The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  He holds up a vial of clear liquid and hands it to the physician next to him, who prepares an injection. Very nervously, this male internist approaches the woman with a less-than-pleased look. “Please, madam, could you roll up your sleeve?”

  With a smirk and narrowly squinted very dark eyes, she says, “Aren’t you the one who splinted the fingers of that other doctor who tried to violate my modesty? You look like you would find my bare limb very stimulating, wouldn’t you?”

  Very scared and shaking, the doctor hands the syringe back to the former priest and hastily exits the room. The man formerly known as Father Jean-Paul peers into her eyes, no smile, no emotion, only asking, “So, where does that leave us?”

  “Well, first, you can explain what is in that syringe,” she says, flexing her fingers. She grimaces. Her right pinky still hurts as that monster made her remove her splint on the plane ride. How perverse can a human being get?

  “It is a genetic vaccine fabricated based on DNA sequencing we made from your cheek cells,” he states with a methodical blink. “It is designed to activate dormant sections of your DNA. Alexander said you had significant reconstruction and therapy after a major traumatic incident several years ago. This vaccine will help repair what they could not back then.”

  “And you expect to believe that?” she replies as she scoots up on the edge of the exam table, readying herself for her a myriad of physical responses, options being formulating in her head. She sizes him up. A dozen or so centimeters taller than she. Likely very muscular, but the black turtleneck does not let her fully discern how sculpted. Very much not what she would have expected in a priest. She studies his hands, then stares at the scabs on her own knuckles. He has vestiges of scars on the same knuckles. What kind of priest was he?

  “How do I know you are not going to sedate me? Maybe that’s a date rape drug,” she posits, looking for him to drop his calm demeanor. “But you are French. Of course you would want to seduce me and do the unspeakable to me.”

  And that got the priest to change his expression. His face lightens up with a smile and a flash of his glistening white teeth. “Mais oui, ma cherie. You know us Frenchmen, we like to wine and dine our women and read sonnets of love before we seduce them. Not drug them,” he mocks with an exaggeratedly thick French accent.

  One eyebrow up, the other eye squinting, she retorts, “Oh, I know you French too well. You strip innocent Muslim women of their headscarves and force them to show you their legs by banning long skirts and dresses in schools. And you demand women remove their burkinis at the beach because you lust to see our bare bodies. Oh, I know you all too well.”

  Smiling at her, he looks around the room for something. And he finds a long, thin towel on a rack, which he drapes on his head like a hood. “Monks, Armenian and Syrian priests cover their heads like this. I did too during a yearlong retreat in a monastery. In fact, early Christian women all covered their heads in public and at services. Nuns and Sisters still do today. Our faiths are not so dissimilar.”

  She’s now the lioness ready to pounce at a fat, juicy gazelle. “Yes, while we’re at it—what about those women of your early churches? The ones who helped spread Christianity in home churches out of the eyes of the Romans. Where did that get them, by the time your bishops met at Nicaea and banned women from priesthood?” She had him now.

  “I admire your theological education. You are right, it is commonly believed that the Council of Nicaea impeded women’s ability to serve in the clergy,” he says, still with a smile. Not the kind that mocks, but that admires.

  “But scholars today read the Nicaean records as saying the female deacons of those days were nonordained,” he adds. “No official statement stated whether they could be later ordained or not. However, the Council of Laodicea fifteen years later stated that women may not go to the altar, and the Councils of Orange one hundred years later finally forbade the ordination of deaconesses.”

  “And do you expect me to believe what is in that syringe will reverse millennia of patriarchal traditions?” the Kurdish woman half-jests. “Just because Alexander wants me injected does not mean I must follow him. I stopped believing in him years ago.” She rubs her eyes, suppresses a yawn, and glances down with a tired, dour aura.

  The tall Frenchman puts down the syringe and turns to address her. “I am like you. I do not follow Alexander blindly. I do so because what he asks of me is consistent with what I believe is my mission on this Earth,” he says before a pause.

  “I understand you have been brought here against your will,” he adds. “I offer my condolences for your situation. In your anger, you have acted out against a few poor souls who only wanted to help. Something deeply agitates you. More than your flight. So I offer this question. What is it that you seek? The desire, the want, the need that keeps you here in this building. I sense you are more than capable of walking out of here by your own will and force.”

  She breathes in slowly as this Jesuit, as his Order usually does, has pinned her on the core issue. Exhales slowly, and she says, “Because he said he would help my people achieve their millennia-old goal of independence.”

  A glow emanates from the eyes of this former priest as he peers into hers. “Good. And is that the same desire you would tell God?”

  She shifts and rocks on that exam table, wanting to hop off up and run. Anywhere but here, where she feels he is compelling her to answer this question. One that makes her deeply uncomfortable. Maybe as unsettling as her great-grandmother’s discussion with her about Rabi’a al-Adawiyaa. Is it God’s will that everyone around her should nudge her in the same direction?

  “Please, I do not mean to cause you any more discomfort than you have already suffered. From your trying flight here with Alexander. From your arduous life journey that has led you here, to this moment. As to what is in that syringe, I ask that you trust in God. I can only offer that I believe it will help you in your journey towards what you desire.”

  Not sure whether to smile, put on her challenging face, or cry, she simply asks, “Which one? My commitment to my people? Or to God?”

  And this man, who says he is no longer a Jesuit priest, gives the frustrating answer only a Jesuit could give. “Which one would you want this vaccine to give you?”

  As she reflects, now more still and calm on that table’s edge, she realizes that is the type of question her mother’s grandfather, the Sufi imam, would have asked her. Or maybe he did, but so long ago she no longer remembers.

  She nods, for this priest has held his ground, allowing both of them to maintain dignity and respect. Not what she would have expected from a Jesuit lackey of Alexander. Perhaps there’s more under that turtleneck than just muscles and blind obedience. She rolls up her left sleeve and jests, “Priest, you may touch my arm. I trust you will not find my limb sexually enticing.”

  Sides of his mouth uplifted, he says, “Madame Khatum, you are a very beautiful, deep woman. Outside and inside. I would be only so fortunate if I were to be that man whom you selected to share your most inner desires. But alas, I am but a humble man, who would simply welcome sharing prayer time with you.”

  She smiles, a much more genuine one, as she holds out her bare upper left arm for his puncture. He swabs with alcohol an area near what looks like a bullet wound, which he gently touches and avoids injecting near there.

  As he puts a Band-Aid on her arm, she says, “C’est mademoiselle, Prêtre. And I would be honored if you would pray with me.”

  “Bonne, good,” he says, and gives her the very oddest of smiles as he stares at her arm. She glances at her arm and finds out why. He put a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on her. She crumples her lips and nods her head at him. Touché.

  “Father,” she says with a more demure inflection. “If it would not be an imposition, I would like to know how your relationship with God has been since you renounced your vows. I only ask because I had once left my faith. But as God was willing, I have come back to his submission.”

  He
blinks methodically and reassuringly. “I wondered the same as I was asking for my Father General’s permission to leave the Order. His Holy Pontiff only agreed because he knew in my heart, in my soul, I would remain faithful to my vows, even if no longer ordained. Just as Christian women did without ordination after Nicaea.”

  Zara purses her lips ever so slightly as she nods in reflection. And then she peers back into his eyes, with hers, brown and soft. “Did you ever have the feeling of emptiness, even though you prayed, even though you remained faithful to your vows?”

  And he steps up to her, very close and in a way that she thinks he might kiss her. Or maybe that is what she wants.

  But he stops at arm’s length, takes her hand, and holds up a splint. “I saw you nursing that finger. Would this help?”

  And she sighs in relief. He is a man of God. Truly, as she allows him to put the splint around her finger and tape it. He turns her hand over to expose her scabs and puts his knuckles next to hers.

  “There was a time,” he says with bass-laden voice, “when I felt such an emptiness. I thought running away with the woman I loved would fill that emptiness.”

  And she is hooked by his words and asks, “And what happened? Was she why you became a priest?”

  He smiles and rubs the back of her hand with his thumb. “She let me know that love was truly the way to fill that emptiness. The love of the Lord.”

  She inhales, nodding her head. “My great-grandmother would love you.”

  “Thank you,” he says humbly. “And you?”

  She slyly smiles and replies, “I’m still thinking about it.”

  A few moments pass, then her YPJ officer face comes forth. “But seriously, I cannot fathom you. One does not truly leave the Catholic Church, much less the Jesuit Order. Not if what Alexander tells me is true. You were close to the Holy Pontiff, were you not?”

  He methodically blinks, humbly nods, and smiles.

  “Then for me to believe you did leave, it would be like believing a good-looking, well built, intelligent, charming US State Department agent in Iraq when he says he has left the CIA.” She pauses, watching his reaction.

  But there is none, other than a rapid blink. Moments pass as they watch each other, and then he glances at the clock behind her.

  “Please, if you could excuse me, I must get material ready for the arrival of the lovely Chinese researcher who led the development of the vaccine you so kindly allowed me to administer. I ask that you rest here for another half hour and please let that very terrified physician come in to monitor you for any reactions you may have to the vaccine.”

  As he is leaving the infirmary, he turns to say, “Oh, yes, I asked the staff here to prepare a prayer room for you. It is down this hallway to the right, across from the men’s room. But I have placed a nice soft prayer mat in your room.”

  She hops off the table and walks over to him, taking his scarred-knuckled hand into her scab-ridden-knuckled hand. “You are still a priest, are you not? You never left the Order, did you, Father?”

  And he only blinks rapidly and smiles. “I am only Jean-Paul. Simple humble Jean-Paul.”

  Chapter 11

  May these vows and this marriage be blessed. May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah. May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm. May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise. May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter. May this marriage have a fair face and a good name, an omen as welcome as the moon in a clear blue sky. I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage.

  —Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī,

  thirteenth-century Persian Sufi mystic

  9600 BCE

  Northern shores of the Black Sea

  A slightly overcast morning with a little sun peeking through. Cool temperatures, but Nanshe is always warm from the love of her family, she thinks as she bundles the tall grass she and her sister-in-law, Zamana, gathered earlier this morning. Like many of the women whom the graces of providence allowed to escape the unspeakable acts and the undignified dress forced on them by their giant captors, they started to cover themselves more completely, allowing them modesty, dignity, and respect. And they began teaching their daughters, who are now of the age that shows their femininity, to dress in this new manner. As Nanshe explained to her husband and older brother, Namu, this new style will not only preserve their dignity but, more importantly, make their beautiful daughters less attractive to the Reindeer warriors.

  Ki and her cousin Taja, younger than Ki by a sun cycle, work today in the nursery, an area set aside for the care of the young animals in the manner of Taja’s mother, who taught them how to domesticate. Cycles and cycles of the sun ago, Taja’s great-great-grandmother first found and raised the babies of a wild female aurochs that the males of her family had killed in the hunt. And so, generations later, her great-great-granddaughters play with these cute animals, which, when they grow up, weigh as much as twenty men and are as high as Ki’s forehead. Although their meat is prized, their skins needed for clothing and simple ropes, and their horns valued for many purposes, it is the milk that comes from the massive breasts of the females that is most important to the family. Today, Nanshe calls for them to bring the milk they obtained this morning into the house.

  In the clearing in the forest near Namu and Zamana’s house, Orzu is helping his brother-in-law defoliate more forest to enlarge the crop-growing area. Fortune smiled on Namu, to pair him with Zamana as she inherited the domestication and farming knowledge of her ancestors. To that end, Namu owed his eternal gratitude to his younger sister, Nanshe, whose brilliance in negotiation made for the fateful opportunity to free Zamana.

  Eleven years ago, she and his new brother-in-law met by chance with Other Siders on the big lake and began the trade in this black stone they called obsidian. In the early negotiations with a young Reindeer warrior to protect their families, Nanshe saw hiding in the shadows behind the warrior a teen girl in rags, barely covered, beaten so that her beauty was taken, and in deep, deep sadness. She knew what this meant. She nudged Orzu and said they should trade all the obsidian they had in reserve for this girl. The warrior, having seen his slave’s resistance to learning the ways of pleasing him and his fellow warriors, had planned to slaughter her anyway, so he thought this trade to be a bargain.

  Ki and Taja bring the milk into the house and give it to Nanshe and Zamana, who are preparing lunch for the family. During lunch, Namu profusely thanks his sister and her husband for their help in relocating their farm closer to the big lake. The Reindeer warriors get closer and closer each sun cycle.

  He and Zamana sheltered many who were fleeing their tyranny, their debauchery, their defilement. They heard the familiar stories of women taken into sexual servitude, but now also of the young men, as there are fewer and fewer girls for them to abduct. In fear for his sons and daughter, Namu listened to the oral traditions his brother-in-law required his siblings to recite once a day, every day, and so he moved his family away from the tail of the bird star.

  Ki and Taja eat at the children’s table with their male cousins. Anxiously, the boys arise, saying, “We must practice shooting arrows now.” Ki’s brother An is not so keen on shooting arrows, for his passion is fashioning them. He has become expert at making obsidian arrowheads and spearheads that are superior in cutting power to those of the Reindeer People. So good is his work that Nanshe asked Orzu to use these to barter with the Reindeer warriors as a way of meeting the increasing the price of their safety. Despite Nanshe’s expertise at negotiating with Other Siders and villagers, the Reindeer People will not negotiate with her directly as they believe women to be inferior, incomplete, and in essence a lower form of being. And so she stays in the background, knowing full well she is always the leader of the family.

  Ki comes out to run with the boys to the shooting range after having changed her clothes to something more suitable to the task. Seeing
her daughter’s dress, or lack thereof, Nanshe yells, “Ki! Come back here right now, young lady.”

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” Ki asks impatiently.

  “What did we say about how proper girls dress?”

  “Mamaaa, my breasts are fully covered, as are my loins. The boys can see nothing,” the disheartened Ki pleads.

  “Ki, how many times do your father and I have to remind you of what the Reindeer men will do to you if they find you attractive? Although your father will never speak to you of his sister, remember well what I have told you of her and me. We will not permit the same to happen to you. You must remember that your exposed limbs can be considered sexually attractive, as well as your shoulders and your calves. All can incite the lust of the uncivilized male.”

  “But how can I shoot well if my arms and shoulders are so draped? Can I at least wrap them tightly in cloth?” Ki begs of her mother.

  “You are one of the most lovely and attractive young women of all these lands. And if, perchance, the Reindeer warriors come unexpectedly? Your uncovered beauty may incite them to break our agreement. My soul would shrivel, burn, and die if what happened to me happened to you,” Nanshe replies with finality. Ki reluctantly goes back to her side of the house and changes.

  Out on the long clearing made for the children to practice their hunting skills, Ki’s cousins are missing the targets over and over again, with only a couple arrows even hitting one of the trees in question. Ki holds a mighty bow that clears her head, stout and heavy. After studying Illyana’s bow, which her husband kept as a penance for his perceived failure, her mother had her son An fashion a much stronger one. Ki had to develop great upper-body muscularity to handle such a bow, which she did as she helped with the nets and sails on the fishing boat. Her mother trained her to do all that which the men could do.

  Ki, late to the games, takes the range. She draws one of An’s special arrows, aims, waits, waits, then releases. The arrow hits the small tree she targeted and shatters the trunk. Not only do An’s arrows feature the sharpest, hardest arrowheads, but the shafts are longer and thicker, made from these oak trees in this new area. She shoots again and shatters another tree. In her mind, and more importantly, in her soul, she remembers what her mother drilled into her in secret—the horror her dead aunt faced when three arrows to the heart did not kill that Reindeer warrior. Ki shoots again. Third arrow to shatter a tree. If needed, she will stop a Reindeer warrior. By will and by force.