Gareth
Gareth’s father had been a friend of my father’s and a merchant, too. He traveled to Egypt and Ur and many other places to buy his goods. Gareth’s mother loved to go with him, and they often left Gareth at home to tend to their animals.
One day his parents didn’t return, and travelers came with the news that they had been attacked by robbers and killed, left by the roadside, their donkey and camel stolen. They would have both been loaded down with the wonderful goods they had bought on their trip.
Hidden in his father’s clothes were the papyrus documents showing that they had bought many metal ornaments and expensive items for their shop. “My father was going to bring me a sword of my own,” Gareth told me mournfully. “If I could find those robbers, I would slit their throats!”
Gareth had always been just one of many young men living nearby. I had seen him at merchant gatherings, casting lots in the dirt with the other boys, while they waited for their fathers to finish their business, as I waited for mine.
When I heard him swear vengeance for his parents, I began to see him as a man.
After the tragedy, my father brought Gareth to work for him.
“He will be one of the family,” my father proclaimed. Then he made Gareth a pallet in the back of the storage room of the shop.
“You just want a slave and a watchdog for your store!” I said, indignantly. “He needs to live in the house with us!” I was outraged, and a little embarrassed, because I knew that my father had always wanted a boy to help him in the shop, and here he got one already grown.
But Gareth was grateful to my father and worked very hard for him.
Sometimes I went with Gareth outside the gates to the cemetery so he could pay his respects to his parents, who are buried there. He would pray to the gods and bring bits of food to help his mother and father in the afterlife.
On one of those trips, as we sat near the place where his mother and father were buried, Gareth suddenly grabbed my hand. “I love you, Naomi!” He proclaimed, “You are like the moon in the night sky, helping me to find my way!” He kissed me then.
I was happily surprised and found myself kissing him back.
Gareth may have become like a son to my parents, and part of the family, but that was no “brotherly” kiss! He had even started to replace Ham in my daydreams. I hoped that, someday, we might be wed.
My mother must have noticed how messy my shawl was when we returned that evening, but she never said a thing. “Hurry, Naomi!” She said, “Help me get your father’s meal ready!” Gareth ducked out and went back to his room in the shop. Before he left, he gave me a sly grin and blew me a little kiss.
The Merchants
Merchants come by our shop regularly, bringing goods and buying or trading for food. They come from Egypt and Ur and beyond, bringing silks, oils, spices, and many other goods. I love to line the shelves with exotic pots carved with the eye of the Egyptian sun god, Ra.
The men stake their camels outside of our shop, and we keep a trough of water for their animals. Sometimes they ride beautiful, wild looking horses to lead their string of camels.
Gareth has to haul water from the well for the thirsty animals, so he is not so happy to see them coming. The huge animals are ill tempered, and if Gareth isn’t careful, they will step on him, bite him, or spit on him.
When the merchants come from Egypt, I always beg my father to buy the colorful silks piled high on the camels, but he is scornful. “It costs so much, and nobody around here would buy it!” he says.
I think the women, especially, would be eager to buy the silk.
“The colors are so beautiful! I would love to have a beautiful silk shawl!”
I kiss my father’s cheek, trying to soften him.
“Look at that bright crimson!” I sing to him, but he will not pay for what he calls “extravagance.”
The silks truly make our linen shawls look dowdy in comparison but, as usual, my father won’t budge. He has plenty of money and is always boasting about how successful his business is, but he never wants to part with any cash unless he believes he can make it multiply from sales.
“When you are married, I will get you some of that silk for your wedding,” my mother says, smiling slyly and tucking my linen shawl around me tighter. “You will have that silk, and you will have our house to raise my grandchildren in!”
“Thank you, mother,” I say, kissing her face. She smells like honeysuckle from the lotion she rubs on her neck and arms.
My father is building another, bigger house where he and mother and Nadena will live. “A successful merchant has to have a house that shows how successful he is,” he says, “Otherwise people will want to shop elsewhere.”
His builders come into the shop with their plans tucked under their arms, and father spreads them out and studies them. He always finds a way to change the plans so the building doesn’t cost as much.
I know he can afford a fine house, but he has waited all this time to build my mother’s beautiful, big house, and she would be shocked if she knew how he is talking to the builders. “Don’t make that room so big, we don’t need the pantry to be so large, and take out that other room, too. It is unnecessary.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the new “big” house ended up being the same as our old “small” house by the time he gets done with it.
“Oh, Gareth,” I say that night, “My silk garments will be so fine!”
And I tell him what my mother said about our old house being “ours” when we marry. Now he looks around a lot more when he comes to see me.
“I can see how we can improve things,” he says, “I can add another pantry to the other side of the kitchen.”
My heart sings when he talks like this, because I know he will be a good husband. “Come here, Nemi,” he says, wrapping his big arms around my waist. His big hands caress my body, and my shawl falls to the floor.
“Shhhh!” I have to caution him to be quiet. “It’s not our house, yet!”
The next day, one of the camel merchants came into the shop. He was tall and dark, and wore a turban wrapped around his head, with its long tail covering his face to keep off the blowing sand.
As soon as he entered, he uncovered his face and began to talk with my father about the big ship Noah and his family were building out in the desert.
I stood quietly in the shadows, hoping they would not see me and send me away; I wanted to listen. “That thing is huge!” the stranger said, laughing loudly. “It looks like a boat, but not for ordinary men. Maybe he is making it for the Gods!” They both laughed raucously at the merchant’s comments.
The stranger went on to talk about a huge pyramid being erected in Giza by the great pharaoh, Khufu. They have been working many years, and many, many slaves are building it.
But Noah’s project is strange for reasons beyond its size and shape. It is at least three days’ journey to the Euphrates River. “How will he get that big boat to the water?” the stranger asked. “And not only that,” he exclaimed, “There are so many animals surrounding the ship! It is something to see!”
My father did not say that Noah’s family often came into our shop. He did not want to be associated with the crazy boat family. He knows Noah and his sons have been building in the valley for as long as he can remember. My mother and father laughed often about Noah and his plans to build an ark out in the desert.
Once the merchant left, my father teased me. “What do you think about Ham now?” he asked, laughing. “Isn’t he a fine specimen of manhood, letting his fields go to seed while he pursues the crazy dreams of his father?”
And, he added, scornfully, “Do you know his father has his own god? You’re lucky Ham turned his attention away from you.”
My father can be mean, sometimes. But he is wise, too, so I didn’t argue with him.
And anyway, I have Gareth now.
My father needs Gareth in the shop when the me
rchants come through to help him bring in the large bags of seeds and crates of fruits to stock the storeroom, but there are many days when he isn’t needed.
My father was curious about what the merchant had told him, but would never leave his shop unattended. He urged Gareth to go see what was going on with Noah’s project.
When he returned, Gareth could not stop talking about what he had seen.
The Ark
Later that night, I visited Gareth in his room at the back of the store.
“You should see this big ship, Nemi!” he said, using his pet name for me.
“It is taller than the walls of our city! It is too big to fit inside the gates!” He pulled me onto his lap and went on, excitedly.
“There are huge pots of pitch boiling near the ship and piles and piles of wood.” Gareth was so caught up in the story of what he had seen, I don’t think he even noticed I’d done my hair in combs, the way he liked it best. “And even after dark, they never stop.”
“They have to sleep, don’t they?” I asked, but he insisted, “Noah never sleeps!”
I am unsure whether to believe him or not. “Next time you go, I will go with you!” I told him, and he agreed with a grin.
“You have to see it, Nemi, you have to see it for yourself!”
So tomorrow we are going, together, to see this great, desert ship.
The next day, Gareth came to get me as soon as the sun was coming up.
It is a pleasant walk along the quiet road. When the sun gets higher in the sky, it will be hot, but now it is wonderful to be alone with my beloved; we hold hands as we approach the ship.
We stop on the hillside above the structure and watch Noah’s family working. You can see them all, lugging gopher wood and pots full of stinking pitch. They’ve lined the boat with pitch and plugged every hole with reeds and grasses. The thing is big enough to hold both of my family’s houses and the big houses up on the ridge, too, not to mention that little place Noah lives in with his family.
“Look, Nemi!”
Gareth points excitedly across the plain, and I can’t believe my eyes. Two huge elephants are coming across the desert, each step sending dust into the air. As they come closer, we can see that the elephants are surrounded by smaller animals—foxes and wolves running alongside antelopes and tigers and none of the animals are bothering the others.
“Look! Look at them all!”
I have never seen anything like this. I have never actually seen a real tiger, but I recognize them from the murals in the bathhouses. Once a merchant came by with an elephant laden with goods and all the children of the town came by to see it. Many of the adults, too, because it was such a rare sight.
When the animals arrive at the ship, they settle down, circling, and lay in the shadow of the great ship. None of Noah’s family seems surprised or even interested in the strange animals. They just continue scurrying around, carrying the wood and jars of pitch. I watch as Ham extends his hand to his wife, and together they climb to the top of the scaffolding and begin smearing pitch along the body of the ship.
We sit fascinated by the huge boat and the animals, watching Noah’s family laboring, and I find myself daydreaming about Ham, again. I look quickly at Gareth and I’m glad he can’t hear my thoughts!
Ham is strong from all the work he does, and even those old tunics he wears can’t disguise how fine he is. I remember how kind he used to be, and how he looked at me with his eyes like dark pools, and how I felt drunk from his attention.
I can feel my face burning and hope Gareth hasn’t noticed how flushed I have become. I grab his hand and kiss it, and he looks at me, startled, and then pushes me to the ground for a kiss.
I can’t believe that all of Noah’s sons have found wives. They work night and day, leaving no time for anything else. But one by one, they each went away and came back with a wife.
Ham’s wife, Naamah, is a Sumerian and dark as the night sky. Her skin looks smooth and shiny in the sun, and she appears accustomed to having fine oils and lotions. (I heard from the chatter at the store that he went all the way to Mesopotamia to find her.)
I used to dream that he would ask me to come away with him, so when he turned up with that woman, I was so hurt and angry that I hid whenever they came around our shop.
I could never compete with someone as lovely and exotic as Naamah, with her mahogany skin and her beautiful headbands, shimmering with shiny metal beads.
Now, Gareth and I watch as Naamah scrambles up the scaffolding of the ark, nimbly climbing while carrying a pot of hot pitch in a sling across her back.
As she approaches Ham, high above the desert floor, I see them silhouetted against the sky, and they suddenly appear as gods. So high in the sky, so dark against the blue, cloudless sky. “Look, Gareth, they look divine!”
But Gareth just laughs and shakes his head. “They are fools!” he says, pulling me closer to him. “You, darling Nemi, are divine!” His kisses are getting longer and more intense these days.
Still, if I didn’t have Gareth to love me, I might go down there with my hair done up and with my finest sky blue shawl and perfume and try to lure Ham away from his exotic wife.
On the ground, Japheth’s wife looks like she is about to burst with the child she’s carrying. She is tending the fires under the pitch pots, holding her back with one hand, her big belly pushing out in front of her as she feeds sticks into the flames.
I see how Noah and his clan live—always working, wearing only home-spun clothes, tying back their hair with ragged bits of leather.
They have no silk, no wine, no tobacco—no fun, if you ask me. They don’t even go into the village for the harvest rituals, or any of the dances or festivals.
When we got back to town, we found my father in his shop and told him about what we had seen. It was the hottest part of the day, and there were no customers, so he sat down with us. Wiping his brow, he told us a story I had never heard before.
“When I was a little boy, I used to play with my brothers in the square by the sundial. It was a popular spot to meet, and we would race around or spin our tops in the shade of the statue honoring the god, Ya’uq.”
It was pleasant to sit and be lazy after our walk, so Gareth and I settled back to listen.
“One day,” he continued, “Noah came striding into the middle of town and, pointing at Ya’uq’s statue, proclaimed in a loud voice that it was an abomination.”
“‘There is only one true God!’ Noah yelled,” my father laughed. “People ducked and ran from the square because they were afraid Ya’uq would rain down lightening to slay us all because of Noah’s words.”
“Apparently Ya’uq was feeling charitable, because the town has continued to prosper,” he said.
“Since that time, whenever Noah came into town, the crowds would jeer and laugh and call after him, ‘Where is your God, Noah?’”
“So it is nothing new, this craziness. I guess everyone thought he would tire of his foolishness. But here he is, after all these years, still ranting, ‘Repent, repent’, and building that boat.”
My father got up slowly, shaking his head, when someone walked into the shop.
Later that day, Gareth and I talked about what my father had said.
“Repent what, I would like to know. Noah makes a big deal out of everything. I’m beginning to wonder how those boys were ever begotten—the old guy acts like it’s a sin or something to have a natural intimate relationship.” I said to Gareth. “What does he think men and women are made like this for, I wonder?”
“Of course, we have to bow down to Ya’uq, who supplies us with the metal for our swords and adornments, who brings us victory over our enemies.” Gareth said.
“Does Noah’s ‘God’ do that?” I asked, indignantly. “No, he does not! Because Noah’s ‘God’ says we should not be fighting at all. I suppose we should just lie down and let ourselves be raped and killed by our enemies. That doesn’t
even make sense, does it?”
Gareth laughed and teased me, “You are ranting like Noah, now, Nemi.” Still, Noah makes me so mad! Always telling everybody how they should live, what they should do, what they should not do.
A few days later at the store, my father complained to me that Noah’s middle son, Shem, came to him spouting some of his father’s craziness.
“The Lord will send a flood.” Shem told him, “Abandon your gods and pray to the one true God.”
“And,” my father continued to quote Shem, “his father’s God is going to send a flood. A Flood! The rivers are going to rise up out of their banks, and the seas will join them, and everyone except Noah and his family, of course, will drown!”
My father laughed and wiped the dust off of his face.
That night, I complain to Gareth when we are alone. “Do you believe that? He is telling my father, an elder, that he should abandon his gods and follow another.”
“Noah insists that there is only one god! One god who made all of this, who handles everything!”
Gareth nods in agreement. “What a god that must be,” he says, “to rule over harvests and the seas, and the sky and the weather, and over the women and the babies.”
This is so ridiculous, we fall on his bed, laughing.
“That is a lot for one god to concern himself with. Their god must be really busy.” Gareth says, stealing a kiss.
Ham has begun shouting at people in the square on the rare occasion when he comes through the gates of the city, just like the rest of his family. Everyone is complaining about them.
I heard that Ham recently stopped the boys playing in the square with their wooden swords, fighting make-believe battles.
In the Beginning (Anthology) Page 12