I am the most sought-after woman in Sodom already, can you imagine? I call on a dozen women a day, and they’re all at home! How can they bear it? What is a city for, if not to go out and see the faces of a hundred people every day? Visit me visit me visit me, the messenger gets here from your camp in only two days, so why has it been years and you never found your way here? Is Abram so poor at navigating by the stars? Lot knows the name of every star. Visit me!

Sarai picked up the tiles, dumped them back into the bag, and crumbled them. There was nothing in that letter that she would want to read again. She loved her sister, but when she imagined spending hours in her company, it made her too tired and sad.

She waited outside the tent door for another half hour, spinning and spinning, while the life of the camp went on around her. Now and then someone would approach Abram’s tent, wanting to speak to him, but Sarai, keeping watch just across the way, would hold up a hand and smile. Some would smile, nod, and go away. Most came to her and told her what they wanted.