by Marek Halter
Moses suddenly crossed his arms over his chest. The bracelets made a jangling noise and flashed in the sun. His voice became lower, almost inaudible, until it ceased altogether.
Silence enveloped them, broken only by the wind and the surf.
Not daring to look at him again, Zipporah moved away from the rock. Trying to avoid dislodging any stones, she began to climb up the path.
“Zipporah!” Moses’ voice echoed behind her in the cold wind. The voice she knew, the voice he always used when he spoke the language of Midian. “Come back, don’t go!”
Pulling her shawl tight over her chest, she turned. Seen head-on, his bare face was even more unsettling. His nose seemed stronger, his jaws broader, his eyes darker. He reached out a gold-circled arm. The memory of the man in her dream came back to her, sending a shiver of fear and desire through her whole body.
“I’m very happy to see you,” Moses said, more gently, taking a step toward her.
She struggled to sustain his gaze, incapable of the slightest movement.
“Oh,” Moses said, laughing and touching his cheeks, “it’s my face that surprises you! It’s an Egyptian custom. To address Amon, you need to be clean shaven.”
He laughed more openly, which gave Zipporah the courage to look at him and smile. She stammered an excuse for disturbing him while he was praying. With a gesture, he indicated that it was of no importance. “So, you knew where to find me,” he said. He did not seem surprised. On the contrary, he appeared quite happy, and his eyes shone.
“We were afraid you’d left for Egypt.”
“Your brother must be angry. It was not very polite of me.”
“No, no, he isn’t angry!” Zipporah heard herself protesting in a voice that was too loud and too sharp. “Nor is my father, nor me . . .”
She was afraid. Afraid he wouldn’t find her beautiful enough, afraid her skin was too black for him, afraid of her own Cushite face. Moses had become a stranger again, an unknown man, with bare cheeks and a prince’s bracelets.
“The whole household has been hoping you would return,” she said, the words half swallowed in her throat.
Twilight was approaching. On the horizon, a cloudless strip of sky was turning red. Reflections shimmered on the sea like thick pools of blood.
“It’s true,” Moses said. “I wanted to leave for Egypt, but I had no idea of the route. The camel your father gave me had more brains than me. I led him into a quicksand. He managed to get out, but then refused to go any farther north. I listened to what he was telling me, and we came back here. The truth is, I have no desire to go to the land of the great Maat! No desire at all!” He made an unexpectedly violent and angry gesture, and turned away to look at the reddening horizon. He shook his head. “No, there’s nothing for me there,” he said, as if talking to himself.
“Why come back to this cave and not to my father’s domain?” Zipporah asked.
He glanced at her coolly, but did not reply immediately. “Come, don’t stay on the path. There’s water in my gourd if you feel thirsty.”
The gold glittered on his arm as he pointed to the cave. Only now did he seem to become aware of the bracelets on his arms. He took them off.
“I had to speak to Amon, the god of Pharaoh and my mother,” he explained. “It was easier to do that here. In your father’s house, it might have offended Jethro and the altar of Horeb, where he makes his offerings.”
He reached the far end of the terrace. His sack and staff were there, and so was the painted casket. He opened it and put the gold bracelets inside. He was no longer hiding anything from her, Zipporah thought, but the thought did nothing to calm either the fear or the desire that were warring in her blood. The light was quickly fading. The horizon was aflame, like the armorers’ fires. Soon, it would be dark. There was still time for her to get back. She knew the way well enough, even in the dark. To stay here, with Moses, would be a significant step, and the thought of it made her tremble. But modesty and shame made her tremble even more. She lowered her eyes, turned her hands over, and looked at her palms, as if they contained an answer.
Guessing her thoughts, Moses came closer. “It’s late to be getting back to your father’s house,” he said, “but I’m sure you know the way, even at night. I could go with you.”
She looked up again. They stood there in silence, intimidated, aware that every moment they remained without moving, without speaking, contained a promise.
Moses was the first to open his mouth. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “I want you to know who I really am.”
“Why?”
Zipporah saw the blood beating under the bare skin of his neck. It was still not too late—if she could find the strength—to turn away and go back up the path to the top of the cliff. She thought one last time of her sisters and Jethro. Especially Jethro. She wished he were here, to give her encouragement.
“Because you are the one who could understand,” Moses said, and his voice sounded as it had when he was praying to Pharaoh’s god.
His gaze was difficult to sustain, and Zipporah lowered her eyes. There was another silence, heavier than before.
She broke the spell. “It’s getting cold,” she said, somewhat curtly, stepping to one side. “We have to light a fire and get the wood ready before night comes.”
“THE Akkadian merchant I met with your brother, Hobab, told me my mother was dead,” Moses began. “The woman I always called ‘my mother,’ although she wasn’t really. I didn’t come out of her womb. I never saw my real mother’s face. I don’t even know her name.”
The flames were high, and whirled in the wind that beat brutally against the cliff. Beyond the shifting reflections on the walls of the cave, the darkness was total. There were no stars in the sky. The night seemed empty of life. It was as though they were the last man and the last woman left alive in the world, both protected and lost in this halo of quivering light suspended between earth and sky. The murmur of the surf faded on the sea. Moses spoke calmly, hesitating only when a word escaped him or some especially emotional memory made his voice throb. Wrapped in a thick blanket impregnated with the smell of sand and camels, Zippora listened. From time to time, she would stoke the embers, adding a dead branch to the dancing flames.
Some years earlier, the name of the Pharaoh who ruled over the land of the River Iterou was Thutmose-Aakheperkare. He was considered one of the wisest and most powerful of the Divine Sons and Protectors of Maat. Thanks to his alliance with Amon, the greatest of the gods, the floods of the River Iterou had never failed to bring abundant harvests. He was a great warrior, who conquered lands to the north and the south, and regained the strength and wealth that had been lost due to the weakness of his fathers and forefathers. Making full use of the Hebrew slaves, he enlarged palaces and temples, extracting whole cities from the sand and the mountains.
Until the day it became clear that the descendants of Abraham and Joseph were becoming ever-more numerous, multiplying in proportion to their ever-increasing burden. Pharaoh had to listen constantly to his counselors’ fears: “What will happen when the Hebrews are equal in number to the people of the River Iterou? What will happen if they become aware of their own strength? If war comes, they’ll side with our enemies! If we’re wise, we’ll destroy the seeds of revolt before they bear fruit. Let us exhaust them in work! Let us stop them from multiplying!”
So it was that Thutmose-Aakheperkare decided that all the firstborn sons of the Hebrews should have their throats cut at birth.
How to describe the cries, the tears, the weeping of women already big with child? Many hid, or lied to save their sons. Others invented all kinds of subterfuges to avoid their being put to death. Among them was the woman who bore Moses.
“Who she was, where she lived, how I was found—even today I don’t know any of those things. What I do know is that the woman I called my mother did not give birth to me.”
Here, Moses paused for a long time. Her face burning, Zipporah did not move.
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“The woman I knew as my mother was the beloved daughter of Thutmose-Aakheperkare,” Moses resumed, in a colder voice. “Hatshepsut. Mother Hatshepsut, I called her. As far back as I can remember, hers was the name and face that calmed my tantrums and nurtured my childish pleasures. The face of a gentle and wise sovereign.”
As soon as his beloved daughter was born, Thutmose-Aakheperkare had wanted to make her a queen, but the priests opposed the idea. So, after much maneuvering, Pharaoh had given her a husband: his own son from another wife. A weak man who would succeed him and become Thutmose II.
“That way, my mother was able to rule the country in secret without attracting the wrath of the priests. But she knew her frail husband couldn’t give her a son. I suppose that was why she went against her father’s orders and took a Hebrew baby to her breast and pretended that he had come from her womb through the will of Isis and Nephthys—which made me the son of Pharaoh.”
So, Zipporah thought, clasping her hands together to stop them shaking, Moses was indeed what Orma had first thought him to be. A prince. Nor could there any longer be any doubt that he was the man in her dream, a man like no other.
“Mother Hatshepsut was as tender to me as a mother could be. I can still feel the touch of her lips on my brow and the memory of her scent in my throat. Where I came from, only she and one of her handmaids knew. It was easy enough to convince her husband, whom she despised, that I was his son. But to lie to Pharaoh, her father, before he died and climbed into Amon’s boat was more difficult. . . . I was given the name Moses. Nothing was too splendid for me! I was taught everything that one ‘appointed by Amon’ had to know: written words, the order of the stars, time and the seasons. I was taught to love and be loved. I was taught to fight, to command, and to despise everything that was not the will of the rulers and gods of the River Iterou.”
Moses looked at Zipporah, but she averted her eyes. He waited a little, as if drawing his memories from the wind and the surf.
“I lived and thought not only like the son of Hatshepsut and Pharaoh, but also like a man of the Great River. Occasionally, when I went to admire some new column or temple, I would see slaves. To be honest, I didn’t think of them as men and women. They were Hebrews, and they were slaves. It took hatred and intrigue to open my eyes and lead me to the truth.”
Thutmose II had died young. Moses, now a man, felt no sorrow at his death. He looked with indifference at his corpse on Amon’s boat. But, as soon as the stones of the tomb were sealed, the palaces and temples came alive with plots. Hatshepsut, radiantly beautiful and confident, as nobody had been since her father, of the help and support of the priests of Amon, advanced, under the sun, in male garb, clasping to her chest the scepters of Osiris, the whip, and the gold crook, and the tiara of the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt was placed on her golden wig. The priests of Osiris muttered, but bent their heads and their knees.
The abundant harvests that followed earned her the trust and gratitude of the people, which merely increased the anger of the nobles, who hated the fact that she was a woman. In the hope of pacifying them, she married her own nephew, a young man the same age as Moses, promising that when the time came, he would become Thutmose III. But what should have been a guarantee of peace became a further source of hatred.
“How could it have been otherwise? Thutmose is strong and handsome, loved by the priests and feared by the soldiers. We are the same age. We played the same games and were taught by the same masters. We fought together and prayed to Amon together. Suddenly we both found ourselves in my mother’s room, I as her son and he as her husband! It was all too obvious which of the two of us she loved! The corridors of the palace were buzzing with rumor and suspicion! Thutmose was told that he would never become the Divine Son and Protector of Maat, because my mother, Hatshepsut, was trying to maneuver so that I would be the one designated by Amon. Of course, he believed it. Who wouldn’t have believed it?”
It was known that Thutmose II had been weak. Doubts were cast on Moses’ paternity. An investigation was launched. The handmaids were questioned—presumably under torture—about how Hatshepsut had spent her nights and what men might have shared her bed. No lover was discovered—but an even greater secret came to light.
One day, Thutmose summoned Moses to the great hall of his palace. They had often eaten there together, enjoying the dancers and magicians. That day the room, with its high columns, was empty but for the throne of Thutmose. Armed guards stood behind every door. On his brow, Hatshepsut’s young husband bore a gold serpent, the royal insignia of Ka. His eyes sparkled with joy and venom.
Moses stepped forward, sustaining his gaze.
“Come no farther, Moses!” Thutmose commanded, in his high-pitched voice. “I know who you are.”
“Who I am?” Moses asked, genuinely surprised. “What do you mean, brother?”
“I’m not your brother!” Thutmose screamed. “Never say that word again!”
“What do you mean, Thutmose? Why are you so angry?”
“Be quiet and listen. The priests have consulted Hemet, Khnum, and Thoth. They’ve also questioned one of your mother’s handmaids . . .” He laughed sardonically. “Your ‘mother Hatshepsut,’ my devoted wife, Divine Daughter of Amon, queen of Upper and Lower Egypt! This is the conclusion they’ve come to. You’re a nobody, Moses.”
Moses realized at that moment that those who had been plotting against Hatshepsut had finally found the weapon they had been looking for. He waited for Thutmose to stop laughing. “I have never claimed to be what you are, Thutmose,” he declared calmly.
“Quiet! Keep your mouth shut, you heap of dung!” Thutmose’s cheeks were scarlet, and he was gripping the arms of his throne so tightly that his knuckles were white. “Slave! Slave, and son of a slave! You’re a Hebrew, a son of the multitude, a blemish on my palace! That’s what you are, Moses. Hatshepsut never gave birth to you. You’re a lie, a Hebrew firstborn who has no right to live!”
Moses was stunned. When he tried to ask questions, Thutmose screamed more insults and called the guards. That night, Moses was thrown into the prisoners’ pit.
“After a few days,” Moses said, gently taking wood from Zipporah and putting it on the fire, “they took me out and led me to a building site to the south of the Great River Iterou, where they put me to work among the slaves—my own people, although I couldn’t even understand their language! It was there that I killed Mem P’ta, the architect and overseer. I had to flee without seeing my mother, Hatshepsut, again. I had no idea what had happened to her until we met the merchant from Akkad and he told us the news. ‘In the land of the River Iterou, Pharaoh is again a man! The name Thutmose the Third is divine. The name Hatshepsut has been banished. The stones on which it is written have been broken, her statues have been overturned, and her temples destroyed. When she died, she was given no boat to take her to Amon.’”
Zipporah shivered. Moses had fallen silent after these last words. She was surprised to hear him sobbing. He had got to his feet, and was standing with his face half in shadow. He turned his back to her, walked nervously to the edge of the cliff, and faced the night and the wind.
“I grew up and was loved,” he cried, “but knew nothing of the slaves who built the palaces where I slept. I thought I was someone I wasn’t. I’m a nobody! Thutmose is right. But my people . . . Oh, my people! How can they live as they do? How can they bear it?”
Zipporah stood up. The cover fell from her shoulders, but she was hardly aware of the cold. Moses turned to face her. In the light of the flames, tears glistened on his cheeks and in his rage-filled eyes. He opened his arms as if he were about to shout some more, but, at that moment, there came a loud rumbling sound, like a roll of drums, not from the sea, it seemed, but from the depths of the cave. It was a dense, fierce, powerful sound, and, when it came a second time, they both cried out in fright. Then it stopped.
“Horeb!” Zipporah whispered, in a strangled voice.
It returned, like a
lament from deep within the cliff. This time, it seemed that the rocks themselves trembled in response.
“What is it?” Moses asked, in a toneless voice.
“Horeb,” Zipporah repeated, in a more soothing tone. “Horeb is speaking. Horeb is angry.”
With a grimace, Moses turned to the darkness, then again to Zipporah. She had crossed her hands below her chest, with her palms open, and closed her eyes. Neither said anything. They listened to the silence.
There was no sound now but the noise of the wind and the surf.
They kept listening, but now, in the darkness, where Horeb’s anger had sounded, they were aware only of a vast emptiness. The rumbling did not return.
Zipporah relaxed. “Tonight,” she said, smiling, “his rage was a small one. Perhaps he heard you and was answering you. Perhaps your rage is his.”
Moses looked at her suspiciously. Was she mocking him? “No! Horeb is not my god. I have no god. Who is the God of the Hebrews? I don’t know him.”
“I saw you praying for the woman who was your mother,” Zipporah countered, gently.
Moses shrugged, and the tension went from his face. “I wasn’t praying to Amon. I was praying to her.”
She did not know what to say in reply. Now she felt the cold of the wind through her tunic. Moses did not seem to mind. She thought of how warm she would feel if he took her in his arms. But, when he took a few steps toward her, she instinctively retreated.
He stopped still. “Now you know who I am. I haven’t hidden anything from you. My soul is as naked as my face.”
She kept retreating, until her back hit the rock. “What about me?” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
“Jethro’s daughter.”
She laughed, and held out her arms and hands, their color blending into the darkness. “With skin like this? Do you really think so?”
Before she could react, he imprisoned her fingers and drew her to him. “You are Zipporah the Cushite, the woman Moses saved from the hands of the shepherds at the well of Irmna. You are the woman who always knows where to find me, the woman who brought me food without knowing who I was.”