Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  My eyes opened; suddenly I was completely awake. I’d never even thought of that, of me not being in my own body. Maybe because to me, wherever I was felt like my body. It was almost as though other people’s skins were leotards I climbed into. They fit that well around me. A trembling started in my throat as I rolled over and looked at him. The starlight fell on his face from above, casting shadows of his lashes on his cheeks. His hair was dark against the bleached white of the pallet. “Are you saying … what I think you are saying?” I asked. I heard the wobble in my voice.

  Mimi always used to say that there were Coca-Cola moments in life. Snippets of time, which for however long one lived, one would recall fondly over a Coca-Cola. My Mimi loved her Coca-Colas. We would sit on her screened porch in the afternoon when I was at university, and she would relate her Coca-Cola moments:

  When she married her first husband; when she received word that he’d been killed and almost lost her first baby because of it. When she’d met the love of her life, my dad’s stepfather. When she’d heard my father speak his first sentence of Arabic and realized he would never stay at home, that he was born to be a nomad. The first time she’d flown anywhere, which was to Greece, to see my parents married. The first time she’d seen me, with green eyes so big, she said, that no one had to tell her who was her grandbaby.

  All of those were Coca-Cola moments.

  Cheftu’s eyes opened. “What do you think I say?”

  I searched his face, felt my life turn a corner: a feeling that would stay with me always, a definite Coca-Cola moment. “Whatever it is, my answer is yes.”

  Then I was flat on my back, my husband looming over me. The lines of his body, the muscles hardened by wielding a scythe, by throwing sheaves of barley, by holding me, were sharply drawn. His eyes were dark, so I couldn’t see them clearly. But I felt his desire, felt my body flood with my own. “My answer is also yes, chérie. However, it is a delayed yes. I will not have my child, children, should le bon Dieu bless us so well, born a slave.”

  I felt myself choking back disappointment, while at the same time being relieved.

  “I wish to see our lives commingled in this way, but not while these chains still bind me.” His voice was hard now; I knew there would be no swaying him. “However, this time, I take the prevention.”

  “You what?” I asked, completely startled. “It would be foolhardy of me to love you so often, so well, if these are my desires. Therefore I inquired of a wise-woman what could prevent me from getting you with child, but allow me to love you. She gave me an herb, to lessen the potency of my seed.” He pressed my face into his shoulder. “Don’t cry, beloved,” he said. “We will be free, somehow, soon.”

  His kisses were soft. I didn’t know why I was crying, but the moment felt cheated. So much for Coca-Colas.

  When I got to work the next morning, everyone was running behind Shana’s schedule. I found myself back at the millstone, with a double order for the day. I gathered that my dates could wait. ’Sheva and I were almost finished with the flour when Shana came up to me. Immediately my mind raced: Had I broken anything? Offended anyone? Nothing came to mind, but that didn’t mean much either.

  “You!” she said, but it was lacking her customary virulence. “Come with me. ’Sheva, take over.”

  The mushroom nodded slowly as Shana yanked me up. “You will need to wash first,” she said, looking me over. I tugged at the edge of my dress. I’d bathed yesterday, I’d sponged off this morning, but my hair was awful. She sighed as she commanded me to follow her.

  We went inside the palace, then stepped into the women’s quarters.

  Once inside, Shana bellowed for water, for clothes. What was going on? Did I dare ask? “Strip,” she said. “You are going before haMelekh. As you are now, you would offend him and reflect poorly on me.”

  “The king?” I repeated, stunned.

  She glared at me. “Ken. The king.”

  I was stripped, submerged, washed, dried, my hair combed and braided. Then Shana reluctantly gave me another dress. It was lovely, a dark green with a band of blue. The sash matched, with tiny stripes of blue, green, and gold.

  “This is yours,” she said, handing me the gold jewelry I’d had when I arrived. The Pelesti stuff was beautiful, intricately worked arabesques and swirls that repeated throughout the four strands of the necklace. The earrings were heavy; in fact, they had dusted my shoulders.

  It was not the attire of a slave. “Todah,” I said, “but these are from another life.”

  Her gaze touched the piercing in my ear, the length of chain that looped from one to the other. I kept the links beneath my clothing, against my skin for protection. Shana gestured to one of the women, who adjusted my hair, then tied on a blue headband to hold the arrangement in place. Why were they doing this? I was a slave!

  “Would you like these?” I asked a moment later, holding out the earrings and necklace to Shana.

  She blushed! The lines on her face lifted as she reverently touched the necklace. “I have never seen such fragile stuff,” she said softly.

  “Then take it, for yourself,” I urged.

  She smiled. “The days for this are in the past for me.”

  “B’seder,” I said, handing my jewelry back to her. “As they are for me.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then snapped back into Shana mode. “Well, don’t stand there! You!” She turned to the others, gesturing toward me. “Isn’t she lovely? A vision! See? This is how well Shana takes care of the palace and her slaves. Now go,” she told me. “The audience chamber.”

  I opened my mouth to ask where it was, but she said, “Don’t worry where the room is, your husband awaits you outside the doors.”

  Feeling a little like Cinderella—had she felt this dazed?—I walked through the harem quickly. Cheftu was standing, as clean and starched as I was, in the hallway. His kilt was tightly wrapped and brightly colored. His hair almost touched his shoulders now, and his beard had been trimmed. His sidelocks fell beside his ears in inky black curls. He too was bewildered at this request, this treatment.

  He held out his hand for me. “What does this mean?” I asked as we walked away hand in hand.

  “You!” I heard before we took three steps. I turned automatically. Shana bore down on us, a determined expression on her face. “Maybe these are better for your life now,” she stated, her hand outstretched.

  She handed me a pair of hoop earrings. They were bulkier than the jewelry I had had, but they had been given some kind of finish that made the gold seem to glitter. “They are beautiful,” I said, trying them on immediately. They didn’t catch in the slave chain that went from the piercing in the center of the cartilage in the back of my ear to the other ear.

  She beamed. “Shana takes care of her own,” she said. “Now go! You will be late!”

  Giddy, we walked down the hallways. As slaves we never saw these parts of the palace. Normally we kept to the back passages that linked the house from room to room, out of sight, to maintain the illusion of graciousness. Hauling chamber pots through the front hallways would be very un-cool.

  Thank God I’d never pulled that assignment.

  We halted outside the doors to the audience chamber, looking for the chamberlain. No one showed up, so Cheftu knocked hesitantly.

  “What is this about?” I asked. “I have no idea. It is odd that they should want to see me.” He looked at me. “I bade them send for you.”

  “Why is that odd? You are extremely talented, I’m surprised they haven’t asked earlier.”

  “Beloved, by the time I came here with you I was already a slave, nachon?”

  That’s right. No one knew that Cheftu was a physician or a former lord of Egypt or a scribe or any of it. “Have you enjoyed working in the fields?” I asked.

  We heard a call from inside to enter. Cheftu looked over his shoulder as he pushed open the wooden doors on their leather hinges. “Immensely.” He shook his head, suddenly remote. “I do not
know if I ever want to practice medicine again.” Before I could respond to this extraordinary statement, the door swung open.

  It was a lousy excuse for an audience chamber. Dark, low ceilinged, and small, it looked more like a room in the Bastille. N’tan lounged in his white robe. Dadua sat opposite Yoav, deep in thought over a game board. In one corner a girl rewired her kinor. In another corner Avgay’el wove, throwing the shuttle and comb with silent efficiency. This was the private chamber of the king of Israel? It made the rest of Mamre look nearly cosmopolitan.

  “Your slave is Egyptian, isha?” Yoav asked me with no preamble. My slave? I was a slave. They stared at me until I remembered that technically Cheftu was my slave. Sort of. “Uh, ken,” I said, then darted a glance at Cheftu.

  “Then ask him if he has ever heard rumor of gold in the desert.”

  Did they think Cheftu couldn’t speak their language? Did Cheftu want me to let them know he understood? He made the slightest negative movement. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want them to know, but I translated the question exactly. He answered in fluid Egyptian: “Which desert?”

  They exchanged looks after I relayed his response. “The desert of Midian.”

  I translated, while trying not to sound so bewildered. “ Lo, he has not heard of such a thing,” I said.

  “Does he know the legend of how the tribes fled his homeland?”

  Were they talking about the Exodus? Would the Egyptians pass down a tale of their own defeat? Not hardly! I translated, and Cheftu responded that he, as an Egyptian, had never heard such tales. However, he had been enslaved with an Apiru man, so he’d heard the stories that way.

  “Apiru!” N’tan scoffed.

  Cheftu and I exchanged glances, for “Apiru” was the term the Egyptians had used for the Israelites. I licked my lips and spoke. “To the Egyptians, you are Apiru.”

  Yoav looked straight at me. “Apiru are a distant branch,” he said. “It is a derogatory term for those who weren’t part of the covenant our forefathers made with our mountain god when they were at his home.”

  Were they talking about God on Mount Sinai? “They aren’t really considered citizens,” N’tan said. “We share Avraham as a forebear and they are circumcised, but they stayed here while Yacov and his tribe went to Egypt and became enslaved.”

  So they were subcitizens because they had the sense to stay out of slavery?

  “Does your slave know his way through the Sinai?” Yoav asked.

  The direction they were going with this was becoming clear. Sinai, Midian. I repeated the question, and Cheftu hesitated. Neither of us knew how to handle this. “A little ways,” I said, translating his response.

  At the game board Dadua triumphed over Yoav. With a shout of laughter he sat back. “Tell him the story, Yoav,” he commanded.

  As I suspected, Yoav looked straight at Cheftu and began the tale: in Egyptian.

  “Before generations ago, my people were slaves to yours.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Strange how the river runs back on itself, aii? Our God was smiting the gods of the Egyptians. Finally, your pharaoh Thutmosis agreed to let my people leave. But he did this only after much grief, many plagues and poxes were visited on your people.”

  Cheftu’s expression was inscrutable. But for the first time I noticed that although he wore the clothes, even the hair, of the tribesmen, he still looked foreign. The man was an Egyptian, regardless of his being born a Frenchman, despite whatever costume he wore. I was in love with an ancient Egyptian. Cheftu nodded once, an acknowledgment of Yoav’s words.

  “Because of the great chaos and grief of our leaving, we went to our neighbors, who were Egyptians, and asked for their gold.”

  “After your god had poxed … my people?” Cheftu clarified.

  “They were willing to pay anything,” Yoav said, “just to have us leave. So: The descendants of every tribesman, who had entered Egypt free but poor, left four hundred years later free and wealthy.” Yoav smiled again, a flash of teeth in his dark beard. I could hear the whisper and whack of Avgay’el at the loom. Dadua was scrutinizing Cheftu, not Yoav.

  N’tan was watching us all. Whom did he look like?

  “Loaded with this gold, we traveled down through the Sinai, then our god opened the Red Sea, so we walked across on dry land.”

  “You have a powerful god,” Cheftu said politely. He was a good actor; you’d never guess that he worshiped this same God. Or that with his own eyes he’d seen what was merely legend to these people.

  “So,” Yoav said, sitting back. “Pharaoh changed his mind, sent his horses and chariots after us. They drowned there.”

  I remembered it well. I’d been there, rooted lichenlike to the shore. I’d been horrified, terrified. I still felt a little sick and uncertain at the recollection. This was not a calm, reasonable-style god. This was God, master of the universe, commander on high, all-cap G-O-D.

  He kinda scared me.

  “My people danced for joy on the opposite shores, then moved into the desert, where the leader, haMoshe, had lived before. His father-in-law raised sheep there, so he took the tribes through. Well …” Yoav’s arrogance was fading. “They camped at the foot of a mountain, Horeb, where haMoshe had received communication from Shaday before. He brought all the people there, for that was his task: to go to Egypt, get the people, and bring them back.”

  Yoav called for wine; instinctively I jumped, but Cheftu laid a calming hand on me. I wasn’t here as a slave. Don’t act like one, I chided myself. Yoav sipped from his cup, then proceeded with the rest of the story.

  “HaMoshe went to meet with God. He took with him the seventy elders of the tribes, the zekenim, leaving behind his brother Aharon and his sister Miryam.” Everyone in the room fell silent. He took the seventy on the first trip? Yoav’s expression was troubled; he wouldn’t meet our eyes.

  N’tan sighed and took over the storytelling. In Aramaic, or Akkadian, or Hebrew or whatever language this was. Was this also a test? Did they expect Cheftu to know this language, too? Did he? “The people were scared. They had lived in cities, now they were in the desert. They were used to the lushness of the Nile, having water whenever they wanted it, food for the taking. Here, there was nothing but sand and the occasional palm tree. Then the leaders all disappear and are gone for days, then weeks. The people are scared.”

  “They went to Aharon,” Dadua continued, interrupting N’tan. “They asked him to make them a statue. Something they could see, so they would know not to be afraid. With the statue they could pray, beg for the safety of haMoshe and the zekenim.

  “Aharon felt uncomfortable, so he tried to put them off by asking for all their gold. Now, when the gold had been brought from Egypt, most of it had been put into a communal storage. Small things, like earrings or bracelets, that were wearable and easily transportable, were kept by individuals. But golden images, lamps, boxes, all of these were put into one cart, kept protected in one sealed tent.

  “Aharon thought the tribesmen would not part with their earrings and bracelets, thus he would not have to make this statue.”

  “He was wrong,” N’tan said, interrupting Dadua in return. “They brought him their gold. He then tried to put them off again, but they were building an altar, then a fire to melt the gold. A few of the goldsmiths had learned their trade in Egypt.

  “So: They made beer the Egyptian way, dressed as they had seen Egyptians do for generations, then proceeded to craft an image of a god. An Egyptian god.”

  Yoav cut N’tan off. It was a strategic move, so that the tribesmen’s errors wouldn’t be revealed. The general spoke in Egyptian again. “The rest of the story matters little. What is essential is that much of the gold was not used, either in the building of the idol, the subsequent punishment, or in the building of the Mercy Seat, our totem, and its implements.”

  “That,” Dadua said, “is why N’tan goes to the desert. When he returns, we shall bring the Mercy Seat into the city, claim Jebus as its home. But we ne
ed the gold,” the king said, staring at Cheftu. “I cannot spare Yoav; no one else speaks Egyptian and also understands our language. You do understand our tongue?” he asked, suddenly uncertain.

  “Ken,” Cheftu said.

  Then why had I translated? They had tested me! Or had they tested Cheftu?

  “Between here and there are many Egyptian outposts. Though Pharaoh seems to care nothing for what happens outside his river valley, still we should be cautious. It would be better to have an Egyptian with us, who can speak to them.” Dadua’s gaze was calculating. “It is obvious you have not always been a slave.”

  Cheftu stood motionless. “Also, as an Egyptian, you know things about the gods of gold, the statues that we will unearth. You read and write, I have been told?”

  Who had told him that? I wondered.

  “Hieroglyphs, cuneiform, the language of the sea peoples,” Cheftu said.

  Dadua glared at Yoav. “Why have we wasted this man in the fields?” he said. “I could have used a scribe!” His dialect was different from what he usually spoke, but I understood it still. I looked at Cheftu from the corner of my eye. Had he also understood? Did he have a lexicon, too? How did he know these languages? All of them?

  Cheftu was as expressionless as a tomb painting. And as beautiful.

  “You are a slave, thus could easily be commanded to go with N’tan,” Dadua continued. “But instead I say to you that you are invited to go with him. The journey will be a few months, back in time for the grape harvest, the arrival of the Seat.”

  Dadua’s words penetrated my brain: Cheftu would be going away? For how many months? Would I get to go? We’d be apart, again? I felt tears welling in my eyes. This couldn’t be happening, not when we’d come so far to be together. Not when we’d endured slavery to be together. Please, no.

  Cheftu bowed his head. “Ha-adoni honors me, but the fields and coming home to my wife content me now.”