Pearl in the Sand

by Tessa Afshar

  This was the first time she had verbalized her story to anyone. It was cathartic to tell, but other emotions besmirched the relief. Weariness. Shame. Guilt. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Holding herself stiff, she separated herself from Salmone. If she chose to withhold herself from him, it wouldn’t hurt so much as having him rebuff her.

  “Stop it,” he rasped. “Stop drawing away from me.” He pulled her into his arms. “Stay with me.”

  Rahab lay against his chest, her heart pounding. He hadn’t reviled her. Though he knew that she had capitulated to her father’s demands without a single plea, he hadn’t judged her. She had helped her parents plan so that they could reap the greatest financial benefit. He knew this and still held her, tenderness etched on his soft lips.

  With a shy movement Rahab did the boldest thing she had yet done in her life. She reached for Salmone’s hand and held it. It cost her more courage than it had to hide Israel’s spies from the king’s men. It cost her every drop of her inner strength to make this move toward him, instead of waiting on him to reach for her.

  Salmone grasped her fingers with a force that almost crushed her hand. “My brave girl,” he whispered, and kissed her. He kissed her and kissed her, not letting go of her trembling hand until she melted against him.

  It was the Sabbath and Israel rested. No one cooked. No one mended. No one worked. Rahab loved the Sabbath now, though in her first days after escaping Jericho, having a full day of inactivity while so many chores remained undone felt more frustrating than restful. With time she had come to see the Sabbath as an expression of God’s concern for her. Now she kept it gladly no matter how many seemingly important things she had to ignore.

  So she sat in the weak autumn sun, her legs stretched before her, quietly reciting the Shema, while covering her eyes with her right hand: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

  The earth moved gently. Beneath her hand Rahab raised her eyebrows. That was odd; it had never happened before when she had recited the Shema. Distracted, she began once more. Hear O Israel …

  The earth moved again, harder this time. Salmone’s shout as he ran from the tent made Rahab sit bolt upright. “It’s an earthquake!”

  Again the earth trembled, this time unmistakably. Rahab gasped. Terror overwhelmed her senses; absently she noticed that sheep were running loose, freed from their pens by the force of the tremors. The sound of shouts grew loud around them.

  Salmone dropped beside her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  Held in the circle of his arms, she began to feel the fear drain out of her. She knew Salmone did not have power over the earth; he couldn’t make it stop trembling. Yet irrationally, his simple presence made her feel safe. She clung to him tightly for long moments.

  “I think it’s over,” Salmone said, pulling back a little. “Are you well?”

  “Yes. And you?” Salmone nodded absently as he surveyed the landscape around them. “There doesn’t seem to be much damage. It was a minor quake.”

  One of the neighbors’ loosed sheep nuzzled Rahab’s shoulder. She laughed, relief making her voice waver. “This one wants to go home.”

  Salmone smiled and patted the white wool on top of the sheep’s head. “It will be a chore sorting this out later. Fortunately sheep know the voice of their shepherds. For now, it’s still Sabbath. Let them roam. It will harm them none. We’ll take care of them after sundown.”

  “Someone should have informed the earth it was Sabbath,” Rahab said, indignant at the rude interruption of her restful prayers. “You’d think it would know better than to make such fuss on the Lord’s Day.”

  Salmone’s eyes crinkled in the corners. He took Rahab back into his arms. A sense of peace washed through her. Salmone himself was a force much like an earthquake, dislodging her world. Yet astonishingly no one made her feel so protected as her husband.

  Too soon, the peace in Salmone Ben Nahshon’s household came crashing to an end. He had spent several challenging days at work dealing with a quarrel between two headstrong men that threatened the tranquility of Judah. His hours had been long and filled with the kind of thorny conversation that made his hair stand on end. He abhorred this aspect of his job as a leader of thousands. Arbitration grated on him and diminished his patience. Without realizing, he brought some of its frustrations home. They stuck under his skin. The extended hours of work cut into his prayer time. Stretched thin spiritually and physically, Salmone was propelled into a clash with his wife when he was least prepared for it.

  In the middle of the night a scream awoke him. His soldier’s instincts kicked in with instant alertness. He realized that the scream had come from Rahab, gripped in the midst of a nightmare.

  He shook her gently at first, and then harder when she would not wake. “Rahab! Rahab!” He cried out, his brow puckered with concern. She snapped awake with a gasp. Salmone bent to light an oil lamp near him. She was trembling, and covered in a layer of perspiration. He touched her forehead and found her skin cold to his touch. Her eyes, wide and unseeing, stared into space.

  “It was a nightmare,” he said, drawing her gently into his arms. With worry, he noticed that she was ice-cold. Pulling a corner of the blanket over her, he cradled her through its thick folds, trying to impart a sense of safety into her still shivering body.

  She nodded. He wrapped his arms about her more tightly and held her as if she were a child. “What was it about, can you tell me?”

  She stiffened and pulled away. “Nothing really. I get them often.”

  “Tell me about this one.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  Salmone let out a sigh of annoyance. They had lived in a happy truce since their conversation in the wilderness some weeks before. He had not pressured her to divulge any more details of her former life. Yet given their recent camaraderie, he expected more trust from her. What did he have to do to win her over? “Who was in it?” he insisted.

  She licked her lips. He noticed that the skin was dry and cracking. “Zedek.”

  Salmone recognized the name instantly and pounced on it. “The goldsmith. The one to whom your father sold you.”

  “For a season.”

  “Did he abuse you?” Try as he might, he could not make his voice temperate. There was an edge to every word. “Is that why you have nightmares about him?”

  “No. He … he was gentle enough.”

  “I see. And this is why you wake up screaming in the night.”

  “I wake up screaming because I didn’t want him! I didn’t want him, but I did what he asked. Every single thing he asked, do you hear me? Every single thing he paid for. I refused him nothing.” She rose from the mattress, shaking now with agitation rather than fear.

  Salmone felt himself go cold. Too late, he realized that he wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t prepared to extend love to his wife in exchange for her brutal choices. This picture of her unresisting compliance made him sick. She had been a willing participant. He tried to dredge up some compassion for her, but the best he could do was to silence the words of judgment that trembled on his lips.

  “And then, when the three months were over, he dismissed me without once looking back.” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “He didn’t want me anymore.”

  Salmone’s heart began to pound so that he could barely hear his own voice. “Did you love him? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She raised her head, her tearstained face bleak. “Love him? He made my skin crawl.”

  “I should think,” he said, his voice like ice, “I should think having such a man release you would be a relief rather than a cause for tears. I don’t understand you, Rahab.”

  She sank down onto their bed as if her legs couldn’t support her anymore. “I may not have loved him, but I would have preferred to stay with one man than be passed around from one to another. In the end, I suppose I wasn’t good enough for him. He had enough of me within three months.”<
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  Salmone’s mind became a whirl of confusion. The thought of another man pawing at his wife while she willingly let him made his stomach turn. The thought of her writhing in agony over his rejection annoyed him. She should have been conceiving of ways to force him into casting her out rather than be so downcast about the end of the liaison. He knew that he was supposed to comfort her now, but he could not. Without words, he grabbed a cloak to wrap about himself and went outside. The sound of his wife’s weeping tore at him as he walked out, but he kept right on going.

  By the goat pen he sank to the ground, leaning his long back against the fence. The pungent odor of goat dung barely penetrated his senses. His guts cramped with the turmoil that whirled in him like a windstorm. Fisting a calloused hand, he punched the ground, twice, three times, until the sting of the hard dirt cutting into his skin brought him to his senses and he stopped.

  He drew his knees against his belly and laid his head on top of them. For a few minutes, he continued to stew in his anger, anger against Zedek, against Imri, against Rahab, against life. Against God. Why did You do it? Why did You let her live like that? Why did You bring her into my life?

  A great silence met his raving. Salmone gulped in big lungfuls of air, trying to keep the tears from coming. In slow increments, the seething anger passed over him. He gave up ranting and began talking. Then listening. As he began to pray, his heart grew soft, changing within him. He realized that every time he fought this battle, he gained a bit of ground. He didn’t land back where he had been before. It seemed to flow out of him the same at first—the same judgment, the same conditional love. But when he worked through it as he had now—God with him, guiding him—Salmone knew that his feelings had undergone a shift that was real. A change that was permanent. Before much time had passed he went back into the tent, back to his wife, who lay still weeping on the ground near their rumpled mattress.

  His stomach tightened at the sight of her. There had been so many occasions that should have led her to tears—endless tears. War. The destruction of her world. The meanness of her new neighbors. Her unspoken love for him. Yet she had been frugal with her tears. Tonight she was crying as if she would not stop.

  He went on his knees before her. “Forgive me, Rahab.”

  She shook her head and cried harder. He felt like she was shredding his insides with her sobs. “You won’t forgive me?”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean there’s naught to forgive.”

  “Of course there is. I didn’t stand by you as I should have. But I’m here now. Not like Zedek, see? I’m back for you.”

  She shook her head again, saying nothing.

  “Rahab, it’s hard for me to hear about you with other men. I won’t deny it. And tonight it was especially hard, because I am exhausted and because I had not prayed. That’s no excuse—more an explanation. I grew angry and I shouldn’t have. What’s worse is that I’ll probably do it again. But beloved, I have returned. I am here, and I want you. I want you for always. I am no Zedek.”

  “Please, Salmone. Can we just let it go? Let’s go to sleep.”

  The haunted expression on her face told Salmone that he had to give up for the night. She was too fragile to take in his pleas, to grasp the truth of them. He leaned away from her, his jaw set. He had lost some ground. Tomorrow, he would gain it back. And more. Joshua had warned him that he would fail Rahab, and that she would also fail him. Victory, he remembered, was not so much in being perfect toward each other. Rather, victory would flow out of how they dealt with their failures.

  “All right. We’ll talk another time. Come to bed now.” He wanted, with an itching desire, to pick her up and carry her to their now cold bed. But he sensed that in her present state of mind any form of intimacy with him would cause her to be more distraught.

  With jerky movements she crawled back to the pallet. Setting his jaw, he exerted immense self-control to prevent himself from lifting her up, helping her, holding her. He lay next to her, careful to avoid physical contact. He had not been intimate with her since those painfully awkward attempts in the early days of the wedding bower. The story she had shared with him about her father had convinced him that he needed to earn her trust before their marriage bed could become a place of joy to them. So he had restrained his desire. Yet at the same time he had made some inroads in teaching her to enjoy his touch. His casual caresses no longer turned her to stone. Now he felt her body respond to him when he kissed her lips. Tonight, he had forfeited some of that ground. The loss grated on him, inasmuch as he felt it was his own fault. He vowed with a single-minded resolve that he would take back what he had lost.

  It took him considerable time to fall asleep. When he woke up, it was late. His breakfast was laid out, and his wife was gone.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Two

  It took every bit of Rahab’s self-control to keep still as she lay next to her husband. She could not rest. She felt mortified by the previous night’s events. It was humiliating enough to wake up screaming like a madwoman. Her husband must have thought he was being attacked by Canaanites in his bed before he realized that it was his own wife having a wrestling match with her nightmares. As though that weren’t enough, she had spoken about her disgrace.

  Poor Salmone. How much could any man of honor take? He hadn’t raved, but she had sensed his seething anger riding hard beneath the surface of his stretched resources. He had left her side, disgusted with her. She knew that he had come back to her out of guilt, feeling bad for having left her in tears. His well-intentioned determination to abide by her had driven him back to her side. But he had seen a glimpse of her real heart, and no amount of good intention could make excuses for that. In a moment of weakness she had revealed her true nature to him. He had been confronted with the awful truth that his wife was a harlot in her soul as much as in her body. She was no good. And now he realized it, and it was only compunction that kept him by her side, sleeping so still in the predawn darkness.

  Rahab began praying with silent desperation, slipping first into words she knew well. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God. But she could not focus on the familiar blessing; the wail deep inside her needed the expression of her own words. Lord, my hope is gone–gone. I am heavyhearted, cut off from my husband, from my future, from Your love. But You are able to restore life to me. Raise me up from this grave of despair: give me a new life, and a new hope, I ask.

  Sighing, she rose up, hardly making a sound as she prepared her husband’s breakfast, and then left the tent in her bare feet, carrying her sandals in her hand to ensure she did not disturb him.

  Thankfully, she had prearranged to meet with Miriam today, which gave her the perfect excuse to delay speaking to her husband again. Before leaving, she gave a message to the sleepy servant who was feeding the goats, informing Salmone of her plans. Like a coward, Rahab snuck out before Salmone had a chance to force another discussion. She had no wish to face him. For the length of this day she would have a hiding place. Then she would have to return to his side and bear the burden of his unspoken disdain.

  Twice a week, without fail, Miriam packed up food, medicine, and bandages and took herself outside Israel’s camp to the tent of the sick. She nursed anyone who happened to be there, often without having met them before. Family members, weary from endless cycles of care, accepted her intervention with relief. Zuph and other physicians had come to respect the young woman’s ability and entrusted some of their complicated cases to her.

  During her long days of nursing Salmone, Rahab also found herself drawn to the work of caring for the sick. She had a talent for it, she discovered. The awareness that she could be of indispensable use to another human thrilled her. That knowledge helped overcome any queasy distaste around illness. So she asked to join Miriam on her weekly visits to the sick, and this was to be her first trial.

  Miriam bounded to her side as soon as she caught sight of her and enveloped her in the kind of hug that made its receiver feel welcomed all the way through
. “I missed you so much.”

  Rahab smiled, tucking away sad thoughts of her husband in a corner of her mind, wishing to be rid of them for as long as she could. “I saw you the day before yesterday.”

  “Too long. Do you know how desperately I’ve been wanting a sister of my own?”

  Rahab loved it when Miriam referred to her as her sister and demonstrated her preference for Rahab’s company over most others. She weaved her arm through the younger woman’s. “Well, sister, are you ready to go cure some sick people?”

  “Cure, is it? You have set your standards high for your first day.”

  “I rely on you to do the curing.”

  Miriam rolled her eyes. “You, I will cure of that high opinion by the end of the day.”

  The layout of the tent of the sick intrigued Rahab from the moment she entered it. Made from animal hide and stained a light shade of grey, the tent was one of the largest she had ever seen. By means of openings in the walls of the tent, fresh air circulated throughout the space. Each opening had a flap that could be shut in cold or inclement weather. Rows of well-maintained pallets lined the ground in orderly fashion, separated into sections by hanging curtains made from spun goat hair. Patients were assigned to specific sections, depending on their conditions. This tent boasted a sophistication that made the tent of the wounded seem minuscule in comparison.

  Surprisingly few pallets were occupied, given the breadth of Israel’s population. Some of the invalids moaned with pain, their cries weak from repetition. Others felt well enough to bear their burden in silence. Still others slept, finding solace in the gift of unconsciousness. Rahab’s heart softened at the sight of their suffering.

  A peculiar odor filled the tent—a mix of the sweet scent of incense, which they burned constantly as a sanitizer, combined with the sour stench of sweat and urine and old food. That odor alone could sap hope dry. At the side of most patients, family members squatted, hollow-eyed with worry and lack of sleep.