Abraham and Sarah Read online

  Gradually, though reluctantly, she began to find solace in the peaceful rhythm. Yawash, yawash, slowly, slowly, seemed to be the words most often heard. It took a strong bashi or head of the caravan to get everyone organized for the day, but once they started to move it was a colorful procession.

  Every animal was decked out by his rider and wore brightly woven saddle blankets, blue lapis lazuli beads to keep off the evil eye, and shells strung on cords so that as they clashed and clanged they made a pleasant sort of music to accompany the bumping and swaying of the carts.

  Sarai especially looked forward to the camping at night. The smell of warm bread being cooked over an open fire and young lambs roasting on a spit gave promise of a plentiful feast. Later when the moon came up and the stars burst out in the blackness of the low hanging sky, she would lie with Abram’s arms around her, listening patiently as he talked of his dreams for the future.

  From the first she had been skeptical of the promises he held in such regard. It seemed to her that they were always getting bigger and grander. First he was to have land, perhaps a whole country where they would enjoy a home and safety, and then he was to have descendants too numerous to count. He, who was no longer young, owned no land, and had no children, believed completely in these impossible promises. It bothered her that he should seem to know this unseen God so intimately, talked to Him, and even heard Him speak.

  “This is the real God, the Creator, the One people have almost forgotten,” Abram explained.

  “And where is this country that is to belong to you and to your descendants?” Sarai asked testily.

  “We are coming to it soon now.” Abram smiled as though remembering something pleasant.

  “You have seen it already?” Sarai raised up on her elbow and looked at him with astonishment.

  “I’m not sure. When I was very young, I went on a trading trip down to Egypt with my father. We traded finely tooled leather goods for their sheer material. We had stopped in a great fertile valley where the earth was moist and rich and the grass was the darkest green you can imagine. We camped under a great tree. The place was called Shechem.”

  “Didn’t it belong to anyone?”

  “There were a few scattered villages built of mud bricks, but the valley had no well and was hard to defend, so it was left open for herders and traders like us. The people who live there are mostly Amorites.”

  “How will you know if this is the place your God has promised?” Sarai asked as she shivered and drew closer into Abram’s encircling arms.

  He pulled the woven robe over her bare shoulder and lay for a few moments quietly thinking. “When I get there, I’ll ask Him.”

  When they came to Damascus, Abram found a pleasant location for their camp in a garden of date palms on one of the branches of the Abana River with the brown ruggedness of Jebel Kasyun looming in the distance. As soon as possible he took several of the men into the city to gather news and replenish their supplies. They needed many things and Abram knew that Sarai would want to see the best of the jewelry, cloth, and perfumes.

  “Go to the market where they sell animals and see if they have any camels to sell,” he told Lot. “I’ll make arrangements for some merchants to visit the caravan with their wares.”

  Lot knew very little about buying camels. Like Abram, he had heard the animals were being used by desert traders because they could go for days without water. Beyond that he knew little. They hadn’t been used in Ur and were a novelty in Haran. To help him, Abram had chosen a young man who boasted of having traveled in a caravan made up entirely of camels and of knowing the markets of Damascus well.

  The animal section of the market was near the khan or inn. It was an open area black with flies and smelling of straw, old leather, and urine. Here and there worn, striped awnings had been hoisted into place to shelter some wealthy merchants from the sweltering sun. Raucous traders milled around, shouting in hoarse voices the price and worth of their animals. Small boys ran in and out, either chasing a stray sheep or collecting the dung to be mixed with straw and burned as fuel.

  Lot was amazed at the variety and number of animals in the market. Some were kneeling, others were standing, but all were held by ropes or tied to stakes. He was drawn to some fine, well-cared for camels, but his driver restrained him. He said, “They are only for riding, and the camels we need are those with the big, ugly heads.”

  Lot again picked four camels from a friendly, persuasive fellow who had placed a variety of fancy trappings on them. Again the driver pulled him aside. “Pardon,” he said, “but you must not choose the camel by his trappings.”

  Lot was exasperated. He wanted to finish buying the camels, and to him, they all looked very much alike. “What then am I to look for?” he asked impatiently.

  “Come,” the driver said as he led him off to one side under the awning of the khan. “You must choose a camel by the breadth of his chest, the shortness of his leg, the fullness of his flank.”

  “Then it is impossible,” Lot said. “There are so many and every owner has disguised his animal. Who can tell which are strong and which are weak?”

  “There is one test that never fails. If I stand on the hocks when a camel is kneeling and he can still rise, this camel won’t fall by the wayside when things get difficult.”

  The thought of a camel dropping behind and left to die in some desert place horrified Lot—such waste! He quickly made a decision. “You buy the camels. I’ll sit here in the khan and see if I can glean some news.”

  Lot found many men standing or sitting in small groups in the open courtyard of the inn. He approached a group of men dressed in the long, fringed garb of men from the old kingdom of Sumer. They were sitting around watching two men play a game Lot recognized as one he had played often in Ur. The board the men were playing on was especially handsome. It was made of colorful inlay, and the playing pieces were of black-and-white ivory. When the men saw Lot, they stopped talking and eagerly made room for him with nods of respect and deference. It pleased Lot that they recognized him as a man of means and prominence.

  The time passed quickly, and before he was ready to leave, the driver was back with news that he had bought the necessary camels, even two extra camels to carry some food for the other animals. “They say there is famine in much of the area through which we are going,” he said. “We’ll need the extra supplies.”

  Lot had also heard rumors of the famine and was worried. He could hardly wait to tell Abram. Surely they wouldn’t go on if there was a famine in the land. However, when he arrived back at camp, there was such an air of festivity that Lot hesitated to tell his disturbing news.

  Abram had found a rich merchant named Eliazer who had also fled from Ur. Upon meeting a fellow countryman, Eliazer promptly closed his shops and brought much of the contents out to the place where Abram was camping.

  “Pick anything you like,” Abram told Sarai. “Gather the women and let them have whatever they want as long as there is room for it.”

  While the women were viewing the jewelry, ointments, headpieces, and delicately carved boxes, Abram was entertaining Eliazer in his tent. Lot was surprised to learn that Eliazer was going to sell everything he owned and join them. “It won’t take long. My brother and cousins will undoubtedly buy everything,” Eliazer assured them.

  Lot was astounded. Here was a man of great wealth and position, willing to give up everything to join them. Lot wondered what Abram had told him; he knew that Abram made things sound exciting. He could feel the air of adventure and see that Eliazer had caught the dream, just as the rest of them had.

  When Eliazer finally ordered his slaves to gather up the unwanted goods and depart, Lot stayed to tell Abram the disturbing news of the famine. “The traders I spoke with,” he said, “have warned of a famine. They say it has totally ravaged the land west of the Jordan. Do you think we should go on?”

  Abram didn’t seem to hear him. “Eliazer has a big family,” he said. “They all fled with him
from Ur just ahead of the armies. Fortunately they had sent some of their most precious belongings on to Damascus before the massacre.”

  Lot was silent for a moment as he mulled over the whole situation. Abram never had been one to fear much of anything, but this was serious. “The men suggested that we turn back while we can.”

  “Turn back!” Abram was obviously not impressed. “I have faith that the God who called me out won’t let a famine defeat us.”

  “What do you mean?” Lot questioned.

  “By the time we get there, the famine will be over, or we will find it was all an exaggeration.”

  “Everyone says the pastures have turned to dust. We’ll have to buy aliek for the camels.”

  Abram was interested. “And what is aliek?”

  “It’s a small grain like lentils, with a green husk. Here in Damascus they mix it into a dough with wheat flour and water, then press it into oblong balls. A camel needs six of these a day, and with water he’ll survive.”

  Abram smiled. “Then it’s all taken care of, and we won’t worry about the famine.”

  Lot said no more, but the whole thing made him nervous. He had seen the expressions on the men’s faces and heard the anxiety in their voices as they had spoken of the famine. Lot couldn’t help but wonder whether the gods Abram had lashed out against were getting ready to punish them. People—many people—had said that Abram would be punished for defying the earth gods and destroying the idols. Everyone agreed that Sarai was barren because of it.

  Lot quickly decided that whatever happened, he was not going to sacrifice his life and risk losing his flocks for Abram’s dream. He would go along until he saw how things turned out. If there really was a famine instead of the promised blessings, he would quietly make other plans.

  They waited some days outside Damascus until Eliazer and his large family could join them. They were happy days blighted only by the news that continued to come out of the country beyond the Jordan. Abram listened to all the reports, but refused to be discouraged. Instead he grew impatient and anxious to be back on the trail.

  They left Damascus on a bright, sunny day and headed out past the western gate onto the road called the King’s Highway that would take them to the foot of Mount Hermon. They couldn’t move as fast as the traders who were unencumbered with families, flocks of sheep, baby lambs, goats, and herds of camels. At times they pitched their tents and camped in one place for five days before moving on. “It is necessary to move at least every ten days,” the saying went among shepherds, “or the grazing land is all eaten away.”

  At the foot of Mount Hermon were both water and adequate pasture, and they decided to stay camped there until the new moon.

  Everyone agreed it was good to be out of the wagons and camping. Lot’s wife, Mara, was especially relieved. She liked the bustle of an orderly routine carried on in settled conditions. Each night the goat’s milk was heated and poured into a special goatskin that had been used so often for this purpose that the skin contained enough of the curdled milk to curdle the new batch. It was then covered and kept warm. In the morning it would have become yogurt, which they ate with sweet dates and bread.

  At other times the women would rise long before dawn and put the yogurt into a leben skin and rock back and forth until all the liquid was drawn out, leaving soft, butterlike balls. This delicious leben was most prized. Mara loved to wake early enough to listen as her servants stirred up the fire, baked the bread, and set up the tripod with its goatskin bag for making the day’s leben. In the same way she looked forward to sunset. Then the herders rounded up their animals, and her servants rolled out the sleeping mats and gathered dung patties to hold the fire during the night.

  Mara could picture the same procedure going on in Sarai’s tent; the only difference was that Sarai would be up managing and directing the whole procedure. Sarai often made telling remarks about women who lay in bed until the sun was up.

  On the third night in the new campsite, Mara was chilly, so she sat by her small fire of dried nettles and enjoyed the night sounds. She had put her girls to bed and was waiting for her husband. As on most evenings, he sat with some of the men around a fire discussing the happenings of the day. Mara had noted that Abram, too, was with the men, but she also knew that on occasion, he spent the entire evening with Sarai. That irritated her. It made her brood and ponder the source of Sarai’s apparent charm.

  Though Sarai wasn’t young, she was still astonishingly beautiful. Her name meant “contention,” and Mara thought it suited her well. She was willful, selfish, and outspoken. Sarai didn’t contradict Abram in front of others, but they all could tell when she was displeased and they could just imagine what she said to him when she got him alone.

  Mara never mentioned it to anyone, but she was smugly pleased that Sarai was cursed with barrenness. She would never have said it herself, but she enjoyed hearing others speculate as to what great wickedness Sarai had been involved in that she had been cursed with barrenness. Though Mara had borne no sons, her two daughters were at least something. Surely sons would follow.

  The stars hadn’t come out yet, but the wind had come up. One of the loose tent pieces flapped annoyingly while the poles creaked and groaned. Mara could hear the bleating of the sheep as they were driven into the enclosure formed by the tethered donkeys and kneeling camels, then much jostling as the ewes searched for their hungry lambs. Finally all was quiet, so quiet that she could hear the laughter of the men gathered around Eliazer’s campfire.

  She wondered what they talked about. She knew Lot’s conversation always turned to the profit he intended to make. Since leaving Damascus, he had become more interested in the animals they owned. She had heard him say that both camels and sheep double themselves in three years. “Of course,” he had added, “the male lambs will be sold or killed for food. The females we’ll keep for breeding.” She knew that the young male camels were always sold and only a few kept to carry the baggage.

  What he didn’t discuss was how heavily he counted on inheriting all his uncle’s wealth. Since Abram had no children, Lot considered it was more or less understood between them that he would be his uncle’s heir. Mara had taken for granted that he had agreed to go on this venture for whatever gain might be in it for them.

  Mara jabbed the fire with a sturdy oak branch. They had plenty of dried nettles for the fire, and her girls had found truffles, which she considered a great delicacy. She hadn’t shared them with anyone, not even Sarai. Especially not with Sarai. Sarai had everything. One didn’t need to give her more.

  Mara did have to reluctantly concede that Sarai genuinely loved her husband. She would defend his ideas, gloat over his success, and follow him on the most uncomfortable adventures. Such behavior was all the more amazing, since it was totally contrary to her spoiled nature.

  Mara stood up and dusted off her robe. She looked around and then tiptoed to the far side of her tent. She strained to see the neighboring tents. She wanted to see if Sarai was up waiting for her husband. As far as she could tell, the tent was dark. Sarai wasn’t waiting up.

  Mara wouldn’t go to sleep until Lot returned. It was their custom. Even in Haran, women waited until the men came home. The men might be hungry, or more likely looking for some wifely attention before going to sleep. Then there was the news. Mara never wanted to miss that. Sarai obviously wasn’t curious. She could wait.

  Mara had noticed that in most things Sarai seemed to get her way. She should have been divorced and disgraced for having no children, but instead she seemed only to get her husband’s added attention and concern.

  That Sarai had a tent of her own further infuriated Mara. She didn’t have to share her tent with anyone, and Abram didn’t seem to mind. “You can’t always win, Sarai,” Mara sputtered to herself, jabbing all the time at the fire. “It’s not natural. I’m just waiting … waiting to see you brought down and humbled.”

  Usually the men went to Abram’s tent, but on that night Eliazer had p
lanned a special celebration in honor of his benefactor. Many of the men of the tribe and others who wanted to share in the festivities sat around the fire enjoying Eliazer’s hospitality. There was to be no talk of business. Instead stories were told and humorous happenings remembered. There was a feeling of well-being and expectancy.

  The men usually ate together, and tonight Eliazer had ordered spits erected and lambs roasted to a succulent brown. To everyone’s surprise, he was lavish with the dried dates and figs and passed the skins filled with date wine again and again. “It’s time to celebrate. We may soon be coming to the place that Abram’s God has promised him.”

  The men looked at each other, and the air grew vibrant with excitement. Finally Urim, who could wait no longer, spoke, “Are we then nearing our goal?” The ribs he had been eagerly gnawing dropped to his lap unnoticed.

  All eyes turned to Abram. He sat as usual in the seat of honor on banked cushions with a tasseled canopy slung overhead, held in place by four lances that had been driven into the ground on each side. He had been talking to his nephew Lot and hadn’t followed the discussion, but now with the cheese maker’s question repeated, he was suddenly alert. “You must understand,” he said, “I can’t say with any certainty where we are going.”

  For a moment the words hung on the evening air in all their mystery and obtuseness. Abram was always answering like this, and yet there was such a sureness about the going itself that none of them doubted for a moment that he knew exactly where they were headed.

  “But,” Lot interjected, “we are following the trade route our people have always followed. Surely you can tell us now where this land is that you are to be given.”

  Abram took a drink of fresh camel’s milk from the gourd that hung from his belt. “There’s nothing like fresh, warm milk enjoyed under a full moon,” he said as though oblivious of the questions.