Lilah

by Marek Halter

  You and I were both paying the price for the letter with the seal of Artaxerxes, which guards from the Citadel placed in Ezra’s hands.

  Zachariah climbed onto a strong basket that Sogdiam brought him, and read the scroll aloud so that even those in the street outside the house could hear.

  Since then, I have heard them repeated so often that today I can write them without thinking.

  Artaxerxes, King of Kings, to Ezra, scribe of the Law of the God of heaven:

  I give this order to those in my kingdom who belong to the people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and who have volunteered to leave with you for Jerusalem. May they go there, for you are sent by the King and his seven counsellors to bring order to Judaea and Jerusalem according to the Law of your God …

  Everyone listened, open-mouthed, their hearts warmed in spite of the cold.

  I, Artaxerxes, order all the treasurers beyond the river to do as Ezra asks, to give him a hundred talents of silver, a hundred kors of grain, a hundred pack-saddles of wine, a hundred pack-saddles of oil, and salt without limit …

  When the letter had been read in its entirety, there was no explosion of joy such as there had been after Ezra’s audience in the Apadana. There was no singing or dancing. The faces around me were solemn.

  Artaxerxes’ letter was not only an order, not only an expression of power: it bore witness that the hand of God was now upon Ezra. I had known it for months, and so had Master Baruch, but now everyone knew.

  It took several days to prepare for our departure. Now that it was certain, volunteers arrived in their hundreds and thousands. Many came from the villages around Susa. Soon, the lower town was overrun, and the inhabitants started complaining. Zachariah was granted permission to use an area of wasteground on the banks of the Shaour, near the lower town, and pitched his tents there.

  But in spite of the large number of people who had chosen to follow him, Ezra was not content. ‘Yahweh demanded the return of all our people to Jerusalem,’ he stormed, ‘not just a few!’

  He sent enthusiastic young men to every Jewish house. In response, my uncle Mordechai and others came to visit him. They explained that not every family could leave Susa and abandon the work of a lifetime: the factories, the workshops, even the posts in the Citadel which had often been obtained in the first years of exile.

  ‘The exile is over,’ Ezra replied, without listening to their complaints. ‘You have no good reason to remain among the Persians, except for your gold and your comfortable cushions.’

  And so, for five days and five nights, the Jewish houses of Susa were full of as much weeping as joy. There were some who were leaving and others who were staying. Fathers sent their sons, sons refused to follow their fathers. Lovers, wives, sisters were separated, or torn as I was.

  Contrary to what I had feared, Aunt Sarah did not beg me to stay. She locked herself in her bedchamber, her eyes red with tears, indifferent for the first time in her life to what was happening in the workshop.

  In truth, it was those who were staying behind who had to bear all the sadness. The sadness of separation and the sadness of shame, for Ezra’s harsh words had struck home.

  To assuage his anger – perhaps Yahweh’s, too – those who chose to remain offered all the wealth they could. We were given wagons, food, clothes, carpets and tents, livestock of all kinds and hundreds of mules. Some even offered slaves and servants.

  Those were strange days.

  And the way I lived through them was even stranger.

  To tell the truth, I felt no joy, and reproached myself for it. Hadn’t I wanted what was happening more than anything? But, however much I reproached myself, nothing brought me peace or satisfaction.

  I had already started to miss you, Antinoes. I had imagined that I had hugged you in my arms tightly enough to keep the imprint on me of what I had lost, but the burden was heavier to bear than I had imagined it would be. I began to doubt that I was equal to it. I was no longer the confident woman who had mustered the courage to confront Parysatis.

  I was only a young woman of twenty-two and a wife of a few days. I was terrified. My whole life stretched before me, a life I could not even imagine.

  Fortunately, Ezra guessed nothing of my doubts, for I did not see him before the departure, or even during our journey to Babylon. Zachariah and his family were always around him now, as well as a band of young zealots who had come from all parts of the Susa region. They drank in his words and his rages like morning milk.

  It was not that anything disagreeable had occurred. No one had spoken a harsh word or made an unpleasant gesture. But it soon became clear to me that I was no longer welcome near my brother while serious decisions were being made concerning our departure. They were men’s decisions, things only men knew about!

  I was not hurt by this. I had my own preparations to make, and many tears to wipe away. Axatria was as nervous as a she-cat who has lost her kittens. She lived in dread of not being able to come with us, because of the rumours that were circulating: Ezra’s young zealots were saying that my brother wanted only Jews with him. Only the children of Israel could take to the road and return to Jerusalem, they claimed. The servants, and even Gentile wives and husbands, could not join the travellers.

  Eventually this rumour died down. Instead, it was announced that Ezra had ordered a two-day fast on the banks of the Shaour before our departure.

  Oh, Antinoes, my beloved, if only I could lay my head on your shoulder! I had to interrupt this letter to bury a child. At the moment, that is the most terrible of my tasks, though not the least frequent. It is difficult for me to take up my stylus again without my hands shaking.

  I am sure you can imagine our departure from Susa, so I will not waste words on it. Uncle Mordechai had made a chariot for Axatria and me, and Aunt Sarah had decorated the seats with the most beautiful rugs from her workshop. Beautiful and strong: I still sit on them, although the chariot itself has been pressed into other uses.

  There were at least ten thousand of us. In the evening, when the front of the column reached the place where we were to make camp, the rear was still far out of sight. Ezra was at the head, of course, followed by Zachariah and his family, and the young zealots. There were no women at the head of the column. Then came the families, in order of tribe, according to the lists Moses and Aaron had drawn up beneath the mountain of the Commandments.

  On the morning of the first day, we found Sogdiam standing at the side of the road, with his weight on one hip. As we helped him into our chariot I felt happy for the first time in a long while. We laughed as he told us how he had tried every means to stay at the front with Ezra. It was hopeless: he was still a long way, he moaned, from being a good enough Jew to have that right.

  He had also not greatly appreciated the previous two days of fasting, and devoured the meal we gave him with a tiger’s appetite.

  We were lucky to have him with us during that long journey. I am lucky to still have him with me today. He has performed a thousand miracles, and not only in cooking soup and filled bread loaves.

  That day, it was through him that we learned our first destination. We were moving towards the banks of the Euphrates and Babylon.

  ‘Ezra is very unhappy,’ Sogdiam told us. ‘According to him, there are too few of us. He thinks the Jews of Babylon will be more receptive to him than those of Susa.’

  It took us nearly a moon to reach Babylon. We had to go as far as Larsa before we found a bridge across the river, which was then in full spate.

  Each day was hotter than the last, but slightly less oppressive. We grew accustomed to raising the tents and taking them down again, to walking long distances, to our backs growing stiff on wagons and chariots. For many it was difficult to sleep surrounded by the noises of the night – the cries of wild animals, the rustling of insects and snakes.

  The light of the stars, the play of the moon and the clouds brought back to me our nights in the tower of your house. Those memories made the next d
ay easier. After a while, I became inured to the thousand discomforts of the journey.

  Ezra had sent Zachariah ahead. When we reached Babylon, we were greeted with songs and flowers and some land had been prepared for us to pitch camp. It was so far from the city that the great ziggurat, with its gardens, looked more like a mountain than a building.

  The next day I saw Ezra. Axatria and I had just made our beds in the tent when he lifted the flap.

  I barely recognized him. His tunic was grey with dust, his hair long. He told me later that he had lost the ivory ring I had given him, which usually held it in place. He was thin, and his grim expression was frightening to behold. His eyes shone with fever. He held the leather case containing Moses’ scroll so tightly that the bones could be seen through the skin of his fingers. It never left him, day or night. Clearly, he had fasted longer than anyone else.

  Axatria was unable to hide her distress, and reproached him for his pitiful appearance. He silenced her and ordered her to leave us alone. She obeyed, without showing the least anger.

  A little later, Sogdiam brought him some herb tea and looked at him sadly. Ezra barely noticed him.

  ‘Why is your tent so far from mine?’ he asked me. ‘Why haven’t I seen you since we left Susa? I wasn’t even sure you were in the caravan.’

  I replied that there was no reason for him to be unsure that I was there, since we had agreed that I would be. ‘And this is my place,’ I added. ‘You chose those you wanted around you, and I didn’t feel welcome among them. It doesn’t seem to be a woman’s place …’

  He avoided my eyes. Then, Antinoes, you would have recognized the young Ezra, whom you sometimes mocked – as handsome and delicate as a gazelle, full of fire, yet lost somehow.

  I was about to smile when he said, ‘I miss Master Baruch. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss his counsels. And I miss you, too. There’s no reason for you to be so far from me.’

  I asked him what he was finding so difficult. Everything, he replied bitterly. Nothing was going as he had foreseen. He was trying to follow the Law of Moses in everything he did, but as soon as he took a step forward, a thousand obstacles arose before him.

  ‘It’s ignorance more than anything else!’ he cried passionately. ‘You have no idea how ignorant these people are, Lilah. There are no Levites I can trust to care for the sacred objects of the Temple, and yet, according to the Law, it is they who must do so until we reach Jerusalem and place them in the Temple. God of heaven, how is this possible? It seems there’s no longer a single priest in all Babylonia descended from the families inscribed in King David’s register! And the few who remember their duties can’t perform them.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Because they have no thumbs!’

  It was true. It had been a tradition among the Levites to cut off their thumbs since the early days of the exile. Following King David’s instructions, the priests were excellent musicians: they played the ten-stringed lyre as part of their sacred duties. When Nebuchadnezzar had decided they would play for him they had cut off their thumbs so that they could not be humiliated in this way. Succeeding generations had followed suit.

  ‘Ezra,’ I asked, ‘why do you let yourself become so discouraged? You are not alone.’ I calmly repeated what I had said to him so often before his audience with Artaxerxes: ‘Trust in Yahweh. If He wants you to go to Jerusalem, if it is His will that you rebuild the Temple, His desire that the Law so dear to you be respected, why would he put obstacles in your way?’

  ‘Because we’re so unclean, so imperfect, that we’re unable to please Him.’

  ‘Isn’t that why we’re going to Jerusalem? To improve ourselves? To learn to live according to the Law? To return to the path of justice and the Covenant?’

  ‘We’re a long way from it, Lilah. Such a long way!’

  I laughed. ‘Yes! We’ve only come as far as Babylon. We haven’t yet crossed the desert. But it may be that Yahweh is less impatient than you are. Fortunately for us.’

  We continued the discussion until Ezra said, ‘Take down your tent, and pitch it close to mine this evening.’

  I agreed, a little reluctantly, on two conditions: that Sogdiam and Axatria could remain with me, and that the wives, sisters and daughters of those with whom he had surrounded himself at the head of the column could do the same. He granted my requests.

  The next day, I succeeded, to Sogdiam’s great relief, in convincing Ezra not to order another fast of purification. Many of us were already weakened by the journey and needed strength, not hunger. Ezra accepted reluctantly. His young zealots, however, had not looked kindly on my arrival with the other women, and that I should convince Ezra to put off a fast was even less to their liking. From that moment, they regarded me with mistrust – a mistrust that has grown ever since.

  That day Ezra had an altar erected and, instead of the fast, for three days he made offerings. More than a thousand rams were sacrificed, and almost as many lambs, with ten bulls and several goats. Smoke hung over the camp, and the smell clung to the tents for a whole moon.

  That was how long it took Zachariah to return with a hundred young Levites, who all had their thumbs but knew little of their duties.

  We spent four Sabbaths in Babylon, where Ezra recovered his strength and confidence. Finally, from among the descendants of the princes appointed by David, two great families, he named the twelve priests who would be in charge of the Temple: Sherevyah, Hashabaya and their brothers.

  It was an opportunity for an evening of feasting and chanting, an opportunity for everyone to be carefree. Once again, it was clear to everyone that the hand of Yahweh was upon Ezra.

  Not that this prevented petty squabbles: as soon as they were named, those responsible for the sacred articles of the Temple started worrying about the journey ahead. ‘Ezra, we have two or three months of wandering before us. We’re going to cross the desert, and we know it’s swarming with Amalekites and all kinds of brigands. Our wealth will attract them like flies.’

  There were a great many of us now, Ezra replied. We were a whole city on the move; anyone would think twice before they attacked us.

  ‘That’s what you think, Ezra! May the Everlasting bless you, but you’ve spent your life studying – you’re not accustomed to these things. Crossing the desert is quite another matter. Many – too many to count – have disappeared or been robbed. Many wives, mothers, sisters and daughters have been raped …’

  Finally the true reason for the uproar emerged from the lips of one of them: ‘Why didn’t you ask Artaxerxes for an armed escort? He would have granted you one. Why don’t you ask the satrap of Babylon? Artaxerxes’ letter entitles you to one.’

  Annoyed, Ezra replied that Abraham and Moses had not needed an armed escort when they had crossed the desert.

  Sherevyah and one of his brothers, Gershom, had already proved their knowledge of the Scriptures. Now they stated that Moses had had an army, and that Joshua was a great soldier, as was Aaron’s son, their ancestor as well as Ezra’s.

  That night, Ezra came to see me, trembling with rage. Since that business with the fast, he had not sought my counsel. Neither did he ask it now. All he wanted, though he did not realize it, was for me to caress him with my words – perhaps even with my hands, because his neck was tense with anger. I asked him to share my meal, but he refused to eat.

  ‘There is nothing new in this,’ I said to him, with a smile, trying to calm him. ‘You must simply keep telling them how things are, until they start to trust you. How many times did Zipporah ask her husband Moses to return to Egypt and take on Pharaoh before he agreed? He was afraid. He did not feel capable of doing it. Yet he was Moses.’

  Ezra understood what I meant. Lit by torches, he climbed onto a wagon. His voice was so loud, most of the vast camp could hear him.

  ‘I know what you’re all afraid of: that we’ll be cut to pieces during our journey. You want to know why I didn’t ask Artaxerxes for an escort to protec
t us. My answer is simple: I would have felt such shame, for myself as well as for you. Is it to the King of Kings, the master of the Persians, that you will turn when you are afraid? If that is so, I say to you clearly: you can stay here and I’ll go on alone. An armed escort when we are marching towards the Lord Yahweh? When we are marching towards His Temple and wish to live according to His Law? Who are you? Where are the children of Israel? Where are those to whom Yahweh once said, “I am making a Covenant with you”? Tomorrow we will fold our tents and move forward with our wagons and chariots filled with food and gold for the Temple, with our women, children and cattle, and we will go to Judaea under the protection of Yahweh. What you must tell yourself before anything else, what you must take into your hearts, is that the hand of our God protects us, while the full force of His anger falls on those who abandon Him. If you must fear something, fear the Everlasting! For one thing is sure: you are not yet worthy of His justice.’

  And so, when the next day dawned, our noisy company of twenty thousand set off again, leaving behind the ramparts of Babylon. Strangely, the further we drew from them, the more the city walls seemed to glitter. In the milky light before the sun had fully risen, the staircases and gardens of the ziggurat appeared to rise so high that they melted into the clouds.

  Then the city disappeared behind a hill of grey dust.

  And because everything reminds me of you, Antinoes, seeing Babylon vanish like that, so simply and so utterly, was like losing you all over again.

  Antinoes, my beloved.

  I had never imagined that murmuring those words would help me to get from one day to the next.

  I murmured them as I’m sure Ezra would have liked me to murmur the laws he taught us sometimes in one of our temporary camps, whenever he granted us a few hours’ rest.

  It was at about this time, too, that a curious dream came to me, several nights in a row, a dream that would have amused you. I saw myself in our caravan, exactly as it really was. It was evening, and Sogdiam came to see me, with a mysterious expression on his face. He took me aside from the column, and led me to a place from which there was nothing to be seen but the immensity of the desert, its gorges and ridges of sand.