Yahweh driven her from the marriage chamber? Is the Bride of God lost and alone?
Addai listens but expends no effort on answering us, save to say, “I once heard it said that none of us know anything, not even whether we know anything or not.” Though he does suggest that perhaps my father’s people were chosen because all other peoples turned him down. At this, I honk with laughter, but Salome laughs so much harder I have to pound her on the back.
The Poor make their home here, and have a council of elders who meet in a large room near the potteries. Save those who swagger about with knives in their belts and flint in their eyes, all are busy. Some of the men fish in the river Jordan, the mouth of which is a few miles away, or set out over the stinking sea in small salt-encrusted boats to collect the rare and precious floating rocks, which is tarry bitumen. Some labor in the fields of barley and wheat and some labor in the smaller fields of madder and other medicines growing wherever there is room. This medicine is used by the ill who daily arrive, or decanted into small bottles and sent up to Jerusalem with Ananias, but the bulk of it is traded with the Arabian tent people whose encampments fill the mountains of the Moab far across the Sea of Salt.
One thing that does not occur here is the sacrifice of animals. Those in the settlement honor the Sabbath, they chant the Shema at dawn and at dusk, and they observe the Holy Days, but there are no priests and there is no Temple. Father would be baffled. Nicodemus would be incensed. Both would ask why a man should have to do his own praying. Are there not priests for this? Is this not what priests are for?
In Jerusalem, there is not a day save the Sabbath where people are not sacrificing some living thing in
asham,
a guilt offering as atonement for some infraction or other, or to make peace between this one or that one, or as an
olah,
a personal repentance, or to give thanks for whatever it is they feel thankful for. From early until late, there is such piteous shrieking and such helpless bleating, and there are days on end when the wind does not blow, and a haze of burnt flesh hangs over Jerusalem like a winding sheet.
But here, this is not so. The air is clear, and Salome and I are set to guarding a secret grove of balsam trees, for the “white tears” of the balsam is worth twice as much as silver. Seth has shown us its true gift; more than a perfume or a royal oil, it stops the flow of blood and it deadens pain. I begin tending my tiny crooked trees as I would my own scrolls. We have also charge of a grove of carob trees and date palms that grow far up a steep-sided wash of gravel. Leading nowhere, this ravine, or
nahal,
narrows as it goes until it is seemingly impassable, so is home only to a family of feeble folk, one of the four things scripture says are “little on earth, but they are exceedingly wise.” Fat and furry, short of leg and small of ear, these hyraxes hide in the rocks, barking in alarm if we come near.
Here there is a small spring that waters our palms and our carobs, and a space of soft sand bounded by a huge rock like a bowl that each day is warmed by the winter sun until it becomes a thing of great pleasure to lie in. We cannot be seen from the settlement and no one from the settlement can see us. Of course, immediately this becomes our private place.
Kishuf
is a thing of horror to the Poor, so we keep our word stones and our magical papyri hidden not in our small tent in the men’s encampment but here near the homes of the feeble folk. As Salome says, “Let their barking be of use.”
As the days pass, we explore the desert above us and the Salted Sea below us. We have seen a thin red fox catch a fat brown sand rat, and once sat for hours watching big black ants devour some sad fallen songbird, until it was nothing but feathers and bones and beak. We have walked by the crystalline shore of the toxic sea picking up balls
Addai listens but expends no effort on answering us, save to say, “I once heard it said that none of us know anything, not even whether we know anything or not.” Though he does suggest that perhaps my father’s people were chosen because all other peoples turned him down. At this, I honk with laughter, but Salome laughs so much harder I have to pound her on the back.
The Poor make their home here, and have a council of elders who meet in a large room near the potteries. Save those who swagger about with knives in their belts and flint in their eyes, all are busy. Some of the men fish in the river Jordan, the mouth of which is a few miles away, or set out over the stinking sea in small salt-encrusted boats to collect the rare and precious floating rocks, which is tarry bitumen. Some labor in the fields of barley and wheat and some labor in the smaller fields of madder and other medicines growing wherever there is room. This medicine is used by the ill who daily arrive, or decanted into small bottles and sent up to Jerusalem with Ananias, but the bulk of it is traded with the Arabian tent people whose encampments fill the mountains of the Moab far across the Sea of Salt.
One thing that does not occur here is the sacrifice of animals. Those in the settlement honor the Sabbath, they chant the Shema at dawn and at dusk, and they observe the Holy Days, but there are no priests and there is no Temple. Father would be baffled. Nicodemus would be incensed. Both would ask why a man should have to do his own praying. Are there not priests for this? Is this not what priests are for?
In Jerusalem, there is not a day save the Sabbath where people are not sacrificing some living thing in
asham,
a guilt offering as atonement for some infraction or other, or to make peace between this one or that one, or as an
olah,
a personal repentance, or to give thanks for whatever it is they feel thankful for. From early until late, there is such piteous shrieking and such helpless bleating, and there are days on end when the wind does not blow, and a haze of burnt flesh hangs over Jerusalem like a winding sheet.
But here, this is not so. The air is clear, and Salome and I are set to guarding a secret grove of balsam trees, for the “white tears” of the balsam is worth twice as much as silver. Seth has shown us its true gift; more than a perfume or a royal oil, it stops the flow of blood and it deadens pain. I begin tending my tiny crooked trees as I would my own scrolls. We have also charge of a grove of carob trees and date palms that grow far up a steep-sided wash of gravel. Leading nowhere, this ravine, or
nahal,
narrows as it goes until it is seemingly impassable, so is home only to a family of feeble folk, one of the four things scripture says are “little on earth, but they are exceedingly wise.” Fat and furry, short of leg and small of ear, these hyraxes hide in the rocks, barking in alarm if we come near.
Here there is a small spring that waters our palms and our carobs, and a space of soft sand bounded by a huge rock like a bowl that each day is warmed by the winter sun until it becomes a thing of great pleasure to lie in. We cannot be seen from the settlement and no one from the settlement can see us. Of course, immediately this becomes our private place.
Kishuf
is a thing of horror to the Poor, so we keep our word stones and our magical papyri hidden not in our small tent in the men’s encampment but here near the homes of the feeble folk. As Salome says, “Let their barking be of use.”
As the days pass, we explore the desert above us and the Salted Sea below us. We have seen a thin red fox catch a fat brown sand rat, and once sat for hours watching big black ants devour some sad fallen songbird, until it was nothing but feathers and bones and beak. We have walked by the crystalline shore of the toxic sea picking up balls
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