Beloved Gomorrah

by Justine Saracen

  “Ah, I see. The girls will be seated on the fountain.” She stood up and went to kneel on one knee in front of them. “They’re quite beautiful,” she said, running her finger delicately along one of the concrete arms. “It’s uncanny seeing such human faces on a statue. I really want to see everything in its final place.”

  “You will if you’re still here next week.”

  “Yes, I will be, of course.”

  The subject ended with another awkward silence as Kaia stood up and turned directly toward her. She bit her lips. “Look, last week ended in such an ugly way. I’d…um…I’d like you to come back to the boat again. At least until Bernard gets back.”

  Joanna let a moment of silence pass. The thought of being alone again with Kaia made her heart pound. But the memory of Bernard throwing her off the boat was painfully fresh. What would be the point? Whatever the invitation meant, it would only be an evening or two, and then things would be back to the way they were. Kaia and Bernard with their strange adversarial marriage, and Joanna, back at her workshop with Charlie and the others. No, she wasn’t going to be some straight actress’s walk on the wild side.

  “I’m sorry. We’re nearing the end of this project and we’re pressed for time. We’ve got more statues to make, and then we have to take everything down to the sea floor.”

  Kaia looked away, obviously embarrassed by the rejection. “Yes, of course. This is what you came to Egypt for. Silly of me to forget. Well, now that I know you’re all right, I’ll let you get back to work.” Ducking her head as if she feared being struck, she hurried along the column of sunlight to the doorway and out of the workshop.

  Joanna stood motionless at her workbench facing empty space, a tightness in her chest. “God damn it,” she muttered, and coughed to dispel the threatening tears, then yanked her goggles back on. “Where the hell are my gloves?” She continued swearing until she found them, slapped them against the workbench to remove the powder, and picked up her sander.

  She resumed sanding the already smooth statue, fearing to turn off the motor since only the rasp of the wheel against stone kept her from crying. What had she just done? What should she have done? How had she gotten herself into this state?

  With a moan of despair, she turned off the sander and set it carefully on the workbench. She had to get out, get away. She needed air, space, perspective. She yanked off her gloves, tossed them next to the sander, and stormed out of the workshop.

  *

  The commercial part of El Gouna was empty of customers as usual, and many of its shopkeepers stood outside smoking. Joanna avoided passing them and swung into a side street.

  Crap, out of the frying pan into the fire. She was in the souk, the long row of stalls and kiosks filled floor to ceiling with pharaonic junk, or beach equipment, or tall display baskets of dried and dicey-looking vegetation. Here too, the scarcity of buying public brought the owners out into the street to cajole her, offering the widest selection, the finest quality, the best possible deals. She brushed past them with her head lowered, muttering “No, thank you” over and over, sorry now she’d ever left the quiet of her workshop, then stopped abruptly with a grunt to avoid bumping into a man.

  He turned around at the sound, surprised, and she stared at him for a moment before she recognized the muttonchops.

  “Abdullah! Uhh, hello. I didn’t expect to meet you here on dry land.”

  “Hello, Miss Joanna.” His thick lips parted in a wide smile. “You come to shop here, with Egyptians? That’s good.”

  “Well, not exactly. I was really just taking a walk. Obviously you do shop here.”

  “Yes, sometimes, but today is just this,” he held up a package wrapped in brown paper, “from my brother. He has a tea shop.” Abdullah gestured with his hand behind him toward a tiny shop with two round tables in front.

  “Shafik, come,” he called to the man standing in the doorway. “This is my friend Joanna.” The portly Shafik, who, with a round face and normal-sized nose, bore no resemblance at all to his brother, offered his hand. “Ah, a friend. Please come and have a cup of tea. No charge for a friend of Abdullah. Really, I’ll make you a nice cup and you can relax.” He pulled out a chair from one of the tiny tables.

  Seeing no way to refuse without giving offense to Abdullah, who had always been kind to her, she acquiesced. She glanced toward him, expecting him to sit down as well, but he merely bowed slightly and said, “Have a good afternoon, Miss Joanna,” and left.

  Slightly annoyed at having been entrapped, she took a seat on the rickety chair. Well, after a morning of sanding stone and walking half an hour in the Egyptian sun, she was thirsty. A cup of tea wouldn’t hurt.

  A moment later, Shafik was back with a small tin teapot and two glasses. He poured out the fragrant tea and sat down across from her, pushing a battered sugar bowl toward her. Obviously she was going to also have to have a conversation. Defeated, she dropped in a sugar cube and sipped from her glass.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed softly. “It’s Earl Grey. You carry Earl Grey.”

  “Of course I do. I drink it myself. An agreeable habit I picked up in London,” he said in perfect English.

  “You were in London?

  “Yes, for two years. I drove a taxi and learned that English drivers are just as crazy as Egyptians.”

  “I suppose they are. Why did you come back?”

  “Homesickness, of course. And to get married. Besides, I couldn’t have stood it much longer. All that bloody rain. After two years of it, I almost changed skin color.” He sipped his own tea and seemed to take note of her cut. “I hope you’re being careful with that. In this heat, things infect quickly. Did you see a doctor?”

  “Yes, briefly, at the hotel. He examined me and said the same thing. It’s from broken glass.”

  “Broken glass? Oh, my god. You’re one of the victims from the Sun Bar. Oh, I am so sorry. I apologize deeply for my country. We are a reasonable people, but we have our fanatics. They think they are saving Egypt, but all they do is shame us.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. So maybe you can tell me why they do it. What’s so threatening about us that people want to kill us?”

  He blew out air. “Lots of reasons. Take your pick. A long history of bitterness at Western colonialism and greed for Arab oil. Euro-American politics that keep our own dictator in power. Israel’s swallowing up of Arab Palestine with the full support of America. Western business and commercialism undermining our culture. A sense of being treated as inferior. I suppose it’s a stew of all of them.”

  Joanna found herself nodding. “Yes, and all of that spiced by the toxic myth of religious martyrdom. So what’s the solution? If you had your way, and it wouldn’t bankrupt Egypt, would you want to have all the tourists go home and leave Egypt to itself?”

  “No, of course not. All foreigners are welcome to drink tea in my shop. Completely aside from Egypt’s dependency on tourism, no country can exist in a vacuum in the twenty-first century. As for religion, I don’t have answers to my country’s problems, but I know that Islam does not have them either.”

  At that moment, a young couple, both in Bermuda shorts and tee shirts, stopped in front of the shop. “Can we buy some tea here?” the woman asked. The man said nothing but cupped his hand protectively over his wallet in his side pocket. Joanna smiled to herself. Domestic financial conflict in microcosm.

  “To be sure. The best tea in Egypt.” Shafik sprang to his feet. “Dozens of flavors and very fresh,” he said as he guided them skillfully into his shop.

  Joanna swallowed the last of her now-lukewarm tea and checked her watch. She’d been pouting long enough.

  “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Charlie appeared in front of her and sat down in Shafik’s place.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  He lifted off the cloth bag that had hung on a strap diagonally over his chest. “Hanan told me you were headed toward the village, and I met Abdullah just as
I came to the square. He said you were here.”

  “What was so urgent it couldn’t wait?”

  “This.” He reached into the bag and drew out a packet of several pages, folded in half. “The transliteration of the last tablet.”

  Joanna’s mood lightened abruptly. “Fantastic. Read it to me. I need some good news.”

  “I figured as much. That’s why I hunted you down.” Charlie unfolded the fax, patted various pockets until he found his reading glasses, and slid them on.

  “Here be the words of Gebreel, son of Hed, which bear witness to the suffering of the daughters of Lot. With this testimony I proclaim that which they were not given to see and which the people of Abraham were not given to know. On my soul before God, this is what came to pass o’er the cities of the plain.

  Hed was a servant of Abraham who was possessed of God and with an iron will, and I was born into his household. Abraham’s love of God was so great that he made to sacrifice his son Isaac upon God’s altar. He came within a breath of doing so, but for a sudden vision that stayed his hand. My father was of equal zeal, and with harsh rule, he raised me to be a servant of God.

  In such a household, I longed to join with them whom Abraham anointed as Angels of God, who pledged with sword and fire to make the One God lord of all the lands. Though too young to lend my sword in their chastisement of Sodom, I reached my fourteenth year in time to stand with them at Gomorrah.

  With a score of others of our tribe already secreted within the pagan city, three of us betook ourselves to the gates. Thereupon our leader Mesoch did proclaim before the people, saying they had offended God and were commanded to repent their ways. But the people did mock us and turned away from us. Abraham’s kinsman Lot came before us then and bade us sup with him and we went in. While we broke bread, the elders gathered before the house and called us out to justify ourselves, on account of Mesoch’s admonition. But Lot did gnash his teeth at the people and threw his daughters in amongst them for their pleasure, if they would but renounce their interest in us.

  The people of Gomorrah were perplexed by this and brought the maids unharmed unto their father’s door, but Mesoch threw the embers of the hearth into their faces, whereby they fled to tend their injuries.

  All the while, within the house I cast my eyes upon Atiyah. How full of grace and tenderness was the wife of Lot, as she embraced her weeping daughters. I knew not my own mother, who had died aborning me, and so I sorely longed to share in that embrace.

  But with great haste, Yassib brought Lot’s women to the stable and gave them to know God’s Will, that His Angels would smite Gomorrah that very night. He bade them thus to flee into the hills. They were sore afraid, for they knew not that the Angels were ourselves, the men of Abraham.

  While Lot and his women fled, a host of other Angels joined us and Mesoch gave out the tasks: one to slaughter livestock, one to set the fires and ignite the granary, another to pull down the houses, and yet another to smash the idols in the temples. The most zealous were to enter the houses of the elders and slaughter them and their families in their beds.

  I swung the sword alongside of them as we went through the streets, though it was more butchery than battle, for the people had no defense. Even I, with boyish arms and growing doubt, smote many a man that night. When we returned to the house of Lot, his servants and kinfolk still lived. One of the women they called Tiamat held an infant. Yassib ripped the babe from her arms and dashed it against the stones. Tiamat made to flee but I blocked her way in my confusion, and when she halted, Yassib plunged his sword into her back. Then he set his torch to the beds and curtains and to the beams of the house.

  Heavy with remorse, and with the wrathful smoke at my back, I hastened after Lot’s family to assure their escape from the ruin of Gomorrah. Shortly I came upon them, stopping midway up the hill. The maids were fled, but Lot and Atiyah were in dispute, for Atiyah repented of her decision and made to return to the burning city.

  “Wife, do not look back,” Lot shouted. “This is God’s retribution on Sodom and Gomorrah for they were as offal that breedeth vile creatures.”

  “Liar!” she cried out. “Men of good heart tended Gomorrah’s olive groves for generations and welcomed you when you came as a stranger, despising us. I lament the day I left my father’s house and joined your monstrous faith, for look what it has done!”

  “Be silent, wife. I will forgive your blasphemy as the One God has forgiven you and brought you out of Gomorrah. But only this once. Do not foreswear this mercy and fall back into sin.” He reached out a hand to her, yet she recoiled.

  “I do not want your forgiveness. I will return in search of Tiamat, wherever she is fled, for I loved her more than ever I did you.”

  Lot did rebuke her and swelled with wrath. “Behold Gomorrah’s iniquities: the wildness of women, the lusts of men and boys, the mixing of races, the prayers to false gods. But the boil is cleansed. Tiamat is dead now, with all the others. Our Angels have seen to it.”

  “Tiamat, dead? You monster! You swine! I curse your angels and I curse your God.” She spat before his feet and, weeping, turned her face toward the burning city.

  “Daughter of Eve. You are a poison to my house!” Lot called out, and took up a rock and smashed it upon her head. She fell onto the stony ground and did not move.

  Lot gathered the stones and blocks of salt that lay around him and piled them up to conceal her. Then he made haste to ascend the mount and shortly he was out of sight.

  Torn by grief, I knelt before the mound and pulled the stones away from Atiyah’s bloody countenance. I kissed her, tasting the salt of the rocks and of her tears, and something broke in me. I wept for her and for the mother I had not known, and for all the mothers we had killed. I tarried on the hill beside her for two nights, weeping, and on the morning of the third day I gave her an honorable grave in a hidden place. Then at the place where she was struck, I gathered up a block of salt and set it on its end, a monument to Atiyah, the wife of Lot.

  Bitter was my heart when I reached the cave where Lot had housed and came upon his daughters packing the beasts of burden. Seeing me, they trembled and I comforted them saying, fear not. I will not harm you. Go you to Zoar, unto the house of Bessem, who is of your tribe and full of kindness. Tell him that Gebreel has tarried at Gomorrah. This they did and so were spared greater harm, and they stayed within the fold.

  As for myself, I wandered many days through the ruined cities of the plain among the scorched remains of man and maid. I searched for signs of God’s approval and found none, only fountains stopped with ash and jackals and vultures feeding off the innocent.

  Whosoever shall read these words, in whatever generation, let no man say this was the will of heaven, for it was brutish men that extinguished Sodom and Gomorrah. What God there is must surely have looked upon it with revulsion, and if He did not, He is malevolence itself.

  Joanna sat back, slack-jawed. “I can’t get my mind around this. An eye-witness report that religious fanatics, not God, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  Charlie took off his reading glasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “I don’t know why you’re so upset about all that. The Bible is full of genocides, scores of them, of just about any tribe that worshipped other gods. It was a primitive time. And whether myth or history, what was righteousness then is terrorism now.”

  “Ancient Hebrews as al Qaeda. Now there’s a comparison you’d never expect.”

  Charlie shrugged. “The Persians and the Greeks and the Mongols all did the same. Some behaviors repeat forever and only change their names. And speaking of names, we have them now for all the women. I kind of like Atiyah, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and Gebreel too. The modern Gabriel. The assassin who came in from the cold.”

  “A lot of good it did the girls,” Charlie mused. “They still lost their home and their mother, bore their father’s children by rape, and married men who shamed them. Frankly, I find the whole story disgusting
.”

  Joanna stared into the middle distance for a moment. “I’m going to put Lot in the exhibit. I want to record the outrage. The design’s already been approved with five statues. All I’m doing is adding identity to them. Identity and a story. Would you stand as the model for Lot? I know he’s a bastard, but with the beard and all, you’re perfect.”

  Charlie stroked his chin and stood up from the table. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  *

  “You’re getting good at this,” Charlie remarked as Joanna troweled the second coat of plaster over his lower body. “You’ve done this whole thing in record time.”

  Joanna snorted. “I think I could do a casting in my sleep now.” She thickened the coating over his chest and then carefully smoothed another layer over his upraised right arm. “You need to hold that arm up for an hour, so let’s put a support under it,” she said, fetching a six-foot length of doweling. She measured off the correct height and then clipped off the top and nailed an inch-wide platform at the upper end. Slipping it under the heel of his upraised hand, she maneuvered the arm until she found the right angle.

  “Now we just need a rock,” she said, folding several rags into a tight round wad and laying it on his hand. “Curve your fingers around it. Perfect. I’ll shape it with the sander later.”

  With the remaining quart of plaster, she coated his wrist, fingers, and the wad at the center. Then she stood back. “Looks good, Charlie. Now you just have to hold the position for,” she looked at her watch, “forty minutes.”

  “Piece of cake,” he said. “Except, um, can you please scratch my nose?”

  “Anything for a friend.” She scraped her nail around the tip of his nose until he moaned relief. Then she occupied herself with the cleanup, such as it was. She washed out the bowl and miscellaneous other instruments, wound the loose cord around the sander and stowed it under the table, and quickly inventoried the remaining cloths. With luck and care, she’d have enough for the final statue.