Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (21 page)

So quickly had they slipped from the sophisticated manners of Egypt to the more earthy ways of the herdkeeping household. Sehtepibre had taken solemn oaths to Pharaoh, but they did not keep him from plotting his master’s overthrow. Nothing that anyone said in Egypt meant what it seemed to mean. Everything was layered and disguised and distorted and, above all, expendable. But these words and actions of Abram’s and Eliezer’s would bind them both for life—Abram to provide a place and sustenance for Eliezer, and Eliezer to serve Abram in any way he might direct.

There might be turmoil in Egypt, but in Abram’s household, there was Ma’at.

The only sadness was that Sarai’s old servant Bitute had died months before. Her last words had been of Sarai, calling her “my good little girl, my best little child.” Sarai wept in gratitude for the love of the old woman that had been part of her life from the start, and in sorrow that she had not been with her when she died. But her body had been embalmed and they would take it with them and bury her in Canaan. “As I must be buried,” said Sarai. “I was born in exile, Abram, but when I die, bury me in the land God has given you. Not in Ur-of-the-North. I was born there, but it was never my home. I’m done with cities.”

“If you die before me, which I doubt, I’ll bury you in Canaan,” said Abram. “But only if I have your promise that if I die first, you will see to it we lie beside each other. We had a year of our marriage stolen from us. From now on, even in death I’ll never be away from you for long.” He turned to the others who were gathered round. “You’ve done well, my friends. You’ve kept everything ready for travel. Tomorrow we set out for home.”

That night, Abram slept in Sarai’s tent and held her close to him far into the night. They dozed and woke and dozed again, and in one of their wakings, she thought of something. “What about the book you wrote? Did you bring it with you?”

“No,” he said. “Everything that’s in the book is in my memory.”

“What if Sehtepibre wins the war? Won’t his people destroy your book?”

“They will if they find it,” said Abram. “But where I’ve hidden it, I doubt it will be found for a century.”

“Where did you hide it? Did you bury it?”

“No. I rolled it up within the scroll of a very boring book of the exploits of a long-dead king. Someday someone will open it and copy it out because they’ll think it’s part of the royal archive. By then no one will remember my name. The scribe will simply copy what I wrote because that’s what scribes are paid to do.”

“So you might as well not have written it at all.”

“If God has a use for it, God will get it into the hands of those who need it. In due time.”

“I need
you,
” said Sarai.

“And after only a year, look whose hands I’m in.”

“
Only
a year!”

“Hush,” he said, and kissed her. “You’ll wake the camp.”

They were both very quiet after that, and woke no one.

Part V

Division

Chapter 13

Qira tried not to be angry at Sarai. It was not the wife’s fault when the husband was selfish and cruel. But when she saw how Sarai made such a point of acting
happy
about living in a tent surrounded by the stink of animals, a life without grace or pleasure, well, it just made Qira too angry to hold her tongue sometimes. Sarai carried this business of wifely subservience much too far. Sometimes a wife had to let her husband know that she was unhappy. How else could he possibly realize how important it was for him to change?

And it was all Abram’s fault, anyway. When he and Sarai came back from Egypt, they had so many cows and sheep and goats that their servants couldn’t tend them all. The obvious solution, as far as Qira could see, was to either sell the animals or turn them loose. If the beasts were too stupid to find food on their own they didn’t deserve to live. But when she said so, Lot actually sent her out of the room to fetch wine—like a servant!

She left the room all right, and just kept on walking until she was at the home of her friend Jashi, who understood completely that there’s only so much humiliation a woman can bear. Qira had rather expected Lot to come looking for her, but he never did, and then it was so late at night that Qira had to impose on Jashi’s hospitality. Even the next morning, there wasn’t a sign that Lot was looking for her, so she finally went home as if nothing had happened. To her fury, Lot didn’t say anything about it, either. And then she realized that the servants were packing up all of Lot’s clothing and putting cloths over the furniture—in every room but hers.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“I’m closing the house,” he said. “Abram has given me half his herd.”

“I fail to see how a gift can cause us to lose our house.”

“We aren’t losing it. We’re just closing it up and leaving a caretaker while we join Abram and Sarai.”

“Join them? Why don’t they join us? All they have is a few tents, and we have a fine house, with plenty of room for them.”

“Oh. I thought you found the house too small.”

“Too small? Well, indeed it is too small to make the impression that the daughter of a king should make in this city, but it is certainly not too small to offer hospitality to my sister and her husband. I’ll go and tell the servants to uncover the furniture.”

“No you won’t,” said Lot cheerfully. “You’re coming with me to Abram’s camp.”

This stunned her. He had never tried to boss her around before. But she was hardly going to start putting up with that now. If you let men push you at all, they thought they could do it as much as they wanted. So she put her foot down. “I do not go to camps,” she said. “I am a woman of the city. I told you that when we married.”

“And I’m a man of the open sky,” said Lot. “We’ve had a good many years of useless city life. It’s time to spend a while doing something worthwhile.”

It was unbelievable that he could treat her years of service to him as if they counted for nothing. “I have worked endlessly to improve your position in this city, to win you more influence, to—”

“To get me invited to even more boring banquets with even more stupid and worthless people.”

“You are talking about my friends! Who are, I might point out, your friends as well!”

“They are not my friends,” said Lot, “and they are not your friends either. It’s only your royal birth and my wealth that win you entry into their homes. Otherwise they’d despise you. They certainly despise
me.
”

“You are simply too sensitive. And my birth is who I
am,
so it is hardly inappropriate that my birth should entitle me to respect. We have been perfectly happy in Sodom for our entire marriage, and suddenly Abram comes home from Egypt stinking of goats and you want to leave everything I’ve built here—”

“Qira, my dear, the decision is made. You’ll find that you enjoy spending time with Sarai and hearing from her about what women wear in Egypt.”

In fact, that was an intriguing thought, but it wouldn’t do to let Lot see that. “Women can go about naked in Egypt for all I care,” said Qira.

“We’re leaving in an hour,” said Lot. “If you want to bring anything with you, you can take what fits in two bags. You won’t need most of your clothing, since it’s not suitable for camp life. Sarai will have plenty of clothing to share with you. So I’ve already ordered your servants to pack most of your fine gowns away till we need them again.”

He had actually given orders to
her
servants. This was intolerable. “I’m not going,” she said.

“I won’t force you,” said Lot. “You are free to stay with any of your friends who’ll have you as a longterm guest. Write to me often.”

“I will stay in this house,” said Qira.

“This house will be closed,” said Lot. “No food will be brought here, no servants will serve here, and no guests will be admitted here. I fear you would die very quickly in such a house. But Jashi is such a good friend that you could spend the night with her last night—see if she’ll have you for a year.”

“I wouldn’t even ask such a thing.”

“I leave in an hour. I certainly hope you’ll come with me.”

Qira did not believe him. She went to her room and ordered her servants to stop putting things away. They were obviously very upset at receiving contradictory orders from her and Lot, and stood there fluttering their hands and looking miserable. Finally she took pity on them and allowed them to continue. “But we won’t be putting them into storage. They’ll simply be transferred to whatever house I live in next.”

Relieved, the servants continued their packing. But Qira knew that when Lot saw that she was simply not going to leave, he would relent.

She had not counted on the way that Abram’s return from Egypt had transformed her husband. She could just imagine their conversation after she left the room. Lot must have explained how important it was for her to live in the city, but Abram no doubt answered, “You’ve got to show a woman who’s in command! Be a man! Not like these weakling city men with their pretty clothes and their vanity! God will punish them for being so wicked!” With Abram everything was always about God. He was really quite tedious on the subject. “If she won’t go, you drag her! That’s what I do to Sarai, and if she doesn’t like it, I show her a stout stick!” Oh, Qira was sure he filled Lot with all sorts of false images of manliness and guilt about city life. These shepherds had the most foolish notions about what went on in the city. Even Lot persisted in his belief that the reason her friends had so few children was because their husbands were somehow sinning against God.

Still, Lot was bound to see reason when he realized that she simply would not budge on this matter.

Only he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even come to bid her good-bye. She heard him call out several times, as if she were a dog to be summoned by a shout. And then the house was still. After an hour or so, she decided to go in search of something to drink. She was shocked to find that he was so petty as to take her servants with him. The house was quite empty. There was not so much as a jug of wine or a rind of cheese. Nor could she even find where the bags of clothing and boxes of jewelry had been put. It never occurred to her that he would store them anywhere but in the house.

So he was being stubborn. Trying to teach her a lesson. She’d see who learned a lesson first!

She stayed that whole night without a bite to eat and nothing to drink, either. She thought of simply going to one of her friends’ houses, but then realized that she was wearing the same dress she had worn to Jashi’s yesterday, and besides, it was simply too humiliating—people must have seen Lot departing with all the servants, and they would ask questions. So she slept that night in the empty house, frightened half out of her wits at the noises of the city and of the empty house. She kept thinking she heard rats scrabbling around, or thieves trying to break in.

In the morning, her mouth so dry she could not even swallow, her eyes sore from weeping, she went to the front door and opened it. And there, sitting on a stool right in the doorway, sat, not a servant of hers or of Lot’s, but that obnoxious Eliezer, a young Damascene servant that Abram had taken into his service in Egypt. Eliezer had apparently spent the night there, and no doubt made half the noises she had heard that so frightened her in the darkness!

“If my lady would like to join her husband, I have two horses.”

“What do I care how many horses you have?” she asked. “I’m not going out to the desert. Your master might be able to impose his will on my husband, but he’ll soon find that Lot’s love for me is greater than his enthrallment with Abram.”

“My lady seems misinformed,” said Eliezer—the impudence, a servant speaking in such a way to a king’s daughter! “My master begged Lot to wait until he could persuade you. Lot declined to leave a servant to guide you. But Abram knew he would regret that, and so he sent me back with two horses.”

He might have sent back a little food and wine for me while he was at it,
thought Qira. But she did not deign to answer Abram’s slave, who was no doubt telling whatever lies would best serve Abram’s plot to destroy her life. She walked past him and out into the street.

She fully intended to go to the house of a friend, but halfway there she was suddenly seized with doubt. Was Lot right? Did they only value her because of her royal birth and his wealth? Oh, it was vile of him to put such a wedge between her and her friends! Yet she remembered how they talked about Nabeleth when her husband simply disappeared one day and left her deeply in debt. She was quite ruined and fled the city before she could be sold into slavery by their creditors. There were all sorts of rumors, including the truly nasty story that she had killed him and buried his body in the garden, as if she would ever have done such manual labor as to dig a grave. But Qira knew that they would tell stories about her, too. And even though she was not faced with debt—Lot was very good about lending money to others, but never borrowed from anyone—the scandal would be unbearable.

The reality was that wives were as much slaves to their husbands as any of the actual servants were. That’s the horrible injustice of the world, she told herself as she walked miserably through the city. A woman has no voice in what happens to her. Husbands just do whatever they want, and run roughshod over their wives, and women are supposed to bow down and thank them for the privilege of bearing their children and . . .