by Paulo Coelho
“I’m ready,” she said.
“We shall return to Israel. The Lord has told me what I must do, and so I shall. Jezebel will be removed from power.”
She said nothing. Like all Phoenician women, she was proud of her princess. When they arrived there, she would try to convince the man at her side to change his mind.
“It will be a long journey, and we shall find no rest until I have done what He has asked of me,” said Elijah, as if guessing her thoughts. “Still, your love will be my mainstay, and in the moments I grow weary in the battles in His name, I can find repose in your arms.”
The boy appeared, carrying a small bag on his shoulder. Elijah took it and told the woman, “The hour has come. As you traverse the streets of Akbar, remember each house, each sound. For you will never again see them.”
“I was born in Akbar,” she said. “The city will forever remain in my heart.”
Hearing this, the boy vowed to himself never to forget his mother’s words. If someday he could return, he would look upon the city as if seeing her face.
IT WAS ALREADY DARK when the high priest arrived at the foot of the Fifth Mountain. In his right hand he held a staff; in his left he carried a large sack.
From the sack he took the sacred oil and anointed his forehead and wrists. Then, using the staff, he drew in the sand a bull and a panther, the symbols of the God of the Storm and of the Great Goddess. He said the ritual prayers; finally he opened his arms to heaven to receive the divine revelation.
The gods spoke no more. They had said all they wished to say and now demanded only the carrying out of the rites. The prophets had disappeared everywhere in the world, save in Israel, a backward, superstitious country that still believed men could communicate with the creators of the Universe.
He recalled that generations before, Sidon and Tyre had traded with a king of Jerusalem called Solomon. He was building a great temple and desired to adorn it with the best the world offered; he had commanded that cedars be bought from Phoenicia, which they called Lebanon. The king of Tyre had provided the necessary materials and had received in exchange twenty cities in Galilee, but was not pleased with them. Solomon had then helped him to construct his first ships, and now Phoenicia had the largest merchant fleet in the world.
At that time, Israel was still a great nation, despite worshiping a single god whose name was not even known and who was usually called just “the Lord.” A princess of Sidon had succeeded in returning Solomon to the true faith, and he had erected an altar to the gods of the Fifth Mountain. The Israelites insisted that “the Lord” had punished the wisest of their kings, bringing about the wars that had threatened his reign.
His son Rehoboam, however, carried on the worship that his father had initiated. He ordered two golden calves to be made, and the people of Israel worshiped them. It was then that the prophets appeared and began a ceaseless struggle against the rulers.
Jezebel was right: the only way to keep the true faith alive was by doing away with the prophets. Although she was a gentle woman, brought up in the way of tolerance and of horror at the thought of war, she knew that there comes a moment when violence is the only answer. The blood that now stained her hands would be forgiven by the gods she served.
“Soon, my hands too will be stained with blood,” the high priest told the silent mountain before him. “Just as the prophets are the curse of Israel, writing is the curse of Phoenicia. Both bring about an evil beyond redress, and both must be stopped while it is still possible. The god of weather must not desert us now.”
He was concerned about what had happened that morning; the enemy army had not attacked. The god of weather had abandoned Phoenicia in the past because he had become irritated at its inhabitants. As a consequence, the light of the lamps had stilled, the lambs and cows had abandoned their young, the wheat and barley had failed to ripen. The Sun god commanded that important beings be sent to search for him—the eagle and the God of the Storm—but no one succeeded in finding him. Finally, the Great Goddess sent a bee, which found him asleep in a forest and stung him. He awoke furious and began to destroy everything around him. It was necessary to bind him and remove the wrath from his soul, but from that time onward, all returned to normal.
If he decided to leave again, the battle would not take place. The Assyrians would remain permanently in the entrance to the valley, and Akbar would continue to exist.
“Courage is fear that prays,” he said. “That is why I am here, because I cannot vacillate at the moment of combat. I must show the warriors of Akbar that there is a reason to defend the city. It is neither the well, nor the marketplace, nor the governor’s palace. We shall confront the Assyrian army because we must set the example.”
The Assyrian triumph would end the threat of the alphabet for all time to come. The conquerors would impose their language and their customs, but they would go on worshiping the same gods on the Fifth Mountain; that was what truly mattered.
“In the future, our navigators will take to other lands the feats of our warriors. The priests will recall the names and the date when Akbar attempted to resist the Assyrian invasion. Painters will draw Egyptian characters on papyrus; the scribes of Byblos will be dead. The sacred texts will continue only in the hands of those born to study them. Then the later generations will try to imitate what we have done, and we shall build a better world.
“But now,” he continued, “we must first lose this battle. We shall fight bravely, but our situation is inferior, and we shall die with glory.”
At that moment the high priest listened to the night and saw that he was right. The silence anticipated the moment of an important battle, but the inhabitants of Akbar were misinterpreting it; they had laid down their weapons and were amusing themselves at precisely the moment when they had need of vigilance. They paid no heed to nature’s example: the animals fell silent when danger was at hand.
“Let the gods’ designs be fulfilled. May the heavens not fall upon the earth, for we have acted rightly; we have obeyed tradition,” he concluded.
ELIJAH, THE WOMAN, AND THE BOY WENT IN A WESTERLY direction, toward Israel; they did not need to pass near the Assyrian encampment because it was located to the south. The full moon made the walk easier but also cast strange shadows and sinister forms on the rocks and stones of the valley.
In the midst of the darkness, the angel of the Lord appeared. He bore a sword of fire in his right hand.
“Whither goest thou?” he asked.
“To Israel,” Elijah answered.
“Hath the Lord summoned thee?”
“I know the miracle that God expects me to perform. And now I know where I am to execute it.”
“Hath the Lord summoned thee?” repeated the angel.
Elijah remained silent.
“Hath the Lord summoned thee?” asked the angel for the third time.
“No.”
“Then return to the place whence thou comest, for thou hast yet to fulfill thy destiny. The Lord hath still to summon thee.”
“If nothing else, permit them to leave, for they have no reason to remain,” implored Elijah.
But the angel was no longer there. Elijah dropped the bag he was carrying, sat in the middle of the road, and wept bitterly.
“What happened?” asked the woman and the boy, who had seen nothing.
“We’re going back,” he said. “Such is the Lord’s desire.”
HE WAS NOT ABLE to sleep well. He awoke in the night and sensed the tension in the air around him; an evil wind blew through the streets, sowing fear and distrust.
“In the love of a woman, I have discovered the love for all creatures,” he prayed silently. “I need her. I know that the Lord will not forget that I am one of His instruments, perhaps the weakest of those He has chosen. Help me, O Lord, because I must repose calmly amidst the battles.”
He recalled the governor’s comment about the uselessness of fear. Despite that, sleep eluded him. “I need energy and tranquillity; g
ive me rest while it is still possible.”
He thought of summoning his angel and talking with him for a while, but knowing he might be told things he had no wish to hear, he changed his mind. To relax, he went downstairs; the bags that the woman had prepared for their flight had not been undone.
He considered returning to his room. He remembered what the Lord had told Moses: “And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.”
They had not yet known each other. But it had been a wearying night, and this was not the moment to do so.
He decided to unpack the bags and return everything to its place. He discovered that, besides the few clothes she possessed, she was carrying the instruments for drawing the characters of Byblos.
He picked up a stylus, moistened a small clay tablet, and began to sketch a few letters; he had learned to write by watching the woman as she worked.
“What a simple and ingenious thing,” he thought, in an effort to turn his mind to other concerns. Often, on his way to the well for water, he had heard the women commenting, “The Greeks stole our most important invention,” but Elijah knew it was not that way: the adaptation they had made by including vowels had transformed the alphabet into something that the peoples of all nations could use. Furthermore, they called their collections of parchments biblia, in honor of the city where the invention had occurred.
The Greek biblia were written on animal hides. Elijah felt this was a very fragile way of storing words; hides were less resistant than clay tablets and could be easily stolen. Papyrus came apart after some handling and was destroyed by water. “Biblia and papyrus will not last; only clay tablets are destined to remain forever,” he reflected.
If Akbar survived for a time longer, he would recommend that the governor order his country’s entire history written on clay tablets and stored in a special room, so that generations yet to come might consult them. In this way, if one day the priests of Phoenicia, who kept in their memory the history of their people, were decimated, the feats of warriors and poets would not be forgotten.
He amused himself for some time by writing the same letters but by ordering them differently, forming several words. He was enchanted with the result. The task relaxed him, and he returned to his bed.
HE AWOKE some time later at the sound of the door to his room crashing to the floor.
“It’s not a dream. It’s not the armies of the Lord in combat.”
Shadows came from all sides, screaming like madmen in a language he did not understand.
“The Assyrians.”
Other doors fell, walls were leveled by powerful hammer blows, the shouts of the invaders mixed with cries for help rising from the square. He attempted to stand, but one of the shadows knocked him to the ground. A muffled sound shook the floor below.
“Fire,” Elijah thought. “They’ve set the house on fire.”
“It’s you,” he heard someone saying in Phoenician. “You’re the leader. Hiding like a coward in a woman’s house.”
He looked at the face of the person who had just spoken; flames lit the room, and he could see a man with a long beard, in a military uniform. Yes, the Assyrians had come.
“You invaded at night?” he asked, disoriented.
The man did not respond. Elijah saw the flash of swords drawn from their scabbards, and one of the warriors slashed his right arm.
Elijah closed his eyes; the scenes of an entire lifetime passed before him in a fraction of a second. He was once again playing in the street of the city of his birth, traveling to Jerusalem for the first time, smelling the odor of cut wood in the carpenter’s shop, marveling at the vastness of the sea and at the garments people wore in the great cities of the coast. He saw himself walking the valleys and mountains of the Promised Land, remembered when he first saw Jezebel, who seemed like a young girl and charmed all who came near. He witnessed a second time the massacre of the prophets, heard anew the voice of the Lord ordering him into the desert. He saw again the eyes of the woman who awaited him at the gates of Zarephath, which its inhabitants called Akbar, and understood that he had loved her from the first moment. Once more he climbed the Fifth Mountain, brought a child back to life, and was welcomed by the people as a sage and a judge. He looked at the heavens, where the constellations were rapidly changing position, was dazzled by the moon that displayed its four phases in a single instant, felt heat, cold, fall and spring, experienced the rain and the lightning’s flash. Clouds swept past in millions of different shapes, and the water of rivers again ran in their beds. He relived the day that he had seen the first Assyrian tent being erected, then the second, then several, many, the angels that came and went, the fiery sword on the road to Israel, sleepless nights, drawings on clay tablets, and—
He was back in the present. He thought about what was happening on the floor below; he had to save the widow and her son at any cost.
“Fire!” he told one of the enemy soldiers. “The house is on fire!”
He was not afraid; his only concern was for the widow and her child. Someone pushed his head against the floor, and he felt the taste of earth in his mouth. He kissed it, told it how much he loved it, and explained that he had done everything possible to avoid what was happening. He tried to wrest free of his captors, but someone had his foot on his chest.
“She must have fled,” he thought. “They wouldn’t harm a defenseless woman.”
A deep calm took hold of his heart. Perhaps the Lord had come to realize that he was the wrong man and had found another prophet to rescue Israel from sin. Death had finally come, in the way he had hoped, through martyrdom. He accepted his fate and waited for the fatal blow.
Seconds went by; the voices were still shouting, blood still ran from his wound, but the fatal blow had not come.
“Ask them to kill me at once!” he shouted, knowing that at least one of them spoke his language.
No one heeded his words. They were arguing heatedly, as if something had gone wrong. Some of the soldiers began kicking him, and for the first time Elijah noticed the instinct for survival reasserting itself. This created in him a sensation of panic.
“I can’t wish for life any longer,” he thought desperately. “Because I’m not leaving this room alive.”
But nothing happened. The world seemed to be suspended endlessly in that confusion of shouts, noises, and dust. Perhaps the Lord had done as He had with Joshua and time had stood still amid the combat.
That was when he heard the woman’s screams from below. With an effort surpassing human strength, Elijah pushed aside two of the guards and struggled to his feet, but he was quickly struck down; a soldier kicked him in the head, and he fainted.
A FEW MINUTES LATER he recovered consciousness. The Assyrians had dragged him into the street.
Still dizzy, he raised his head; every house in the neighborhood was in flames.
“An innocent, helpless woman is caught in there! Save her!”
Cries, people running in every direction, confusion everywhere. He tried to rise but was struck down again.
“Lord, Thou canst do with me as Thou wilt, for I have dedicated my life and my death to Thy cause,” Elijah prayed. “But save the woman who took me in!”
Someone raised him by his arms.
“Come and see,” said the Assyrian officer who knew his language. “You deserve it.”
Two guards seized him and pushed him toward the door. The house was rapidly being devoured by flames, and the light from the fire illuminated everything around it. He heard cries coming from all sides: children sobbing, old men begging for forgiveness, desperate women searching for their children. But he had ears only for the pleas for help of the woman who had afforded him shelter.
“What is happening? A woman and child are inside! Why have you done this to them?”
“Because she tried to hide the governor of Akbar.”
“I’m not the
governor! You’re making a terrible mistake!”
The Assyrian officer pushed him toward the door. The ceiling had collapsed in the fire, and the woman was half-buried in the debris. Elijah could see only her arm, moving desperately from side to side. She was asking for help, begging them not to let her be burned alive.
“Why spare me,” he implored, “and do this to her?”
“We’re not going to spare you, but we want you to suffer as much as possible. Our general died without honor, stoned to death, in front of the city walls. He came in search of life and was condemned to death. Now you will have the same fate.”
Elijah struggled desperately to free himself, but the guards carried him away. They passed through the streets of Akbar, in infernal heat; the soldiers were sweating heavily, and some of them appeared shocked at the scene they had just witnessed. Elijah thrashed about, clamoring against the heavens, but the Assyrians were as silent as the Lord Himself.
They arrived at the square. Most of the buildings in the city were ablaze, and the sound of flames mingled with the cries of Akbar’s inhabitants.
“How good that death still exists.”
Since that day in the stable, how often Elijah had thought this!
The corpses of Akbar’s warriors, most of them without uniforms, were spread out on the ground. He saw people running in every direction, not knowing where they were going, not knowing what they sought, guided by nothing more than the necessity of pretending they were doing something, fighting against death and destruction.
“Why do they do that?” he thought. “Don’t they see the city is in the hands of the enemy and there is nowhere to flee?” Everything had happened very quickly. The Assyrians had taken advantage of their large superiority in numbers and had been able to spare their warriors from combat. Akbar’s soldiers had been exterminated almost without a struggle.
