Sarah: A Novel

by Marek Halter

  She was suddenly startled by a cry: “Child, child!” An old woman sat in a doorway, smiling—or grinning—at her, her face nothing but wrinkles, her eyes almost invisible, her lack of teeth revealing a disgustingly pink tongue. She wagged a crooked finger at Sarai, beckoning her to come closer.

  “Herbs, my child, herbs! Do you want any of my herbs?”

  A dozen small baskets were lined up along the wall beside her, crammed with leaves, seeds of all colors, stones, crystals of gum. Sarai wanted to run away, but the old woman’s eyes held her back.

  “Herbs or something else? Come here, child, don’t be afraid!”

  Her voice became softer. There was even a touch of kindness in it. Were luck and the gods smiling on her? Sarah wondered. Perhaps the old woman could find her shelter for the night? What could a woman like her fear? But her next question froze Sarai’s blood.

  “Do you need something, goddess? Anything you want, Kani Alk-Nàa can sell it to you . . .”

  Why did the woman call her “goddess”? Had she guessed she was from the royal city? Or was she simply mocking her? Feigning indifference, Sarai bent over the baskets. They not only contained herbs and seeds, but animal skeletons, fetuses, skulls, dried entrails, and the gods knew what else! She was outside the lair of a witch, a kassaptu!

  The old woman noticed her expression of disgust and let out a piercing laugh. “You’re a long way from home, goddess! Make sure the demons of the night don’t eat you!”

  Sarai straightened up, fear in her belly, and ran away.

  Behind her, the high walls of Ur towered like mountains, their tops bathed in the ocher light of dusk: impossible to get back inside now until dawn. Above the walls, only the upper terraces of the ziggurat were visible, the dark crown of the gardens, the Sublime Bedchamber with its lapis lazuli reflecting the sun like a daytime star. There was no more beautiful sight in all the world.

  Sarai ran without looking back, thinking of her garden, her new bedchamber, the softness of her bed. She slowed down. Night was coming on fast, like the sea coming to drown the shore.

  She knew that if she had stayed in her father’s palace, she would by now be with a husband who didn’t care about her and would be in a hurry to get it over with, and there would be nothing beautiful about her chamber or her bed. Yet tears welled up in her eyes. She felt a good deal less brave now.

  “MAKE sure the demons of the night don’t eat you!” the old woman had cried. The warning still echoed in Sarai’s ears. The sun was disappearing beneath the rim of the world. She was finding it increasingly difficult to keep going. Her legs felt heavy. She had lost her beautiful kid sandals in the mud. Water slapped beneath her bare feet. The bottom of her tunic was soaked. Bulrushes struck her arms and shoulders.

  She was wading along the riverbank without knowing how she had got there. She had followed an alley; the houses had become less frequent. She had hurried straight on, exhausted, too terrified to stop, still hoping to find something—a hut made out of bulrushes, a boat, a tree trunk, a hole in the ground—anything that could protect her. The cold and the night were pressing against the back of her neck.

  Suddenly, her foot hit something hard. She felt a blow against her thigh, thought of the demons, and screamed in terror. Headfirst, she tipped over in the water. Her fingers sank into the mud. The torn fabric of her toga almost strangled her. Sarai pushed herself up until she was sitting, ready to face the most horrible of deaths.

  But what she saw, standing outlined in the dim light, was not a monster but a man.

  Perhaps not even a man: a boy. A head crowned by a halo of curly hair, a long, thin, but muscular body, naked but for a raw linen loincloth, legs black with mud up to the knees. In his left hand he carried a kind of cylindrical wicker basket, with animals moving about inside it. Sarai could barely make out his features. Only the gleam in his eyes as he stared at her.

  He made a furious gesture with his arm, pointed at the river, and said something in a language she did not understand. Then he stopped speaking and took another, closer look at her.

  She wiped the mud from her cheeks with her hand. Her tunic was torn, so she knelt in the water, covered herself as best she could with the soaked cloth, then finally stood up.

  The boy was a head taller than her. He was watching her calmly, staring at her braids without a smile although she must have been a horrible sight.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, in her language this time. There was no harshness in his voice, only surprise and curiosity.

  With the back of her wrist, Sarai again wiped her cheeks and eyelids. “What about you?” she asked in return.

  He raised his basket and shook it. Inside it, two frogs with swollen necks blinked. Now she could see his face clearly, a narrow face with a high forehead and very arched eyebrows that almost met above a big curved nose. The slightly greenish brown of his eyes was translucent in the last light of day. His checks were covered with a sparse down. He had beautiful lips—big, full, shaped like wings—a prominent chin, and a thin neck. The skin between his shoulder blades was damp.

  “I was fishing,” he said with a smile, and glanced at the river, which seemed to grow bigger as the night deepened. “It’s the best time for frogs and crayfish. If nobody steps on you and screams.”

  Sarai was sure of it now: He was a mar.Tu. One of those Amorites from the borders of the world, where the sun disappeared. A man who worshiped lesser gods and was never allowed to set foot in the royal city.

  She shivered, the skin on her arms bristling in the cold. The wind rose, making the wet cloth cling to her body. Without knowing why, she felt a desire to tell the truth, to let this boy know who she was.

  “My name is Sarai,” she said, in a low, frail voice, hardly pausing to take a breath. “My father, Ichbi Sum-Usur, is a lord of Ur. Today was the day a man was supposed to take me as his wife. He, too, is a lord of Ur. But when he looked at me, I knew I would never be able to live with him, in the same bed and the same chamber. I knew I would rather die than feel his hands on me. I thought I could hide in my house. But it wasn’t possible. The handmaid who takes care of me knows all my hiding places. I wanted to throw myself from a wall and break my legs. I wasn’t brave enough. I ran away. Now my father probably thinks his daughter is dead . . .”

  The boy listened, looking now at her mouth, now at her braids. When she had stopped speaking, he said nothing at first. The darkness of the night seemed to rush toward them, transforming them into mere silhouettes under the countless stars.

  “My name is Abram, son of Terah,” he said at last. “I am a mar.Tu. Our tents are five or six ùs farther north. You mustn’t stay here, you’ll catch cold.”

  As he took a step toward her, she heard the noise of the water and jumped. He held out his hand. Palm to palm, he squeezed her hand with his own warm, slightly rough hand.

  Firmly, but with a strange gentleness, he drew her after him. His gentleness made Sarai’s whole body feel iridescent, from her thighs to deep in her chest.

  “We have to find you a dry place, and make a fire,” he said, and his words brought tears of gratitude to her eyes. “The nights are cold at this time of the year. I don’t suppose you know where to go. It isn’t every day that the daughters of the lords of Ur get lost in the bulrushes by the river. I could take you to my father’s tent. But he’d think I was bringing him a bride, and my brothers would be jealous. I’m not the eldest. Never mind, we’ll find somewhere else.”

  THE “somewhere” was just a sandy hillock. But the sand was warm and the hillock offered protection from the wind.

  Abram seemed to be able to see in the dark. It did not take him long to collect some dry reeds and dead junipers, and he lit a fire by rubbing lichens and juniper twigs skillfully between his palms. The sight of the flames warmed Sarai just as much as their heat.

  Abram continued to bustle about, constantly disappearing and coming back with more armfuls of reeds and dry shrubs. When there were enough of them, h
e crouched down without a word.

  Now they could see each other much better. But as soon as their eyes met, they looked away again, embarrassed. For a long time they said nothing, warming themselves at the flames and watching the swirling sparks fly upward.

  Sarai estimated that the young mar.Tu was about the same age as Kiddin. Probably not so strong, she thought, used more to running than fighting, her brother’s favorite exercise. His hair made him look quite different, less noble, less proud, but she liked that.

  Suddenly, Abram stood up, jolting the exhausted Sarai out of her torpor. “I’m going to the tents,” he said.

  Sarai leaped to her feet. Abram laughed at the sight of her terrified face. He picked up his wicker basket and shook the frogs.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just going to find something to eat. I’m hungry, and you must be, too. What I’ve caught here isn’t enough to feed us.”

  As Sarai was sitting down again, annoyed at having shown fear, he smiled, mockingly. “Are you able to put wood on the fire?”

  She merely shrugged.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  He examined the sky for a moment. The moon was already up. Sarai noted that he often looked up at the sky, as if he were looking for traces of the sun in the stars. Then he took a few steps, and vanished into the night. All Sarai could hear now was the wind in the bulrushes, the lapping of the river, and, far in the distance, from the lower city, the barking of dogs.

  She was once more stricken with fear. The boy could easily leave her here. The fire would attract the demons. She peered into the darkness, thinking she might see a sniggering crowd. But then her pride regained the upper hand. She was ashamed of herself. She must stop being afraid. She only feared what she did not know. Tonight, everything was completely unknown. The night, the fire, the river, the sky above her in its infinity. Even the name of this mar.Tu boy, Abram.

  What a strange name! Abram. She liked the way the syllables coiled in her mouth.

  Abram certainly wasn’t afraid of the night. He moved about in it as if it were broad daylight. He didn’t even seem to dread the demons.

  Perhaps that was what being a mar.Tu meant?

  In truth, she liked everything about this boy. It may simply have been because she had been scared of being lost and alone in the night. Or it may have been because he wasn’t anything like Kiddin. Or the bridegroom her father had chosen for her.

  It amused her to think how horrified they would all have been if they had seen Abram take her hand so unceremoniously! A mar.Tu daring to touch the daughter of a lord of Ur! What a sacrilege!

  But she had not even thought of withdrawing her hand. She had felt no shame, no repulsion. Even his smell, so different from the scents with which the lords of Ur anointed themselves, did not disgust her.

  Even the fact that he was a barbarian, a mar.Tu, pleased her!

  Sarai wondered what he thought of her. She must be a dreadful sight, she knew, yet Abram had shown no reaction. Perhaps that was the way these men without a city behaved. Both her father and Sililli claimed that they were crude, cunning, inscrutable people. It didn’t matter: This one hadn’t hesitated to come to her aid.

  Unless Sililli and her father were right and she never saw him again.

  She hated herself for thinking such a thing. She put more wood on the fire and forced herself not to let her mind wander again.

  HE woke her by dropping two thick white sheepskins and a big leather bag by her side.

  “It took me a while because I didn’t want my brothers to see me,” he explained. “They might have thought I wanted to sleep under the stars in order to get an early start hunting, and they would have followed me. They always follow me when I go hunting. I’ve already killed ten lynx and three stags. One day I’ll face a lion.”

  Sarai wondered if he was boasting or trying to impress her. But he wasn’t. Abram unrolled the sheepskins, took a coarse dress from his sack, and handed it to her.

  “To replace your toga.”

  He himself had swapped his loincloth for a tunic held in at the waist by a belt. The handle of dagger protruded from a leather sheath hanging from the belt.

  While Sarai withdrew into the shadows to change, he ostentatiously turned his back on her, stoked the fire, and took food from the bag.

  When she came back and squatted again by the fire, he looked at her with a slightly ironic smile, which made his cheeks seem rounder. In the shifting light of the flames, the brown of his eyes was even more transparent.

  “This is the first time you’ve worn a dress like that, isn’t it?” he asked, amused. “It suits you.”

  Sarai also smiled. “Are my eyes still black?” she asked.

  Abram hesitated, then burst out laughing: a laugh he had been holding back for a long time, which made his whole body shake. “Your eyes, yes!” he said, catching his breath. “Your cheeks and temples, too. In fact, when I first saw you, if I hadn’t seen your stomach, I’d have thought you were black all over. They do exist, you know—women who are black all over—far away to the south, by the sea.”

  Sarai felt her cheeks burning with rage and shame. “It’s the kohl they put on brides.”

  She seized her toga furiously and tried to tear the bottom of it, but the cloth resisted.

  “Wait,” said Abram.

  He took out his dagger. It had a curved blade of very hard wood. Sarai had never seen one like it before. It sliced easily through the damp cloth. When he held it out to her, she seized his hand.

  “Will you do it?” she asked, her voice shaking more than she would have liked. “You can see in the dark,” she added, trying to sound more confident.

  He shook his head, embarrassed. So that they should both feel less awkward, she closed her eyes. Kneeling before her in the luminous warmth of the fire, he cleaned her eyelids, her cheeks, her forehead. Gently. As if it was something he had always known how to do.

  When he had finished, Sarai opened her eyes again. He smiled, and the wings of his beautiful lips seemed to fly away.

  “Do you think I’m pretty now?” she dared to ask.

  “Our girls don’t have such beautiful hair,” he said simply. “Or such straight noses.”

  Sarai did not know if that was a compliment.

  Then, to dispel their embarrassment and assuage their hunger, they threw themselves on the food Abram had brought: still-warm kid, whitefish, cheese, fruit, fermented milk in a skin gourd. Strong-tasting dishes, without the sweet flavors preferred by the lords of Ur. Sarai ate as heartily as Abram, showing nothing of her surprise.

  AT first they ate in silence. Then Abram asked what Sarai planned to do when morning came. She said she didn’t know, but perhaps she could find refuge in the great temples of Eridu, where girls without families were allowed to become priestesses. But her voice lacked conviction. The fact was, she had no idea. Tomorrow seemed so far away.

  Abram then asked if she wasn’t afraid her gods would punish her for refusing the husband her father had chosen for her and running away from home. She said no, this time with such confidence that he stopped eating and looked at her in surprise.

  “No, because if they’d wanted to punish me, they’d have sent demons instead of making me fall over you.”

  The idea greatly amused Abram. “The lords of Ur are the only people who believe the night is populated with demons. All I’ve ever seen at night were bulls, elephants, lions, or tigers. They’re fierce, but a man can kill them. Or run after the gazelles!”

  Sarai did not take offense. The fire crackled, the embers were getting hotter and hotter, the sheepskins were soft to the touch. Abram was right. The night no longer frightened her.

  All at once, she was aware of happiness suffusing her body, from the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes, and calming her mind. She felt warm, and there was laughter in her chest that did not need to cross her lips. The flames danced for her, time stood still, and this boy she had not even known when the sun was up, Abram, who was so clo
se to her she could have brushed his shoulder, was going to protect her from everything. She knew it.

  So they kept talking, kept asking each other questions. Abram told her about his two brothers, Haran, the eldest, and Nahor, and about his father who made clay statues of ancestors for people like Ichbi Sum-Usur, statues with heads so lifelike you’d think they could speak.

  Sarai wanted to know if he liked living in a tent. He explained that the clan of which his father, Terah, was the head, reared great flocks for one of the lords of Ur. Every two years, when it was time for the royal taxes, they took their animals to Larsa to be counted by Shu-Sin’s officials.

  “Then we either come back here with just a few animals or start a completely new flock. One day, my father will earn enough from his statues, and we won’t need to bother with rearing sheep anymore.”

  He questioned her, too. Sarai told him about her life in the palace. She spoke about Sililli, Kiddin, her sisters, and, for the first time in a long while, the vague but painful memories she had of her mother, who had died giving birth to Lillu. So carried away was she by the excitement of confiding all this, she even mentioned the chamber of blood and the barù’s strange prophecy: Queen or slave . . .

  Abram was a good listener, patient and attentive.

  They talked for so long that the wood on the fire burned down completely and the moon crossed more than half the night sky. Sarai said her people feared that one night the Lady Moon would vanish forever and that the gods, in their anger, would take the sun away. It would then be horribly cold.

  “In a tent,” she said, “it would be even more terrible than in a house.”

  Abram shook his head, poked the embers, and replied that he didn’t believe in any of that. There was no reason for the moon and the sun to disappear.

  “Why are you so sure?” Sarai asked, surprised.

  “Nobody can remember it ever happening. Why should something that’s never happened since the beginning of the world suddenly happen one day?” He paused. “Just because you sleep in a tent doesn’t mean you can’t think. It doesn’t mean you can’t learn by observing the things around you.”