The Esther Paradigm (A Contemporary Christian Romance)

by Sarah Monzon

  Two days I’d wrestled. I should be there. My place was by my husband’s side. Especially now as he waded through a difficult time. I should be there to give him strength. To comfort him.

  But he’d left me behind.

  I hated the insecurities and their ugly voices that shredded my confidence. In no way should I take it personally. His mother had been ill, and they’d needed to leave immediately for the hospital to get her the care she needed. With the three of them on the single bench seat, there would’ve been no room in the cab for me.

  Except, how long, really, would it have taken to fetch me? I would’ve run with all my strength to get there as fast as possible. Minutes, surely. That was all sending word would’ve delayed them. And I’d have gladly hopped into the bed of the truck. Would’ve been happy to breathe in the dust kicked up by the tires if it meant I could help Karim during this difficult time.

  But I’d been left behind. Without a word. Without a care?

  The insecurity again. Because if Karim hadn’t cared, he wouldn’t have appointed Daher over my safety.

  But had it been duty or something more that had caused him to momentarily think of me before he’d left?

  Fingertips touched my arm, and I looked to my right.

  Radina cocked her head as if wondering at my thoughts, but only asked, “Are you ready?”

  Life had surprised me too often lately to say I’d ever be ready again. But I couldn’t voice that, so I smiled and nodded.

  Date harvest started today. A day that spelled hard work but was accompanied by joviality and family. Besides my mother, whose ribs still hadn’t healed enough for her to offer much help, I was without any family and felt no reason to laugh.

  I almost felt robbed. This was to be the first memories made with my mother-in-law. She would teach me things as a woman among the tribe that I hadn’t learned as a child. We’d share stories of Karim and bond under the shade of the wide palm canopy.

  Would we ever have such an opportunity now?

  Jesus, You are the Great Physician. Please heal her. Give her more time to know You…give me more time to know her.

  We made our way to the grove, both clans already present at the trunks of the towering trees. Yara looked up from her work and smiled.

  I tried to switch my thinking, focus on the task directly before me instead of what was taking place in a hospital a hundred kilometers away. While I’d helped with the harvest in my youth, it’d been some years since I’d had anything to do with the fruit besides eat it.

  Radina led me to a row and stared up at the wide fronds. “These trees belong to your husband and your tribe.”

  My eyes widened. I’d thought all of the trees in the grove were owned by Daher and his people.

  “I’m not sure how long the trees have been in his family’s procession. Perhaps they were the ones who’d originally planted them.” She pointed to the next row over. “Those are the trees belonging to the poor.”

  “The poor?” How could the poor afford date palm trees?

  “Yes. We have around one hundred trees in this grove. Ten are dedicated to those who work within the grove year round, and ten are dedicated to the poor. It is what Allah would have us do.”

  Sounded like tithe and the biblical decrees to help those in times of need.

  Radina turned to me. “How many years has it been since you’ve helped with the palms?”

  My forehead scrunched as I tried to think back.

  “That long?” Radina chuckled. She looked back at the row of trees and reached out to touch one of the thick, scratchy brown pieces that made up the trunk. “Did you know these palms do more than just provide food for our tables and shade for our heads? On the coast, they use the trunks to create boats for fishing. The women use the branches as brooms for their homes. The leaves can be woven into rope and bags, and the trunks themselves make excellent seating.” She looked back at me. “They take care of us, and in return, we take care of them.”

  I shielded my eyes against the sun as I craned my neck and peered up into the fronds, trying to look at the tree and see all that Radina did. Large clusters of purple fruit hung low, heavy like a pregnant woman ready to deliver. My mouth watered to sink my teeth into the fresh flesh. Bedouins ate dates in many ways. Shegig—dried without the stone but the skin still on. Aguwa—skins removed, the naked, soft fruit mashed with sesame seeds. My favorite, though, was a fresh fruit fallen to the ground accompanied by a strong Arabic coffee.

  “They are just like us, those trees.”

  I swallowed a laugh, not seeing the similarities. Unless she meant we both had prickly edges. Or that we required great care to grow.

  “Palm trees are dioecious. They are either male or female.”

  My brows rose. One didn’t think of gender when it came to plant life. “Really?”

  “They need each other for survival, for their seeds to scatter and germinate. If it wasn’t for the workers who remove the pollen from the male trees at the exact time and then hand pollinate the flowers of the female tree at least three times, there would be no harvest. No ripe fruit ready for the picking.”

  A slight breeze picked up and blew through the fingerlike branches, causing them to rub together and make a shushing sound, drawing my attention back to them. My mind worked to wrap itself around Radina’s words and the deeper meaning within them. The fact she used her beloved palms as an example of an object lesson was clear. The meaning, however…I still struggled to unravel.

  She wasn’t the first to use a tree as a lesson, and that was the direction my thoughts took. To the two parables Jesus told of fig trees. One budding and one barren. The buds of the tree were a sign of readiness. The barren tree, however, had had three years in which to bear fruit and still produced nothing. Frustrated, the owner commanded the vinedresser to cut the worthless tree down. To which the vinedresser pleaded to give the tree one more year to bear fruit.

  The three lessons didn’t have anything to do with one another. Did they?

  I studied Radina, surprised to find she returned the scrutiny with equal intensity, as if measuring me by some invisible scale. With a softening around her shoulders, she reached into a woven bag slung across her chest and removed a small leather-bound book.

  My breath caught. It couldn’t be. Frantically, I looked to the left and right. No one paid us any attention.

  “You are not the first Christian that has come and tended to my tree.” With reverence, she caressed the top cover of the Bible. A book illegal to possess, the consequences of ownership severe. She raised her face to me, her dark eyes clear. “Three times these palms need pollination to bear fruit.” She took a step toward me and pressed the book into my hand, keeping hers on top so that the Bible was sandwiched between our palms. “Help me to bear fruit, Hannah.”

  With clarity, like a curtain dropping to reveal the masterpiece it’d covered, I realized Radina was the budding fig and I the barren. The revelation reverberated inside me like the deep resonation of a bass drum. Almost an entire life living among the tribe, and I couldn’t conjure up one time in which I’d shared my faith. Not verbally. Not like this. Not even with Yara. Her conversion had been a result of my mother’s loving administrations, not mine.

  I’d taken care to live my faith, evangelize through friendship, but now I saw, like the changing images of a PowerPoint presentation, the moments of opportunity I’d let slip by without a word about a loving Savior who had died for all our sins. And their need of Him.

  With humility, I laid my hand on top of hers. “It would be my honor.”

  She smiled with a radiant glow that almost had me believing I could hear the angels rejoicing in heaven. “Date harvest in the morning, school lessons in the afternoon, and”—she wiggled her brows—“should we say harvest lessons in the evenings?”

  Laughter—something I’d been sure only minutes before wouldn’t be a part of my day—tumbled from my lips. “I can’t think of anything better.”

  I
s this the reason I was left behind, Lord? Was it Your doing all along?

  “Good.” She slipped her Bible back into her bag and then reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me to a group of women sitting in a circle. A large mound of dates still connected to the bunch residing in the middle of them all. “Now, let’s see how many of these bags you can fill.” She handed me a large yellow plastic bag and took a seat on the ground.

  I shook the bag out to fill it with air and opened it at the mouth before sitting. Reaching forward, I grabbed a cluster of dates and then began pulling the individual fruits from the strands.

  Ahead of me, a man stood at the base of a tree, a long piece of rope in his hands. He wound the rope around itself to create a type of harness, which he placed at his lower back and the back of his thighs before reaching the rope around the base of the tree. Secured, he flicked the rope up, then placed his bare feet on the trunk. With agility and speed that surprised me, he climbed the tree that reached straight into the air, yet another rope dangling from his hand. He looped the loose rope around a thick branch, then hand over hand pulled the rope, a wide basket attached to the other end. A long knife with a hooked end that I hadn’t noticed before appeared, and he sawed at the stalks bowed under the weight of the ripe purple fruits. The date bunch dangled in his hand as he lowered his arm, releasing the fruit into the basket. Down the basket scaled into the arms of another man, who emptied its contents, the basket rising again for another load.

  “Not those.” Radina’s words drew back my attention.

  She nodded her head at the dates in my grip, and I looked down.

  “Separate the yellow ones from the rest that go into the sack. They’ve not fully ripened yet and will need to be left out in the heat to do so.”

  I placed the two unripe dates to the side and slid another three into my bag, feeling the stares of the other women. Their bangles tinkled against each other as their hands moved to separate the fruits from the strands.

  I’d become the center of the gossip mill in Radina’s clan the same as I’d become in my own. That familiar feeling of self-doubt stole over me. Were they only curious, or did they see me as unworthy? My lips wobbled as I attempted to smile at two of the women across from me who openly stared. They quickly dropped their gazes back to their work.

  I scanned the circle. Still forced my smile. Resemblances could be seen anywhere if a person had their eyes open wide enough to see them. Women, all working together, their hands making deft movements in a pattern they’d perfected over years of practice. Though the setting was different, the clothing, the language, the food, I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance to a southern front porch, rocking chairs, and women shucking peas out of their shells.

  We were all more alike than some liked to acknowledge. Did these women see that?

  Radina’s gaze met mine, her smile warm before returning to her work. Were more of these women like Radina? Ready to hear of Jesus and His love?

  Dear Lord, give me the words.

  Chapter 22

  Karim

  “How is she today, Doctor?” My question preceded me as I followed the doctor from my mother’s curtained-off hospital room. She could still hear our conversation past the fabric partition, but perhaps separating the physician from her keen, laser-like gaze would allow him to shake off whatever power she held over him.

  In any other situation, watching this knowledgeable, grown man shrink a little under my mother’s glare would be humorous. The men of my tribe had become used to her ways and accepted them because of the power she held in our family unit. This man, however… It was as if it were his own mother in the cot, ready to swat his backside if he spoke something against her wishes. Like the fact that she was ill and needed to stay at the hospital to regain her strength and fight the infection. So he’d acted like a teenager about to get disciplined whenever he was in her presence and been tight lipped around her, causing Ethan and I to stalk him in the halls just to get straight information out of him about her condition and progress.

  He turned and tapped a pen to the clipboard in his hands. “Her oxygen saturation levels are rising, which means we should be able to take her off the ventilator later today, if things continue to progress the way they have. Her body is responding well to the antibiotics, and she hasn’t had a return of fever for the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Does that mean we’ll be able to take her home today?”

  The doctor’s gaze moved to the partition, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. “Even though she’s demanded that very thing, I’m afraid she must remain here at least one more day, perhaps two.” He looked back at me. “I’m sorry.”

  I scrubbed a hand across my cheek, my beard scratching my palm. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  He nodded, then turned and strode down the hall to another patient.

  I let my head fall, my chin against my chest. The muscles in the back of my neck stretched, and I took a deep breath, hoping some of the stress built there would leave on an exhale.

  Unfortunately, when I raised my head, I still felt wound tight.

  Ethan approached, two steaming Styrofoam cups in his hands. He held one out to me.

  Warmth seeped into my fingers as I held the cup to my lips and took a long drink. “Thank you.”

  He stared at me over the rim of his cup as he sipped at his coffee. Licked his lips as he lowered his hand. Silence enveloped us. He assessed me as if trying to uncover a diagnosis from my expression.

  “Worry never solved anything, you know.” A small smile tipped his lips. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Why worry if you pray, and why pray if you worry?’”

  Catchy, but his grandmother wasn’t responsible for the survival of an entire clan of people, a dying culture we fought to keep alive, a herd of livestock with a mysteries disease, a wife and in-laws who were being persecuted for their beliefs, and a mother who lay helpless on a hospital cot.

  My thoughts and responsibilities were weights I carried with chains around my neck, slumping my shoulders with each tick of my mental list. They all pressed in my mind, garnering for my attention, and here I was, helpless to address any of them.

  Ethan’s strong hand clasped my shoulder. “Everything will work out, son.”

  He couldn’t know that.

  As if reading my thoughts, he said, “I know, because I pray. I’ve given it all to God, and He’s big enough to take care of it.”

  “He’s shown you the future then?” I didn’t mean to be disrespectful in my sarcasm, but I’d prayed too. Five times a day, in fact. And yet I’d received no revelation from Allah. The sheep were still sick. Hannah and her parents were still in danger. And now my mother was in the hospital. Even so, I knew Allah blessed me. I continued to have faith in his word.

  But the truth hadn’t altered. Prayer hadn’t changed my circumstances.

  Ethan tilted his head and regarded me with a secret smile. “The big-picture future, yes. How all of this will turn out, no. Still, I know, in the end, everything will work out. Even if it isn’t the way we think or hope.”

  I had no wish to enter into a religious debate with the man. Especially not here in public where anyone could hear us. Ethan took too many risks. If he wished to believe in Jesus as the son of God, that was his religious right. But in a country where such talk could get you in severe trouble, he should keep his personal beliefs to himself.

  Thankfully, Hannah had already learned that lesson. She lived a faithful life, but I’d never heard her trying to convince another that her religion was the only right one.

  What was she doing right then? Did she miss me like I did her? I’d never thought it possible, this feeling of restlessness I had simply because I was away from my wife. I found myself reaching for her in the night, only to have my fingertips graze the cool sheet beside me. With equal parts cruelty and kindness, my memory reminded me of the feel of her skin, the smell of her hair, the sound of her laughter. The last few days I’d
walked around as if part of me was missing, and my soul ached to be reunited with hers.

  The tense muscles in my neck loosened as I thought of Hannah. Imagined her among the women harvesting dates waiting for my arrival so she could return to her place in my arms.

  Ethan chuckled besides me, and my face heated under his knowing look. “Missing my daughter?”

  I cleared my throat, embarrassed and ready to deny the claim, but he held up a hand.

  “It’s good. That you miss her, I mean. Makes me feel a little better, actually.” He leaned back and hooked a finger over his chin, his eyes narrowing as his gaze probed my face. Then he laughed. Not a light snicker but a deep roar that shook his belly. When he’d regained his composure he said, “I can’t believe I never saw it before. I must have been blind!”

  What was he talking about? “Saw what?”

  He shook his head like he hadn’t heard me. “All these years and I never saw it.”

  At the risk of sounding like a toddler asking a parent the same question over and over, I repeated myself. “Saw what?”

  His head turned right to left again before resting in the center, his face bemused with a smirk.

  My chin dropped and brows rose, silently demanding an explanation.

  “That you love her. Have loved her since you were children.”

  I brushed off his assessment. “Of course I have always loved her. We grew up together as the best of friends.”

  His eyes softened. “No, Karim. You love her. She is, and has always been, your treasure, has she not?”

  His gaze held mine captive. Wouldn’t let go. Hadn’t I said the same things to Hannah on our wedding night? I’d meant them, but as I let Ethan’s words soak into my conscious, they grabbed hold of my center.

  And then it all came to me. Like a blast of cold air on a hot summer day. The rightness that had settled into my bones that first time I’d swept her up into my arms and carried her to her parents after the scorpion sting. The way I’d always sought her out because simply being with her made me feel better than how I felt without her. The way her pain had been my pain. Her joy my joy.