A large, pale moth now fluttered into the room. It made for the lamp flame, circling and bobbing. I shooed it away, jumped up, watched it fly back into the night. Then I paced back and forth, reflecting.
Babak was changed. No longer did the sight of a crippled bird cause him to sob inconsolably. Now he would pick it up and try to feed it. No longer did he seem to absorb the illnesses and injuries of others into himself. He was still a kindly boy—a thoughtful boy. There was a tenderness about him, but the boundaries between himself and others seemed firmer, more secure.
Yet he did have nightmares now—dreams of monsters, dreams of falling, dreams of burning fire. Leah had told me that all of her children had been visited by such dreams. Ordinary dreams.
Divining dreams were a grand and precious gift, like the gifts the Magi had brought to Bethlehem. But the freedom to dream ordinary dreams, dreams that were truly one’s own—perhaps this was more precious still.
Footsteps on the stairs. I whirled round. It was Leah. “Levi wishes to speak with you,” she said. “Go.”
I ran.
Giv was there, sitting cross-legged on a woven mat beside Levi. Two lamps on bushels cast flickering shadows across the room. The men greeted me, then Levi nodded to Giv.
Giv wasted no time, but went straight to what he had to say. “When I saw that you and Babak were not in Melchior’s caravan, I went back and searched for you along the road to Bethlehem and in Bethlehem itself. But I could not find you. So I returned with Melchior, journeyed up through Damascus and then Palmyra on the way back home. I searched for your kinsmen there.” He hesitated. “I heard that they had moved on from Palmyra, and no one seemed to know where.”
I swallowed, nodded. The fines houses and stately pillars of Palmyra had long ago faded from my imagination.
“Mitra,” Giv said, and his voice was grave. “I did hear this: Your father, your mother, and your brother Suren are all dead. Killed by Phraates’ men.”
There was a strange, empty stillness inside me. “I know,” I said.
Levi and Giv exchanged a glance.
“It was the king’s Eyes and Ears who found Suren,” Giv said. “Something he told them …” He cleared his throat.
I did not want to hear this, but I knew I must.
“Under torture, most like,” he said gently. “Something must have sent them searching for Babak.”
I bowed my head, a deep, familiar sadness dragging at me. I had known for some time what must have befallen Suren. I would always have to live with what I’d done to him.
Yet still …
It was also true, as Levi had said when I poured out my shameful story to him one night … It was also true that if I had done nothing, we all would have lived out the remainder of our lives in the City of the Dead.
“But these months past,” Giv went on, “there have been rumors of fresh uprisings against Phraates. There are new enemies for the Eyes and Ears to ferret out, and I do not think they will spend much time searching for a boy of six years, last seen leaving Babylon, whose kinsmen are all dead or scattered.”
So then, might we go back to Persia? The question leaped into my mind, but I didn’t ask it aloud. It might seem ungrateful to Levi. Besides, we had no home there anymore, no kin.
“Melchior released me,” Giv said.
I straightened, alert.
“You would hardly know him now,” he continued. “He released most of his other servants as well. He prays to the Wise God without end and has given away the greater part of his possessions to the poor. Some say he has become feeble-minded; others say bedeviled. And yet he seems not so to me. Surely he is not now such a vainglorious man as he once was. It might be that he is well on his way to becoming … wise.
“After he let me go, I journeyed toward Bethlehem to see again if I could find you. I happened upon Ardalan and his family in a caravansary just west of Ecbatana. And they, too, were on their way—to find you.”
Koosha. It came to me with sudden certainty.
“To find me?” I repeated. I must have sounded simple.
“Yes. You,” Giv said, “and Babak as well. It is the custom of the men of their tribe to find wives outside the village. This Koosha is a very resolute young man, and he has made his choice.”
Koosha!
They all regarded me, seemed to wait for me to speak. I opened my mouth, but no words issued forth. I swallowed.
“Mitra.” Levi spoke to me in his own tongue. His voice was gentle. “How do you find this Koosha?”
“I … I do not know him well,” I said, switching back to Levi’s language. “But …”
I recalled his patient way with Babak, and that night when he told of his village. And then later, how he had looked at me—had seen me. You are entirely yourself, he had said, no matter how you hide.
“But you do know Giv,” Levi was saying. “Do you trust him?”
Giv was not my kinsman. But after all we had been through together … “Yes,” I said.
“Giv speaks well of Koosha, and of his father and his uncle. Though …” Levi turned to Giv, addressed him in Persian. “How well do you know Koosha and his kin?”
“Not well,” Giv admitted. “But I am a fair judge of character, and I deem they are good men. I am thinking perhaps I will travel with them for a while. They have said I would be welcome.”
“Hmm.” Levi rubbed at his beard, close cropped but beginning to curl. “Mitra.” He spoke again in his own tongue. “Though we are fond of you and Babak, we would not hold you here against your will. And yet to send you off to live with strangers … it likes me not. And yet again, I have often thought you missed your own people, your own land. I have need of your help, Mitra, if I am to decide what is best for you. What say you?”
This had come upon me all in a rush; my mind kicked up hopes and fears as a caravan kicks up dust. “I would like,” I said in Persian, “a day or so. To think.”
Levi nodded. “This is a weighty matter. That seems wise.”
I returned to our room. The day’s events still roiled about in my mind; I could not sleep. I stole out onto the gallery, climbed the stairs to the roof. It was cool now, although summer was coming on, and the night air lacked the bite it had had of late. I lay on my back and gazed up at the stars, large and moist and bright.
I thought about our journey, born of dreams and stars. I remembered our home in Susa and our chamber in the City of the Dead. I thought about Palmyra, of the home I had yearned to find there.
But there was no home in Palmyra for us. Our kinsmen … All scattered, Giv had said. Or dead.
Only Babak and I were left.
Babak. For the thousandth time I wondered about that dream he’d had of the leper, about the cloth in the toe of his boot. Had Babak’s illness healed of itself, as Balthazaar had said might happen? Or had it been the dream?
Whose dream?
The dream of an infant king? Or …
I sighed, rose, dusted myself off. I’d leave that to the wise men to answer. Let them decipher the mysteries of God’s alphabet writ across the heavens! Babak was well—to me, that was what truly mattered.
And yet I had a decision to make.
I sighed again, and headed back down to my pallet.
In time, I slept.
And dreamed.
I am walking up a path toward a village in the mountains. A clear brook gurgles its way among the red mudbrick houses, and late-summer sunlight lies warm upon my shoulder. Around the edges of the village I see groves of almond and apricot and pomegranate trees; flat, round baskets of fruit lie drying on the rooftops. A breeze begins to stir, and the soughing of the willows near the brook, and of the trees in the grove that surrounds us, makes music lovelier than that of any lute. As I watch, the people of the village come out in twos and threes upon their terraces; they look down and smile at me. Friends. Beloved friends. And here is Koosha, walking down the village road toward me with Babak there beside him. Babak runs to me, takes my hand, a
nd tugs me toward Koosha.
I stop for a moment, inhale a deep, sweet breath of mountain air, try to take in the whole of the scene before me.
It looks like nothing so much as home.
* A NOTE from the AUTHOR *
The story of the Magi’s journey to Bethlehem has fascinated me ever since I was a child. These three exotic figures showed up once a year in our church Christmas pageant, wreathed in clouds of incense and wearing the best costumes in the show. There was something romantic and mysterious about them. Where did they come from? Were they wise men, kings, or both? How long had their journey taken? Did the star lead them the whole way? What did they expect to find? Each December the Magi materialized again out of the candlelit darkness … and disappeared all too soon.
In Alphabet of Dreams I have approached the Magi’s story as a writer of fiction. I have tried to stay as true as possible to the story told in the Gospel according to Matthew, but to fill in with research and imagination the answers to some of my childhood questions.
As I wrote and thought about the story, many other questions occurred to me. I’ll share some of them here, as well as others that might occur to readers.
Is the story of the journey of the Magi based upon well-known historical fact?
Of the books of the Bible chronicling Jesus’s life, only two—Matthew and Luke—tell of Jesus’s birth, and only one—Matthew—mentions the Magi. As far as I know, there are no other accounts of the Magi’s journey to Bethlehem from anyone writing at or near the time of Jesus. But the historical record of such events during this time is sketchy, to say the least.
Matthew’s story is a religious one, and people look at religious stories in different ways. Some accept them literally, on faith. Others believe that the Bible contains folklore, parable, and fiction as well as history.
Which of these is the story of the Magi? There seems to be no independent historical proof that the Magi’s journey either did or didn’t happen. To my mind, each reader is free to decide for himself.
And the massacre of the innocents? Did that really happen?
Although the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote much about the last years of Herod the Great, recounting many of his terrible deeds, he never told of this event. To my knowledge there is no other historical evidence of a massacre of children in Bethlehem, nor does it appear elsewhere in the New Testament.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the massacre of the innocents is an integral part of Matthew’s story of the Magi.
What about the other characters in the book? Which ones actually existed?
Only the kings—Phraates and Herod. There are allusions to actual kings of ancient Persia—Cyrus, Darius, and Mithradates. The rest, I made up.
What was the star of Bethlehem?
Some people believe it was a miraculous occurrence, unconnected with ordinary celestial events. Others suggest that it may have been something governed by the known laws of the universe: a comet, the aurora borealis, a nova or supernova explosion, the occultation of a planet or star by another body, or a conjunction—two planets coming so close together that they appear to the naked eye to be a single larger and brighter star.
I am neither an astronomer, an astrologer, a theologian, nor a historian. So I’m not qualified to choose knowledgeably among the many theories put forth and passionately defended by experts in these fields. Besides, to be honest, while I find the issue of identifying the precise nature of the star to be interesting, I don’t think it’s critical for my purposes here. I am more concerned with finding meaning, in human terms, in the story of the Magi’s journey. And, of course, with its possibilities for fiction.
I liked the idea of a real celestial event, so I picked a theory that seemed fascinating, complex, and compatible with my ideas for the book. This theory, which has been around a long time, is set forth and further developed by P. A. H. Seymour in The Birth of Christ: Exploding the Myth.
Basically, according to Seymour, the star of Bethlehem was in fact a conjunction of two planets—Jupiter and Saturn—in 7 B.C. To the naked eye the two planets would have appeared as a single, bright star. Definitely bright enough to notice, but not terribly alarming or remarkable if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Jupiter’s rising, says Seymour, was associated in ancient times with the birth of a king or leader. Saturn was considered to be the protector of the Jews. The conjunction took place in the constellation of Pisces, and Jerusalem, according to Seymour, was thought to be under the influence of Pisces.
So, taking this all together, we have: the birth of a Jewish king or leader, somewhere near Jerusalem. For most of their journey the Magi wouldn’t literally have had to “follow the star.” They could have followed where the “star” indicated.
What would have made this conjunction even more significant to the ancients, according to Seymour, was that it didn’t happen just once. It was what’s known as a triple conjunction; in other words, this same conjunction occurred three times within a single year. Seymour suggests that the Magi may actually have seen the first conjunction, which occurred on May 27. Then, with their considerable knowledge of mathematical astronomy, they may have been able to predict the other two: October 6 and December 1.
I liked this idea! So, in Alphabet of Dreams the Magi set out in early fall, their curiosity piqued, perhaps, by their having witnessed the first conjunction. As in Matthew’s story, they miss the actual birth of Jesus—which Seymour claims, for reasons too complicated to go into here, took place on September 15. Matthew never makes clear exactly how late his Magi were; my Magi miss the birth by a number of weeks.
For much of the Magi’s journey Jupiter and Saturn would have appeared to be very close to each other in the nighttime sky. In fact, for a great deal of that time the two planets would have been so near as to look, to the naked eye, like a single star.
Jim Todd, manager of the Murdock Planetarium at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, kindly gave me a computer disk with a schematic of ancient skies, based upon a computer modeling. From the vantage point of Jerusalem on September 15, 7 B.C., Jupiter and Saturn do indeed appear as a single star, the brightest object in the sky.
Incidentally, December 25 is never mentioned in the Bible as the date of Jesus’s birth; nor is the year, nor even the time of year in which he was born. December 25 was not established as Jesus’s official birthday until much later, perhaps the third century A.D.
Who might the Wise Men have been?
Matthew never says how many Wise Men there were, nor from whence they came, other than “from the east.” Over the centuries much legend, speculation, and embroidery has attached itself to these mysterious figures. The second-century theologian Tertullian claimed the Magi were “almost kings,” and, with the passing of several centuries, belief in their kingship became prevalent. According to J. Ross Wagner of the Princeton Theological Seminary, a contributing source of the tradition that the Wise Men were kings was a “widespread ancient Christian reading of Isaiah 60:1–6 as a prophesy of the Messiah’s birth.” Although early accounts of the Wise Men’s numbers ranged from as high as fourteen to as low as two, the third-century theologian Origen opined that there were three of them—presumably because of the three gifts mentioned by Matthew—and that number seems to have stuck. By the sixth century they had acquired names: Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior, and Balthazaar. In the Middle Ages they were regarded as saints; supposedly their relics were removed to Cologne Cathedral in A.D. 1162. Alternatively, Marco Polo claimed they were buried in Saveh, Iran.
As to precisely where in “the east” they hailed from, some scholars and theologians have thought perhaps it was Arabia or the Syrian Desert, because gold and frankincense were associated with desert camel trains from Arabia. Others have assumed that the Wise Men must have been from Babylon, because the Babylonians, or Chaldeans, were well known for their expertise in astronomy and astrology. Still others, taking their cue from magoi—the word used for
the Wise Men in the early, Greek version of Matthew’s Gospel—make the case for a Persian origin.
Again, I am no scholar. But ever since writing Shadow Spinner I have been fascinated with Persian (Iranian) history. Also, the idea of a boy with the ability to dream for others came from a book by an Iranian scholar and friend—Abbas Milani’s Tales of Two Cities. So I liked the idea of Persian magoi.
According to many historians, the magoi—or, as we spell the word in English today, “Magi,”—were probably members of an ancient Persian priestly caste. Although the original Magi were priests of an older, Indo-Iranian religion, over time they became identified with Zoroastrianism.
During the reign of the emperor Justinian, mosaics on the basilica at Bethlehem showed the Magi in Persian dress: trousers, belted tunics with full sleeves, and pointed caps. In A.D. 614 the Persian army overran Palestine, destroying many churches. But, evidently because of the mosaics depicting their countrymen, they spared the Bethlehem church.
In time the word “Magi” (singular: “Magus”) became more broadly applied—not just to a Persian caste or Zoroastrians, but generally to people who were skilled in various kinds of secret lore and magic, including astrology and the reading of dreams. Indeed, the word “Magi” is at the root of our words “magic” and “magician.” However, in this book I’ve kept to a narrower interpretation, that of Persian Zoroastrian priests.
For an excellent discussion of the Magi, the star, and other related matters, see The Birth of the Messiah, by Raymond E. Brown.
What religious beliefs might the Magi—and other characters—have held at that time?
There is some scholarly disagreement about the prevalence of actual Zoroastrianism in Persia’s Parthian era. Most agree that, while Zoroastrianism was evolving, Persia seems to have had a mixture of religious beliefs and practices during the time of this story. In writing this book I’ve imagined that the Magi practiced a form of Parthian-era Zoroastrianism. But for the other characters religion is much less rigorous and pure, and mingles aspects of Zoroastrianism with local, Indo-Iranian, and/or Greek deities and practices.
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