Sarah (8 page)

SHE kept on walking, recognizing nothing around her. The houses here were nothing but overlapping cubes, with single-leaf wooden doors or sometimes just curtains over the entrance, and walls covered with white cob.

There were many people on the streets, common people wearing tunics or loincloths, with wicker sandals on their feet, their calves gray with dust. They chatted, laughed, called to one another. Some carried baskets or sacks, goaded asses, pushed carts loaded with rushes or watermelons. A few people, both women and men, looked at Sarai in surprise, but with no real curiosity. For her, everything was strange and astonishing.

In the whole of her young life, she had left the royal city a mere half dozen times, crossing the river in a boat with her father, heading west to the great temples of Eridu. But the lower city, the northern city, was somewhere the lords never went. They felt nothing but contempt and distrust toward it. The handmaids told stories about how at night the streets swarmed with black-skinned demons, animals with more than one body, fierce jaws, and claws, and other horrors straight out of the caves of the underworld.

The men and women of the lower city were the subjects of the Lords of Ur, but never saw their faces. Whenever Ichbi Sum-Usur needed craftsmen or merchants from among them, he would ask his scribes, his foremen or his regents to find them.

Sarai just had to look around her to realize that she would find neither help nor shelter. Who would welcome a girl from the royal city, a runaway, moreover, without fearing the wrath of the lords? It wouldn't stay secret for long, because there were no secrets in the lower city. People spent as much time on the streets as they did inside their own homes. The doors of the houses were usually left open, and the inner courtyards could be seen by anyone passing by. The streets and alleys were cluttered with children, geese, dogs, and even pigs, and strewn with refuse. But nobody seemed to mind. They all went about their business, their mouths wide open, bustling unconcerned about the stalls where everything was bought and sold: food, rope, fabrics, sacks of grain, even asses. All around was the smell of rotting vegetables, of meat and fish exposed to the heat, mingled with the stench of excrement—the excrement of asses and children—not yet absorbed by the dusty ground. A stench so suffocating that Sarai had to hold her veil over her mouth to breathe. She was the only one doing so, but everyone was too busy to pay her any attention.

She was suddenly startled by a cry: “Child, child!” An old woman sat in a doorway, smiling—or grinning—at her, her face nothing but wrinkles, her eyes almost invisible, her lack of teeth revealing a disgustingly pink tongue. She wagged a crooked finger at Sarai, beckoning her to come closer.

“Herbs, my child, herbs! Do you want any of my herbs?”

A dozen small baskets were lined up along the wall beside her, crammed with leaves, seeds of all colors, stones, crystals of gum. Sarai wanted to run away, but the old woman's eyes held her back.

“Herbs or something else? Come here, child, don't be afraid!”

Her voice became softer. There was even a touch of kindness in it. Were luck and the gods smiling on her? Sarah wondered. Perhaps the old woman could find her shelter for the night? What could a woman like her fear? But her next question froze Sarai's blood.

“Do you need something, goddess? Anything you want, Kani Alk-Nàa can sell it to you . . .”

Why did the woman call her “goddess”? Had she guessed she was from the royal city? Or was she simply mocking her? Feigning indifference, Sarai bent over the baskets. They not only contained herbs and seeds, but animal skeletons, fetuses, skulls, dried entrails, and the gods knew what else! She was outside the lair of a witch, a
kassaptu!

The old woman noticed her expression of disgust and let out a piercing laugh. “You're a long way from home, goddess! Make sure the demons of the night don't eat you!”

Sarai straightened up, fear in her belly, and ran away.

Behind her, the high walls of Ur towered like mountains, their tops bathed in the ocher light of dusk: impossible to get back inside now until dawn. Above the walls, only the upper terraces of the ziggurat were visible, the dark crown of the gardens, the Sublime Bedchamber with its lapis lazuli reflecting the sun like a daytime star. There was no more beautiful sight in all the world.

Sarai ran without looking back, thinking of her garden, her new bedchamber, the softness of her bed. She slowed down. Night was coming on fast, like the sea coming to drown the shore.

She knew that if she had stayed in her father's palace, she would by now be with a husband who didn't care about her and would be in a hurry to get it over with, and there would be nothing beautiful about her chamber or her bed. Yet tears welled up in her eyes. She felt a good deal less brave now.

“MAKE sure the demons of the night don't eat you!” the old woman had cried. The warning still echoed in Sarai's ears. The sun was disappearing beneath the rim of the world. She was finding it increasingly difficult to keep going. Her legs felt heavy. She had lost her beautiful kid sandals in the mud. Water slapped beneath her bare feet. The bottom of her tunic was soaked. Bulrushes struck her arms and shoulders.

She was wading along the riverbank without knowing how she had got there. She had followed an alley; the houses had become less frequent. She had hurried straight on, exhausted, too terrified to stop, still hoping to find something—a hut made out of bulrushes, a boat, a tree trunk, a hole in the ground—anything that could protect her. The cold and the night were pressing against the back of her neck.

Suddenly, her foot hit something hard. She felt a blow against her thigh, thought of the demons, and screamed in terror. Headfirst, she tipped over in the water. Her fingers sank into the mud. The torn fabric of her toga almost strangled her. Sarai pushed herself up until she was sitting, ready to face the most horrible of deaths.

But what she saw, standing outlined in the dim light, was not a monster but a man.

Perhaps not even a man: a boy. A head crowned by a halo of curly hair, a long, thin, but muscular body, naked but for a raw linen loincloth, legs black with mud up to the knees. In his left hand he carried a kind of cylindrical wicker basket, with animals moving about inside it. Sarai could barely make out his features. Only the gleam in his eyes as he stared at her.

He made a furious gesture with his arm, pointed at the river, and said something in a language she did not understand. Then he stopped speaking and took another, closer look at her.

She wiped the mud from her cheeks with her hand. Her tunic was torn, so she knelt in the water, covered herself as best she could with the soaked cloth, then finally stood up.

The boy was a head taller than her. He was watching her calmly, staring at her braids without a smile although she must have been a horrible sight.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, in her language this time. There was no harshness in his voice, only surprise and curiosity.

With the back of her wrist, Sarai again wiped her cheeks and eyelids. “What about you?” she asked in return.

He raised his basket and shook it. Inside it, two frogs with swollen necks blinked. Now she could see his face clearly, a narrow face with a high forehead and very arched eyebrows that almost met above a big curved nose. The slightly greenish brown of his eyes was translucent in the last light of day. His checks were covered with a sparse down. He had beautiful lips—big, full, shaped like wings—a prominent chin, and a thin neck. The skin between his shoulder blades was damp.

“I was fishing,” he said with a smile, and glanced at the river, which seemed to grow bigger as the night deepened. “It's the best time for frogs and crayfish. If nobody steps on you and screams.”

Sarai was sure of it now: He was a
mar.Tu
. One of those Amorites from the borders of the world, where the sun disappeared. A man who worshiped lesser gods and was never allowed to set foot in the royal city.

She shivered, the skin on her arms bristling in the cold. The wind rose, making the wet cloth cling to her body. Without knowing why, she felt a desire to tell the truth, to let this boy know who she was.

“My name is Sarai,” she said, in a low, frail voice, hardly pausing to take a breath. “My father, Ichbi Sum-Usur, is a lord of Ur. Today was the day a man was supposed to take me as his wife. He, too, is a lord of Ur. But when he looked at me, I knew I would never be able to live with him, in the same bed and the same chamber. I knew I would rather die than feel his hands on me. I thought I could hide in my house. But it wasn't possible. The handmaid who takes care of me knows all my hiding places. I wanted to throw myself from a wall and break my legs. I wasn't brave enough. I ran away. Now my father probably thinks his daughter is dead . . .”

The boy listened, looking now at her mouth, now at her braids. When she had stopped speaking, he said nothing at first. The darkness of the night seemed to rush toward them, transforming them into mere silhouettes under the countless stars.

“My name is Abram, son of Terah,” he said at last. “I am a
mar.Tu
. Our tents are five or six
ùs
farther north. You mustn't stay here, you'll catch cold.”

As he took a step toward her, she heard the noise of the water and jumped. He held out his hand. Palm to palm, he squeezed her hand with his own warm, slightly rough hand.

Firmly, but with a strange gentleness, he drew her after him. His gentleness made Sarai's whole body feel iridescent, from her thighs to deep in her chest.

“We have to find you a dry place, and make a fire,” he said, and his words brought tears of gratitude to her eyes. “The nights are cold at this time of the year. I don't suppose you know where to go. It isn't every day that the daughters of the lords of Ur get lost in the bulrushes by the river. I could take you to my father's tent. But he'd think I was bringing him a bride, and my brothers would be jealous. I'm not the eldest. Never mind, we'll find somewhere else.”

THE “somewhere” was just a sandy hillock. But the sand was warm and the hillock offered protection from the wind.

Abram seemed to be able to see in the dark. It did not take him long to collect some dry reeds and dead junipers, and he lit a fire by rubbing lichens and juniper twigs skillfully between his palms. The sight of the flames warmed Sarai just as much as their heat.

Abram continued to bustle about, constantly disappearing and coming back with more armfuls of reeds and dry shrubs. When there were enough of them, he crouched down without a word.

Now they could see each other much better. But as soon as their eyes met, they looked away again, embarrassed. For a long time they said nothing, warming themselves at the flames and watching the swirling sparks fly upward.

Sarai estimated that the young
mar.Tu
was about the same age as Kiddin. Probably not so strong, she thought, used more to running than fighting, her brother's favorite exercise. His hair made him look quite different, less noble, less proud, but she liked that.

Suddenly, Abram stood up, jolting the exhausted Sarai out of her torpor. “I'm going to the tents,” he said.

Sarai leaped to her feet. Abram laughed at the sight of her terrified face. He picked up his wicker basket and shook the frogs.

“Don't worry. I'm just going to find something to eat. I'm hungry, and you must be, too. What I've caught here isn't enough to feed us.”

As Sarai was sitting down again, annoyed at having shown fear, he smiled, mockingly. “Are you able to put wood on the fire?”

She merely shrugged.

“Perfect,” he said.

He examined the sky for a moment. The moon was already up. Sarai noted that he often looked up at the sky, as if he were looking for traces of the sun in the stars. Then he took a few steps, and vanished into the night. All Sarai could hear now was the wind in the bulrushes, the lapping of the river, and, far in the distance, from the lower city, the barking of dogs.