by Marek Halter
And so the days passed, full of promise. But just as the happiness of these days should have reached fulfillment, it came to an abrupt end.
UNABLE to cross the Sea of Reeds with their flock, they had to go around it. For five moons, they kept close to the desolate folds of the mountains, a land of dust and stones, devoid of shade. They moved ever westward, and still there was no sign of the River Iterou.
Moses became restless. The slowness of the days and the length of the nights made him irritable. His sons’ laughter and babbling no longer took the frown from his brow, no longer distracted him from his endless staring at the western horizon. Occasionally, Zipporah even sensed a certain weariness in his caresses.
Soon, not an evening went by without his being tormented with anxiety. The shepherds had never gone as far as Egypt—how could they be sure they were on the right road?
The shepherds would smile. “Have no fear, Moses. There’s only one route, and you could find it without us. You just have to go toward the setting sun.”
Then Moses would find other reasons to torment himself. Would his brother, Aaron, come to meet him, as Yahweh had promised? How would he recognize him? How would they get to Waset, the queen of cities? How would they get to see Pharaoh? Would the children of Israel accept him? Would they even believe him? Would the Lord Yahweh speak to him again?
“I build altars, as your father taught me,” he would say to Zipporah. “I call his name, I make offerings. But only the locusts answer me!”
“Trust in your God,” Zipporah would reply patiently. “What have you to fear? Isn’t the Everlasting the embodiment of will?”
Moses would nod, and laugh, and play with Gershom, drawing imaginary beasts for him in the sand. But his anxiety would soon return.
One day, he even threw down his staff, as he had done in Jethro’s domain, and again it turned into a snake. The handmaids screamed in terror, the shepherds reacted with laughter, and Gershom was full of admiration for a father capable of such wonders.
Then, one day, as they came over the top of a hill similar to hundreds of hills they had left behind them, the shepherds stopped dead and pointed. “Egypt! Egypt!” they cried.
Zipporah and Moses had already got to their feet, gripping the handrails of their baskets. There at their feet, as far as the eye could see, a line of green stretched across the ocher and gray immensity to the horizon, linking earth and heaven. Moses picked Gershom up and placed him on his shoulders. When his camel knelt to let him down, he swept Zipporah up in his arms and danced with her, his cheeks wet with tears. That evening, his offering to Yahweh was a long one, and the fire of their celebration blazed all night.
After another day’s walk, the River Iterou appeared, cutting across the green expanse like a snake without head or tail. Then they were on the plain, and there was more green than ever now, stretching from north to south. It was there, between the desert and the unimaginable opulence of the land of Pharaoh, that a group of men came out to meet their caravan in the early morning mist.
THEY were wearing wide beige tunics that covered their whole bodies down to their feet. Their faces were wrapped in turbans that left only their eyes visible, and they all held staffs in their hands. They came to a standstill in the path of the flock. The shepherds whistled, and the whole caravan came to a halt.
The newcomers pushed the sheep aside and walked up to where the camels stood. A smile was already hovering on Moses’ lips. Zipporah took Eliezer in her arms. Here at last is this unknown brother, she thought. She, too, was ready to smile, to share the joy that was about to overtake Moses. But a sudden twinge of fear made her hug Eliezer a little tighter and carefully adjust his colored turban before she forced her camel to kneel.
The newcomers walked briskly up to Moses’ camel. Moses climbed out of the basket.
“Are you my brother, Moses?” Zipporah heard a man’s voice ask. “Are you the one who has been sent back to us by the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob and Joseph?”
Moses was overcome. All he could do was open his arms and lift his staff.
“Yahweh, the God of the children of Israel, has visited me to announce this coming,” the man went on.
The accent was unfamiliar to Zipporah. But in the ease and authority of the voice, she could sense that this was a man accustomed to words and their power. By contrast, Moses’ tone was humble. “Yes, yes, of course,” he stammered, almost inaudibly. “That’s me! I’m Moses. How happy I am. A few days ago . . . Just a few days ago . . . Of course, I’m Moses!”
For a brief moment, they looked at each other, astonished as much by their respective appearances as by the reality of what was happening to them. The shepherds and handmaids who pressed around Zipporah peered at the strangers, searching for their eyes in the folds of their turbans. And the strangers stared back at them, uneasily, their hands gripping their staffs, as if still fearing a threat.
“And I am Aaron!” the man at last replied.
Aaron took hold of the end of his turban and skillfully unrolled it, revealing his face. It was a very thin but impressive face, with its dark, severe eyes, its red mouth, its thick beard. The brow was perhaps most like that of Moses, although it was higher and prematurely lined beneath the thick, curly hair. It was a face in which the flame of passion probably flared up quickly, a face that made Aaron seem older than Moses even though he was his junior by several years.
Moses at last gave full reign to his happiness and threw his arms around Aaron. The shepherds responded with cries of joy. Zipporah, with Eliezer resting against her chest, handed Gershom to Murti. But before they could reach Moses’ side, one of Aaron’s companions stepped forward and made the same movement as Aaron had made with his turban. A flood of heavy, silky hair was released. A woman! She seized Moses’ hands. “Oh Moses, Moses!” she exclaimed excitedly. “What a happy day this is for me. I am your sister, Miriam!”
Moses stood rooted to the spot, incapable of responding to this impulsive show of affection. Zipporah was astonished to discover the reason for his silence.
Miriam had a face of great and terrible beauty. Full, perfect lips, eyes shining with emotion and intelligence, smooth, gentle brow, delicate nostrils—there was not a feature that lacked elegance or charm, and, unlike Aaron, she still seemed in the first flush of youth, even though she was perhaps fifteen or sixteen years older than Moses. But when the wind lifted her heavy hair, a horrible, disfiguring mark was revealed. Down the whole of one side of her face was a thick, shiny purple scar. It was irregular, with raised edges, and wider between the temple and the eye, as if it had been beaten flat.
“I have a sister,” Moses stammered at last. “Miriam, my sister! I didn’t know I had a sister.” He burst into a great laugh, and pressed Miriam’s hands to his cheeks. “Of course, not so long ago, I didn’t know I had a brother, either!”
Zipporah was perhaps the only person present to sense how embarrassed Moses was beneath his effusiveness. Miriam and Aaron, though, were both beside themselves with happiness, and could not stop kissing him.
“It has come to pass, Moses, it has come to pass!” Aaron cried, raising his hands to heaven. “Yahweh came to me and said: ‘Get up and go to meet your brother Moses! Support him, for he will deliver the children of Israel from the yoke of Pharaoh.’ We abandoned everything and left. ‘You will find him in the desert,’ he said, ‘on the road to Meidoum.’ We came and waited for you on the edge of the desert on the road to Meidoum, and here you are!”
Moses laughed. “And I was so worried! I kept saying to myself: ‘Will my brother come? Will I recognize him, when I don’t even know his name?’ How stupid I was to be afraid! Zipporah mocked me, and she was right again.”
“Would you believe it?” Miriam cut in, as if she had not heard what he was saying. She could not stop looking at him. “Would you believe it? I used to carry you in my arms when you were a child!”
Moses laughed again, but he was surprised and somewhat disconcerted, and there wa
s a serious glint in his eyes. “When I was a child?”
Aaron, meanwhile, had turned to the woman behind Moses. When he saw her and Eliezer, he frowned and looked at them with eyes like coals. “Zipporah?” he asked, before Miriam could answer Moses.
“Yes, Zipporah!” Moses echoed, fervently. “Zipporah, my beloved, my bride of blood, may she be blessed. I owe her everything, even my life. This is my firstborn son, Gershom. And this is my second son, whom I have called Eliezer, ‘God is my support,’ because he came to me at the same time as the voice of the Lord Yahweh.”
Zipporah was smiling, but the only response was one of astonishment. Miriam, her gaze made even more penetrating by the terrible mark on her face, looked Zipporah up and down, as if able to see her naked under her clothes. Aaron blinked incredulously, and his mouth quivered. “Your wife?” he said, turning to Moses.
Miriam took a step forward and pointed in the direction of the handmaid Murti, as if she still hoped there was some mistake.
Moses laughed uneasily and put his arm around Zipporah and Eliezer. “The daughter of Jethro, sage and high priest of the kings of Midian. I owe him a lot, too. Everything you see here, brother—this flock, these mules and camels, even the tunic on my body and the sandals on my feet—I owe to Jethro’s generosity. These shepherds are all from his household. But the greatest gift he has given me is his daughter. I tell you this: Without Zipporah and Jethro, Moses wouldn’t be Moses!”
He had tried to put some warmth into this long speech, but the response from Aaron and Miriam was glacial. “So you were among the Midianites?” Aaron said. “And their priest is a Cushite?”
Moses laughed again, more openly this time, a laugh in which there was a touch of mockery as well as amusement.
Zipporah also laughed. “No, Aaron,” she said, trying to make her voice both gentle and polite. “Have no fear. My father Jethro is like all the Midianites, a son of Abraham and Keturah.”
Both brother and sister looked surprised, but they smiled politely at Zipporah. Their smiles forced her to lower her eyes, although she immediately regretted appearing too submissive.
Moses tightened his hand on her shoulder. In that pressure, she could sense his anxiety, the silent words that went from his body to hers: “Don’t take offense; they don’t know you yet. They have no idea. They’re from Egypt and are accustomed to Pharaoh’s whip. They’ll soon forget their mistrust.”
“It’s a long story,” he said out loud. “I’ll tell you all about it. But let’s be off; I’m anxious to reach Waset. We’ll talk more on the way. We have much to learn from each other.”
Aaron acquiesced happily enough, but on Miriam’s face, which had known such suffering, Zipporah saw disappointment and incomprehension. And a new suffering. The great joy of her reunion with her beloved brother, the brother she had been waiting for all these years, had already faded.
FOR thirty days they walked southward, along damp, narrow paths away from the main roads. Zipporah had never seen landscape like this. A vast, green expanse of fields, gardens, and woods, and, running through it, an enormous river, dotted with islands of dense foliage and covered with countless boats, their sails gliding, like giant butterflies, on the strong current.
Some of the gardens and palm groves were so huge and luxuriant, they could have provided food for the whole of one of Midian’s kingdoms. Zipporah discovered fruit, grains, and foliage she had never seen or tasted before. From time to time, between the cane hedges and the trunks of trees, figs and bays and palms loaded with dates, the walls of a city would appear. She would have liked to go closer, but each time Aaron and Miriam would move the caravan away in order not to arouse the curiosity of the inhabitants.
“There are spies everywhere,” they explained. “They’ll soon see you aren’t from Egypt. They’ll run and tell Pharaoh’s soldiers.”
More than once, Zipporah was tempted to say what she had been repeating throughout the journey: “Why be afraid, since you are acting according to the will of your God?” But she did not want to embarrass Moses, and so she remained silent. The fact was, she saw so little of her husband that to demand his attention might have exacerbated the already sensitive mood of his brother and sister.
Moses had told Aaron that they would have a lot to say to each other. In fact, they were inseparable. At first they spoke in the basket. But the swaying of the camel made Aaron feel sick, so then they rode side by side on mules, their voices droning from morning to night—especially Aaron’s dry, clear voice, for, after a few days, Zipporah noticed that it was he who was doing all the talking. Moses would listen and nod his head.
Whenever they pitched camp for the night, they would go off together to sacrifice to Yahweh. Then they would eat separately from the others, Aaron still talking endlessly. Moses would not get back to his tent until the middle of the night, when Zipporah was already asleep. Aaron would wake them in the first light of dawn, anxious to perform the morning offerings with Moses as early as possible, for fear of being caught unawares by Pharaoh’s soldiers or spies.
“Aaron is like your father,” Moses had said to Zipporah in the first days. “He wants to know everything about Yahweh’s appearance to me in the fire. I have to repeat to him a hundred times what he said to me. He also wants me to learn all about the history of the sons of Isaac and Jacob, especially what happened to Joseph. Yes, he’s really like Jethro. But he’s not as good a storyteller as you!”
He still found it amusing at that point. But soon, Zipporah detected an increasing sadness and anxiety.
“I thought I already knew something of our past,” he said one day, “but I realize now that I know very little. I also thought I knew about the sufferings of the Hebrews in this land, and Pharaoh’s wickedness and enmity, but I know nothing.”
She refrained from asking him any questions, and he did not ask for her help. In the evening, when the tents had been pitched, she would spend all her time with Gershom, Eliezer, and the handmaids. It was rare now for Moses to spare his sons so much as a glance. And, surprisingly, just as rare for his sister Miriam to take any notice of them.
Murti was the first to express surprise. “Isn’t it strange that Moses’ sister never comes to see your children? She did make an appearance the other day but since then she’s kept her distance.”
Zipporah remained impassive, pretending not to have heard.
“Is that typical of the women here?” Murti insisted, with a touch of resentment. “Keeping away from the children and the handmaids, even at night, and spending all day with her brothers and their companions, as if the rest us had the plague?”
Zipporah forced herself to smile. “We don’t know each other. We’re strangers. Don’t forget, we’ve had Moses with us for a long time now. Miriam is greedy for her brother. She wants to have her fill.”
“Well,” Murti squealed, “she’s certainly having that! If she could eat him, she would. I’m surprised she doesn’t complain about him sleeping in your tent!”
“Talking of jealousy,” Zipporah mocked, “could it be you’re jealous yourself?”
“Oh no,” Murti cried, sincerely. “I know I committed a sin, and you saved me from it, but now Moses is only my master and the man I admire. It’s you I love.”
“Things will be better soon,” Zipporah said, stroking the back of her neck. “Aaron won’t have so much to say, and Moses will spend a little more time with us.”
“Do you think so?” Murti cried, skillfully turning Eliezer over in order to rub his buttocks with a fine chalk powder. “The day Aaron doesn’t have much to say seems like a long way away.”
Zipporah laughed, although her lips were trembling. What was the point of revealing the pain gnawing at her heart before they even reached Waset? Murti’s words were all too true.
One evening soon after they had set out together, Miriam had approached Zipporah’s tent. With a veil concealing her right cheek, she had looked beautiful, although her smile was forced. Zipporah was just then
unwrapping Eliezer’s swaddling clothes. As she removed the last of them from the chubby little body, she had waited for Miriam’s reaction and had seen a look of genuine terror on her sister-in-law’s face.
Naked, Eliezer could not conceal his descent. Miriam had wanted to make sure that he was circumcised, but what she saw, more than anything else, was the color of his skin. In this respect, Eliezer, unlike Gershom, was more his mother’s son than his father’s. And the less he looked like a baby, the more his skin, although lighter than Zipporah’s, acquired a soft, luminous blackness with a touch of brown. He looked just like a little loaf of bread stuffed with herbs, the tenderhearted handmaids would say, so crusty you could eat him all day.
But Miriam was not tenderhearted, and she had no desire to eat Eliezer.
She did not even try to conceal her repulsion and anger. Without a word, she walked away, leaving her bitterness hanging in the air behind her.
Zipporah, in fact, had no need of words to understand. Her whole life had taught her the aversion and rejection her skin could arouse. Miriam, totally imbued with the knowledge and tradition her brother Aaron loved to talk about, could not for one moment have imagined that Moses, this Moses she seemed already to worship as a god, as Yahweh had foreseen, could have a son who was so unlike his own people.