by Marek Halter
He shook his head and raised an eyebrow, just as he used to in the old days when he reprimanded me for making a mistake in writing.
“Zipporah, you are finer and stronger than the resentment you feel. Don’t let the appearance of things and the pain in your heart make you believe that it is night when the sun has already risen. Look at it this way. What are the children of Israel today? Poor suffering devils, who for years have been regarded by Pharaoh as nothing more than pairs of feet and pairs of hands. They have no idea how much they know! Their hearts have been hardened by suffering. They go from one misfortune to another, like flies trapped in a pitcher who have no idea the neck of the pitcher is wide open. They see a strange woman and cry: ‘Oh, how horrible, she isn’t like us! Her skin is black, the Lord Yahweh has covered her with darkness, let’s stay away from her!’ It’s as if they saw an unknown flower and the first question they asked was ‘What’s its poison?’ Zipporah, my child, don’t forget that they have lost their way because Pharaoh’s whip and the hard labor they are condemned to perform killed the innocence they once had when they were in Yahweh’s heart. Miriam is right. The only reason some of them are still standing, still holding their heads high as men and women should, is because they cling to their own wounds, like a climber clinging to the rocks on Horeb’s mountain.” He paused to regain his breath, and put his hand on my thigh.
“Slaves are slaves in their hearts as much as in their bodies. Just as it will take them time to escape Pharaoh’s whip, it will take them time to get away from the knots he has tied in their minds. But the Everlasting knows all about time. They are on the march behind Moses. Do not doubt it, daughter, do not doubt it! And that young man, that Joshua, is right. You will see your husband again. Have faith, Zipporah, my sweet. Let Yahweh’s time give birth to life.”
I LISTENED to my father Jethro’s wisdom and I let time take its course. A strange time.
At first, all I could do was wait. Moons passed, and I watched Gershom and Eliezer grow. Hundreds of dawns when the name of Moses was on my lips, and my anxiety about him was in my offerings to the Lord Yahweh. And just as many nights when my desire for him, my hunger for him, would wake me in tears.
A year went by without any news from Egypt.
“Have the Akkadian merchants disappeared?” my father would grumble.
“The caravans have started going through Moab and Edom again,” my brother, Hobab, explained. “Those lands are more prosperous than ever. That’s the place to buy and sell.”
Nevertheless, at the height of summer, a caravan leader came to ask permission to draw water from the well of Irmna. Jethro lost no time in questioning him about his journey and his business. The man raised his arms to heaven and cried that he had just come from Egypt, where he had lost almost all his goods because of the chaos that reigned there.
“Oh!” my father exclaimed, with a big smile. “Tell us all about it.”
And so it was that we learned about the wonders the Lord Yahweh had brought to the land of Pharaoh through the hand of Moses.
“One minute, the River Iterou turns to blood,” the merchant said, rolling his eyes. “And then when it turns to water again, the fish are dead. Can you believe that? It’s the truth, though. And the truth stinks. Oh yes! What a stench! Even the sand of the desert stank of it! But that’s not all. No sooner is that pestilence over than the whole land is covered in frogs. They swell in the sun and explode with this terrible farting noise. Then it stinks again, really stinks! Wait, it’s not over! Gnats, hail, locusts—each new season brings another calamity down on Pharaoh’s head. How can anyone trade in such a land? When I ran away with what I had left, you couldn’t see the sun anymore. For three days, the whole country was covered with clouds. Three days of darkness! Can you believe it? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it myself!”
Jethro laughed. A laugh so big and so joyful that the merchant took offense.
When he caught his breath again, my father threw me a look, as if to say: “You see, daughter! I was right, wasn’t I?” As for me, I had to hold my hands tightly together to stop them from shaking.
Once again serious, Jethro turned back to the merchant. “What is Pharaoh doing to overcome these misfortunes?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing! As far as anyone knows, nothing at all. He’s told the people these things will pass. They’re just magic tricks and his priests will deal with them.”
“Oh!” Jethro said in surprise, with a sardonic grin, and winked at me, his beard shaking.
“Yes, I think like you,” the merchant snorted. “Maybe these magic tricks will pass, but the way things are going, Pharaoh is in danger of passing with them!”
“And does anyone know why these things are happening? There’s a reason for ordinary things. There must also be a reason for extraordinary ones.”
“Oh, you hear all kinds of theories. Some say it’s because Pharaoh’s god, Amon, is angry at him for rising up against the former Pharaoh, his wife and aunt, who was protected by Amon. Others say it’s because of the slaves. But, I ask you, how could slaves perform such wonders? All the slaves do is stamp mud to make bricks.”
The next day, Jethro summoned the household beneath his canopy and told them of the wonders taking place in Egypt. Moses’ name was again on everyone’s lips, and I was the center of attention.
“Oh, how proud and happy you must be to be Moses’ wife and the mother of his sons!”
I was, yes, I was. And all the sadder to be separated from him by such a long distance.
Other caravans came. Now the merchants were fleeing Egypt, and each one who passed rolled his eyes in terror and told of new wonders.
“The slaves have found themselves a leader who’s almost a god. His name is Moses, and he’s the one who’s inflicting these wounds on Pharaoh, because he wants to lead all the children of Israel out of Egypt.”
All over Midian, people were starting to remember that this Moses had been welcomed to Jethro’s house and had become his son-in-law, the husband of Jethro’s Cushite daughter. Visitors flocked to hear news of Egypt from Jethro’s own mouth. Each time, my father sent for Gershom and Eliezer and made them sit on the cushions beside him.
“These are my grandchildren, the sons of Moses and my daughter Zipporah. It is good for them to hear and learn what their father is accomplishing over there beyond the sea.”
And he would launch again into the story of the river of blood, the gnats, the hail, the boils, the darkness . . . He would take his own staff, brandish it, and bring it down between the cushions.
“Your father, Moses, is hearing the voice of Yahweh. And this is what it says: ‘Go to Pharaoh and tell him: Be just, king of Egypt. Free the slaves from their labor, allow them to leave your land.’ Pharaoh laughs. His beardless mouth curls wickedly. He sits on his gold throne, with snakes on his head, his eyes dark with scorn. ‘No!’ he says to Moses. ‘Make bricks for me, you slave rabble.’ Then Moses points his staff, like this, at the dust. And suddenly, the wind rises. Without warning. In the north, in the south, whoosh! A great, icy, rasping wind! Pharaoh runs out onto the terrace of his magnificent garden and sees the clouds massing. The thunder crashes. Huge lightning flashes split the sky, and the hail falls and falls until it covers the whole of Pharaoh’s green land.”
“What’s hail, Grandfather?” my son Gershom would ask, delighted to be scared.
And we would all laugh and feel happy. Like Eliezer and Gershom, we all wanted to be told over and over again about the wonders my husband was performing.
“Soon,” everyone said to me, “you will be a queen just like Orma. Greater even than her.”
To which I would reply: “Moses is neither a king nor a prince. To his people, Moses is the voice of their God. And I am here.”
One day, however, Eliezer, who was beginning to know how to use words, asked: “What’s my father, Moses, like? Is he all old and white like you, Grandfather? Or is he like Mummy, all black and with no beard?
”
The handmaids laughed until they cried. I cried without laughing.
Jethro had been right. Yahweh’s time was doing its work. Moses was accomplishing his task. But the time was passing slowly. Moses had been gone so long, my son had forgotten his face.
With all the wonders Moses was performing, there was one I did not think would ever come to pass: that we would finally be reunited. That I would once again kiss his neck as I had loved to do. That I would see him clasp his sons to his breast.
AT the end of the following winter, a piece of news reached us that was more remarkable than any that had gone before.
The slaves had finally set out from Egypt. They had left the marshes and the villages. Thousands and thousands of them. Men and women of all ages, the strong and the weak, all the children of Israel! The other slaves, too, those captured in wars of conquest. Pharaoh’s building sites were now as silent as if time had stood still.
Moses had led these thousands of people to the Sea of Reeds, and Thutmose had set off in pursuit with his army. By the time they had reached the shore, a storm was gathering and the spears of Pharaoh’s soldiers could already be seen in the valleys leading to the sea. Moses had plunged his staff into the waves.
The waters had opened before him. The Sea of Reeds had split in two, that’s what had happened! The waves stopped, and the seabed became a path to the opposite shore!
The thousands and thousands of slaves who were following Moses rushed in. When they reached the other side, they saw the waves join again and engulf Pharaoh’s war chariots. They were free!
For the first time in many years, I thought of my dream. I saw the water opening before me, the boat plunging between the huge liquid walls. I saw the cliffs of water threatening to join together, like the edges of a wound, and swallow me up.
And there, on the dried-up seabed, I saw a man holding out his arms to me and giving me back the breath that the waves were trying to take from me. Moses, although I did not yet know it was Moses.
The man the Lord Yahweh would appoint to give back the breath of freedom to his people.
My father Jethro was watching me. He saw the look in my eyes, my trembling body, my hands kneading my sons’ shoulders. He guessed my thoughts.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he said softly. “They’re on their way. Yahweh is moving time on. We’ll have more news soon. A new story is beginning.”
Tears welled from his eyes, rolled down through his wrinkles, and disappeared in his beard.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll go to the sea. I want to see if anything about it has changed.”
But before reaching the cliffs, where I had so many memories, we saw a man wrapped in a heavy woolen coat made even thicker by dust, his face masked by a hood pulled down over his brow, sitting on an exhausted ass that he was kicking to make it move. He looked like a forlorn brigand. But when he saw me with Gershom and Eliezer, the man jumped down from the ass and rushed to me.
“Zipporah!” His hood fell back. “Zipporah!”
He was shouting and waving his arms. I recognized the voice before the face, which had grown thin, the beard matted with dust and sea spray.
“Joshua! Joshua!”
He laughed and hugged me. It was like an anticipation of Moses’ body, and it made me tremble.
The Days of Blood and Turmoil
And so began the days of blood and turmoil.
Joshua told us that Moses and his multitude had pitched their tents in a desert plain called Rephidim, just five days’ walk from Jethro’s domain.
“Less, if you run,” he said, pointing to the folds in Horeb’s mountain, which were almost white in the mist that shrouded the west.
I had imagined Moses a long way away and yet he was so close!
“I’ve come to fetch you,” Joshua went on. “Zipporah and you, too, Jethro. Moses needs you. His mother, Yokeved, is dead. He’s at the end of his tether. They’re all out of their minds. Nothing’s going right: They quarrel, they grumble, they’re hungry and thirsty, they have no pasture for the animals . . . If it isn’t hunger and thirst they complain about, then it’s the fact that they’re tired of putting up and taking down the tents. The desert is too empty for them, the rocks too hot, and the land of milk and honey too far! It’s as if they’ve brought the chaos of Egypt along with then. The other day, one man even complained they were no longer under the whip of Pharaoh. ‘At least there, we had food and drink and shade!’ he said. If I hadn’t held him back, Moses would have cracked the man’s skull with his staff. ‘What shall I do with all of you? I lead you out of Egypt, and now you all look as if you want to stone me to death!’ He was shouting so much, you could have heard him from here. Apart from that, Aaron and Miriam want to be in charge of everything. Yahweh speaks to Moses and counsels him. But Aaron tells him that he doesn’t understand the meaning of these counsels. He quarrels with everything and about everything. This confusion only increases everyone’s discontent. And now it seems the Amalekites are sending an army against us! And we have no weapons. Moses said to me: ‘Run to Jethro. He’ll take you to see the armorers.’”
Jethro nodded. His mind was made up, I knew.
“We’ll leave at dawn. Get some rest, Joshua. My son, Hobab, will go to the armorers. Their leader, Ewi-Tsour, will supply you with iron swords.” He winked at me. “Anything Zipporah asks him, he’ll supply double if he can. Meanwhile, Sicheved will divide my flocks in two. He’ll keep half here, and take care of my house, and the other half we’ll take to Moses.”
If I could, I would have set off immediately.
I spoke to Gershom and Eliezer. “We’re going to see your father, Moses, again.”
“Will he do wonders for us with his staff?”
Laughing with happiness, I assured them he would.
MAY the Everlasting forgive me, but Joshua was right: His people had brought the chaos of Egypt with them when they crossed the Sea of Reeds!
There were tents as far as the eye could see, and smoke, and a constant din, and rubbish stinking in the sun, and a swarming multitude of people and animals, thousands of faces—somber old men, sad children, anxious women, people dying, others being born. A multitude, yes—a multitude that covered the fields of dry grass on the edge of the desert and seemed lost somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow. By the time we arrived, the noise, already shattering to our ears, had been made even louder by the battle with the Amalekites, which had begun the day before on the northern edge of the camp.
It was there that I saw Moses again. I was so astonished, I remained rooted to the spot. Astonished and perhaps even terrified.
He was standing on a big, flat rock overlooking the fray. The shields and spears of the Amalekites glinted in the sun. The only weapons we could see in the hands of Yahweh’s fighters were sticks and stones. The ground was strewn with corpses. Moses, up there on his rock, was raising his arms to heaven and brandishing his staff.
As I stood there speechless, Jethro pointed him out to the children. “Look, there’s your father. The man over there, with his arms in the air, that’s Moses.”
Eliezer, frightened by everything he saw around him, gripped Gershom’s arm with both hands.
“Why does he have his hands in the air like that?” Gershom asked.
We were to find out later: Whenever Moses put his arms down, the Amalekites were victorious; whenever he kept them up, the Amalekites were routed.
“Look at Hobab and Joshua!” Gershom cried.
They were descending the slope toward the battle, followed by Ewi-Tsour and his armorers, who had consented to come with us. We heard the cries that greeted them. The mules were unloaded in a trice, and the iron swords shone in the hands of the Hebrews.
I saw Aaron climb onto the rock to support Moses’ right arm. Another man, whom I didn’t know, did the same with his left arm.
The battle went on until evening.
So it was that on the day of my return I did not get a chance to see my husband.<
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By the time night fell, Joshua was victorious, and when he returned to the camp, he was acclaimed with songs.
Scented with amber and adorned with jewels, I dressed in my most beautiful tunic. Holding my two sons close, I waited for Moses outside the newly pitched tent. My heart was pounding so loudly, I was afraid everyone could hear it.
As Moses was late, busy thanking Yahweh along with Aaron, hundreds passed before us. They wanted to make sure of the rumor that had already spread from one end of the camp to the other, even more swiftly than the announcement of the victory over the Amalekites: Moses’ wife was back.
And yes, there was a stranger, as black of skin as they had said. A daughter of Cush.
At last we heard cries, trumpets, ram’s horns, drums, singing. My sons knew what that meant. “Here’s our father, Moses!” they cried, leaping up and down. “Here he is!”
A serried mass of people was climbing toward us. The crowd parted.
Lord Yahweh, what had you done to my husband?
He was walking forward, tottering like an old man. Older, it seemed, than my father Jethro. Supported by Aaron and Miriam, both of them upright and strong, the gleam of victory in their eyes.
Gershom and Eliezer were stunned. I felt a clamminess in my throat, and a shiver went down my back.
My husband, my beloved. My Moses.
He looked so tired, so exhausted.
“What have they done to you?” I murmured. “What have they done to you? How is this possible?”
“Is that my father?” Gershom said.