No Woman So Fair

by Gilbert, Morris

  But suddenly a form appeared coming down the street, and Sarai was surprised to see that it was Abram. She was further surprised when he stepped between the burly man and the girl and heard him say, “Sir, she’s young and a valuable slave, I’m sure. Please don’t beat her anymore.”

  The strongly built slave owner flushed red in the face and cursed Abram, yelling, “Get out of the way! It’s none of your business!”

  Abram was fully as tall as the slave owner, though not nearly as thick in body. Sarai could see the anger in Abram’s eyes, yet he was struggling to keep his composure. With his voice even and controlled, he said, “I hate to see anyone mistreated, even a slave.”

  The big man laughed coarsely and shouted in a drunken rage, “You want to see someone mistreated, then I’ll mistreat you!” He cursed again and raised the stick toward Abram, but Abram’s hand shot out and grasped the man’s wrist. Sarai expected to see the big man pull away, which indeed he attempted to do. But surprise washed across his face as he was obviously unable to release himself from Abram’s grasp. And then his surprise changed to shock as Abram apparently kept increasing the pressure. Finally the stick dropped from the man’s hand, and he cried out hoarsely, “Let me go! You’re crushing my bones!”

  At once Abram released the man’s wrist. He reached down and picked up the stick, broke it in two, and said, “I usually don’t interfere in matters that are none of my business, but I don’t like to see a helpless person hurt.”

  “It is none of your business, and you can’t stop me! I’ll do what I please with her!” He rubbed his wrist and backed off a step. “You’re a strong man—I can see that—but you won’t always be around.” He glanced at the girl, who had turned her face upward, tears running down her cheeks.

  Sarai watched closely and saw that something was working in Abram’s mind. His eyes were fixed on the burly slave owner, but some thought was taking possession of him. She was surprised when he said, “I’ll buy her from you. How much?”

  “Buy her!” The man stared at Abram with shock. “All right,” he said quickly. When he named an extravagant price, Abram reached into the pouch he carried slung around his shoulder and pulled out a small pottery jar. “How about this instead?”

  Sarai watched as the man took the jar and pulled out the stopper. “Why, this is purple dye,” he said. Then a crafty look came into his eye. “The girl for the dye?”

  “Done,” Abram said.

  Laughing roughly, the man said, “You’re not much of a trader. This dye is worth a dozen of her kind.”

  Abram ignored the man’s gloating over the deal as he raised the jar to the gathered crowd and laughed at Abram’s stupidity.

  “Come,” Abram said simply. “We’ll have this recorded.”

  Sarai watched Abram reach down to help the girl to her feet and heard him say gently, “Come along, girl. No one will hurt you now.” The girl wiped the tears from her face and followed the two men quickly to a scribe sitting at a table, where the transaction was recorded. She stayed very close to Abram the whole time while the business matter was completed, then followed him down the street.

  Sarai ordered her maid to take the basket of fruit home; then she followed Abram and the slave girl from a discreet distance, carefully staying out of sight.

  As for Abram, he did not know what had possessed him. He had always hated to see any helpless thing hurt, even an animal that was beaten or mistreated. After they had gone some distance from the crowded marketplace, Abram found a shady spot under a palm tree to sit down and let the girl rest. He saw she was trembling as she sat by his feet, and he asked kindly, “What’s your name, child?”

  “Layona.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. He put his hand out to touch her head, and she flinched. “No one’s going to harm you.” Then, after they had caught their breath, he stood and helped her up again, saying, “Come along.”

  Sarai, watching and listening from a close hiding spot, sneaked back into the street, merging once again in the crowd, where she could watch Abram’s tall figure as he led the girl along. She saw him bend down more than once and speak to her, and she saw the gratitude on the slave girl’s face.

  ****

  Sarai had said nothing to anyone about what had happened, but she was aware that Abram had asked her mother to take care of the girl until he could locate a new owner for her.

  At the evening meal Abram was quiet, as usual, while Garai talked ceaselessly. The slave girl, looking quite frightened, came in bearing a large bowl of fruit, but as the meal continued, she seemed to relax. She had been washed and was wearing a clean garment and her hair was tied back. She was a pretty girl, despite the scars on her face and body from the frequent mistreatment by her former owner, and Sarai wondered what it would be like to be a slave. She herself had never suffered badly, and now, for the first time in her life, she wondered what it would be like to be forced to do every depraved thing a man could think of and to be beaten for no reason. Her heart flooded with compassion, and she looked toward Abram, who was smiling at the girl. Again she wondered what kind of a man would do such a thing.

  After the meal Abram and Garai went to the courtyard to talk of business, and Sarai went to Abram’s guest quarters, where she found the girl alone.

  With a frightened look on her face, the girl said timidly, “Master Abram’s gone, lady.”

  “Yes, I know,” Sarai replied. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I belong to Master Abram.”

  “Well, he’s a good man. I think you will like being in his service.” She began to question the girl gently and found out, after some difficulty, that she had had an even harder life than Sarai had imagined. The girl’s family had died of a plague, and she had been passed around to various relatives, the last of whom had sold her into slavery. The burly man had mistreated her frightfully, although she would not give specifics.

  “And what will you do now, Layona?”

  The girl looked at her and smiled. “I belong to Abram. I will do as he says.”

  “That’s a good girl.” Sarai smiled, then returned to the living quarters until she saw Garai come inside and head for his bedroom. She went out to the courtyard, where she found Abram alone, enjoying the cool night air. He nodded to her respectfully as she approached and asked, “Have you had a good day, Abram?”

  “Why, yes, I have. Very good.”

  Sarai hesitated. “I was there on the street. I saw what happened between you and the man, the one you bought Layona from.”

  Abram looked surprised. “I didn’t see you.”

  “No, you were concerned about the girl. I don’t think many men would have done what you did.”

  He dropped his head, embarrassed. “I…I don’t like to see anyone mistreated.”

  Sarai suddenly found herself liking this man a great deal. “Come inside. Mahita’s made a special brew. It’s very good.”

  “All right,” Abram said, surprised at the invitation, the first he had had from Sarai. He followed her inside and waited in the living area while she went into the kitchen. She quickly returned, carrying a gourd with two reeds sticking out of the top.

  “We’ll share this,” she said, sitting down and indicating for him to sit beside her.

  It was a form of sharing Abram had never seen before, but he sipped the brew through the reed straw, conscious of the sweet anointing perfume Sarai had on. “It’s very good,” he said quickly.

  “Mahita knows how to make the best things. She’s a fine cook. She makes this concoction from grape juice and some other ingredients. I’m going to get her to show me how to do it.”

  “I’d like to know myself. My mother likes recipes like this.”

  Sarai began to question Abram about his family, and for the first time he spoke freely with her. She noticed he said little about himself, his father, or his brothers, but it was clear that he loved his mother deeply.

  “You and your mother are very close, aren’t yo
u?”

  “Yes, I think we are,” Abram said, looking down, embarrassed. “My brothers say I’m too much like her.”

  “Well, I think she sounds like a wonderful woman.”

  “She’s the finest woman I ever met.”

  “I suppose you want a wife who will be like her.”

  Abram looked up quickly and saw that Sarai was watching him with a smile. He smiled back. “I’m not sure I could ever find one as kind and generous as she is.”

  His candor pleased Sarai. She had heard so much flattery from suitors that it sickened her, and now here was a young man who refused to say that she might be even better than his mother. “Well, what does she look like?” Sarai asked.

  “Oh, she’s about as high as my heart.”

  “What a nice thing to say!”

  “I mean she’s small. She has nice brown eyes—very warm—but unfortunately she’s not in the best of health,” Abram said, and a concerned expression crossed his face. “I worry about her sometimes.”

  Sarai continued to draw the young man out, and as he relaxed in her presence, she found he had a wit that lay beneath the surface. He told her about several misadventures he had had with the flocks that made her laugh.

  Finally he turned to her and said, “I’m sorry about knocking you into the mud. I felt terrible about that…. I still do.”

  Sarai discovered that all of her ill will was gone. “Please don’t speak of it anymore, Abram. It was an accident. I was a fool to take it personally.” She laughed suddenly. “My mother told me so. So I have a good mother too.”

  “Yes, you do. I like her very much.”

  Suddenly Sarai had a thought. “I’m going outside the city tomorrow to visit my mother’s sister, my aunt Bernia. Would you like to go?”

  Abram noticed her enigmatic smile and wondered what she had in mind. “Why…yes, I’d like it very much—if I wouldn’t be in the way.”

  “Oh, you won’t be. We’ll leave early in the morning and spend the whole day and a night there.”

  ****

  Sarai’s aunt Bernia was much older than her sister Zaroni. Her hair had turned to silver, but her eyes were bright and alert. She looked up when she met Abram and said, “My, what a tall, fine fellow you are! Come and sit down. You must tell me all about yourself.”

  Abram quickly discovered that the old woman meant exactly that. She had an inquisitive mind, and Sarai sat to one side laughing at him, saying once, “She’ll want to know everything about you. I warned you that she was like this.”

  “Of course I want to know everything,” Bernia said. “Like why aren’t you married?”

  The blunt question took the wind out of Abram’s sails, and he could only stammer, “Why…why, I’m not sure.”

  “Don’t you like women?”

  Abram suddenly found he liked the old woman, despite her quick, penetrating questions. “I like sensible ones.”

  “Don’t they have to be pretty?”

  Abram hesitated then, keeping his eyes on her face, and said, “For me, better a plain woman with sense than a pretty face with nothing in the mind.”

  “Well, a man who tells the truth,” Bernia said, laughing. She looked over at Sarai and said, “And you’re the current hope, are you, Sarai?”

  “Hope, Aunt? What do you mean?”

  “Well, Garai’s tried to marry you off to every rich man he can find. Are you rich, Abram?”

  Sarai was humiliated. “Don’t talk like that, Aunt!”

  “Why not? I suppose that’s why you came, isn’t it, Abram, with Sarai in mind for a wife?”

  Abram could not look at Sarai. He dropped his head and said, “My father and your sister’s son have discussed it.”

  “Never mind them. What about you?”

  Abram felt his face flush at the twinkle in Bernia’s eye and at her laughter as she went on, “Well, friend Abram, let me tell you. She has a sharp tongue, this girl, but she’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Y-yes, she is,” Abram stammered.

  Sarai was very pleased. It was the first time he had said anything about her beauty, but now she wanted to rescue him from her aunt’s interrogation. “Don’t pester him, Aunt.”

  “I will if I want to.” She put her old hand over Abram’s and said, “She’s a good girl underneath all that sharpness.” Then she turned and smiled, her eyes sparkling. “I like this one, Sarai. He’ll do. He’ll make you a good husband.”

  ****

  “I’m sorry if my aunt embarrassed you,” Sarai said later that evening.

  “She did a little,” Abram said, “but it’s all right. I like her very much.”

  The two were standing in Bernia’s garden in the cool of the evening. They had had a good supper prepared by Bernia’s servant, and the old woman had gone to bed. Abram turned to Sarai and said, “She reminds me of my mother.”

  Sarai gazed into his eyes. The sweet fragrance of the flowering plants was heavy on the air, yet he could smell the perfume Sarai wore, and he was very conscious of her beauty. She was wearing a simple outfit made of soft cloth dyed a light blue, and earrings that sparkled when she turned her head.

  “I’ve thought about the slave girl you bought. What will you do with her?”

  Abram flashed a smile. “I have a confession to make.”

  “A confession? What is it?” Sarai was intrigued and saw laughter in his eyes. “What is it?” she urged. “Come on, confess.”

  “I had brought you a gift from Ur, but I used it to buy the girl.”

  “Why, I’m surprised at you, Abram.”

  “It was a terrible thing to do.”

  “No, it wasn’t at all.”

  “What I’d like to do is give the girl to you as a gift. She’s a sweet little thing, I think, and I believe she’d be useful to you.”

  “Maybe I’d mistreat her.”

  “No, I wouldn’t offer her to you if I thought that.”

  “I don’t know why you’d think that after the way I treated you. I was awful.”

  “Well, it was awful of me to shove you in that mud.”

  “Let’s forget that.” Sarai reached up and touched Abram on the chest. “I was angry at first, but I’m not now.”

  Abram wrapped his hand around hers and said, “There’s one thing I need to tell you about myself, Sarai.”

  “What is it, Abram?”

  “I’m not like other men.” He shook his head sadly. “My father and my brothers tell me that often enough.” He looked deeply into her eyes and said quietly, “There’s something in me that cries out to know the true God—the God who is above all the gods of Sumer.”

  “My mother has told me how religious you are.”

  “I’d like to tell you what it is that’s within me if you don’t mind.”

  “Come. Sit down and tell me.”

  The two sat on a stone bench, and Sarai listened as he spoke of his hunger to know an almighty and all-powerful God. She did not fully understand it. She herself made offerings to the many Sumerian gods, but she had never even imagined that there could be a God that was more powerful than all these gods put together. She found herself intrigued by the idea that there might just be one God alone.

  Abram admitted to her that he had never before fully shared this idea with anyone, afraid that he would be thought crazy. But deep in his heart he had a yearning to learn the truth, and a growing conviction that the religion they had all been taught from childhood was totally false. Even while he had been here visiting in Uruk, he had become convinced that this unseen God was speaking to him—not in an audible voice, but clearly in his heart and mind while he was out in the fields on his early-morning walks.

  When she said nothing for a long while, he asked, “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  Sarai saw that here was a man like no other she had ever known. He had a gentle spirit, and she knew he respected women, because of his love for his mother and his quick defense of an innocent slave girl. It was the very quality she had bee
n looking for in a man, and now she had found it.

  “No, Abram, I don’t think you’re crazy at all.” Yet one thing about him troubled her. Even in these close moments, he made little move to touch her. True, he had taken her hand, but then he had dropped it again as they sat together on the bench and kept a respectful distance between them as they talked. This puzzled Sarai greatly, for men always wanted to touch her. She had always been beautiful and expected men to be overcome by her beauty. He had only commented about her beauty once, to her aunt earlier that day, and he certainly had made no advances to her. Having spent so much time fending off unwanted caresses from men, she was troubled by this. Why doesn’t he even try to kiss me? She leaned over against him slightly and knew that for most men this would have been an invitation, but Abram did not respond. For one brief moment she was hurt, but then she thought craftily, I can make him want me. He’s a man, after all!

  ****

  After their return to Uruk, Abram explained to his new slave his intention to give her as a gift to Sarai. Layona was pleased with the arrangement, for she thought she could not find a better situation than to be a servant to this well-off family.

  As Sarai taught her to serve alongside her personal maid, Zulda, Layona become quite fond of Sarai. She was anxious to please, which caused some jealousy on the part of Zulda. But Sarai ignored Zulda’s annoyance and gave much attention to Layona.

  “Are you going out today, mistress?” the girl asked.

  “Yes, I am, Layona.”

  “May I go with you?”

  “Not this time. I’m going to a betrothal celebration with Abram—for one of my friends who is getting married.”

  “You’ll be the prettiest one there, mistress,” Layona said, and she turned worshipful eyes upon Sarai.

  Sarai reached out and touched her cheek. “I thank you, Layona. That’s a nice thing to say. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

  Leaving her bedroom, she went to find Abram waiting for her near the front entrance. “I don’t know if I ought to go,” he said shyly. “I won’t know anybody there.”