Sunrise on the Mediterranean (32 page)

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.”

Dadua’s black eyes glittered; it was his only outward sign of irritation. I suspected he didn’t hear
lo
too often. He spoke curtly, white teeth flashing in his russet beard. “Go to Midian and come back. Upon your return you will
be made a free man.”

Cheftu stiffened; if he’d been a dog, his ears would have perked up, his tail would have begun to wag.

A free man. His children wouldn’t be slaves. He would have standing in the community. He could control his own life. I knew
Cheftu, I knew this was the ultimate carrot, the seducer royale. Cheftu would have his freedom back; to get it he had only
to do what he’d longed to do from the moment he’d heard about it. He would travel to the mountain of God.

“Only if my wife is freed also,” he said.

Dadua glanced at me, then away. “Go, return a free man. Then, in another year, on the anniversary of your departure, she will
also be freed.”

“Within six months.”

“By the Feast of Unleavened Bread, next year.”

Cheftu did the calculations, then looked at me. “What say you?” he asked me in English.

It killed me to say this, but I knew I had to. Especially after our talk last night. “As you will. I want you to be happy,
to be free.”

“I will wait for him to offer six months.”

“Why are you taking this at all?” I asked, trying to sound reasonable.

“Because neither of us have found a portal. I spent seventeen years in Egypt. If we were free, we could live well here. Rear
our children with the One God, be safe and happy.” He glanced at our audience. “Trust me, Chloe. We can craft a life this
way.”

“Do what you think best,” I said, though I choked at the cost of these words. “I love you.”

“
Ach
, but do you trust me?”

“Implicitly.”

His gaze remained on my face a moment longer, then he turned to Dadua. “Thy will be done,” he said. “I will go.”

They offered Cheftu a chair, then dismissed me.

He’s leaving, I thought in a monotone chant that played with every step of my way through the hallways, back to the women’s
quarters. He’s leaving. He’s leaving. I walked into the main women’s room, thinking, He’s leaving.

Shana took one look at me and hugged me. For a moment we weren’t slave and owner, but two women. “They think such stupid things,”
she said as I cried, explaining through my tears what Dadua had offered and that Cheftu had accepted. “Always they seek glory
for themselves, or their gods or their king.” She patted my shoulder. “When all we really want is for them to be home, to
laugh with us, to coddle our babes. Poor
isha
,” she said. “This, this is what it means to be a tribeswoman.”

I pulled back, sniffling. “Why?”

“Because every tribeswoman has bade farewell to her father, her brothers, and eventually her husband. It is the way. Now come,
you. Change out of these clothes, wash your face, and go to the kitchen. Tell that harridan that I said you were to have some
cucumber soup with honey.” I tried to smile but just ended up crying at her kindness. “Go now,” she said, pushing me toward
the waiting slaves, who stripped me again.

After my soup with honey, Shana said it was time for me to learn how to make bread; the dates were forgotten. “Kneading is
Shekina’s way of relieving our anger,” she said.

“Anger is not what I feel,” I protested.

“Yet,” she said darkly. We crossed to the opposite side of the courtyard from the millstone. “Here,” she said. I was looking
at another stone contraption. It was flat, rectangular, with a U-shaped ridge around it. “After ’Sheva finishes with the grain,
you will mix it with water and a pinch of yesterday’s bread, to make everyday bread. Then,” she said, scrutinizing me, “you
will cover it while you go get the water for the day.”

“At the well?”

“Where else do you find water?”

I don’t know, a faucet, maybe? At 7-Eleven? I was feeling a little loopy. Cheftu was choosing to leave me. For good reasons,
granted. But still. Where was Midian? The fleeing Apiru had crossed at the neck of the Gulf of Aqaba, going into … Saudi Arabia?
Giddy laughter bubbled up inside me. The Jews’ gold was in the Arabs’ country?

You already know that
, the lexicon scribbled across the chalkboard in my mind.

I heard it, I retorted, I didn’t
know
it, not like I do now.

“After that, you wait, for maybe the length of a watch,” Shana said, continuing her cooking lesson. “Not too soon. Then you
will put the dough down and knead it. You don’t know how to knead,” she said. I noticed it was not a question.

“
Ach, lo
,” I said, unnecessarily.

She
tch
’d only once, then pulled me down to show how to knead. You pounded the stuff, stretched it out flat, then rolled it back
on itself. “Now you.”

I managed it, but I wasn’t going to be starting an ancient pizza parlor anytime soon. However, I knew how to exercise my triceps
for the rest of eternity. “Do that about forty times,” she said. “Then make it into rounds.”

Rounds I could do. “If you will leave them here, the kitchen slaves will come and get them.”

I nodded. “Now get back to your dates!”

She had been gone for about six rounds when I wondered, Who was Shekina?

Cheftu said nothing that night. I said nothing. What could I say? His reasoning was good; it was rational. I was the one being
neurotic. We lay down in silence, not touching. We woke up in silence, still not touching. He left for the fields, I returned
to my unconquerable mound of dates.

Only I was conquering them. One by one they had been moved from one pile into another. Now all I had to do was add spices
and whatever stuffing, then store them in the jars. After exchanging my flint for a small spoon, I sat down on my haunches
and began stuffing.

When we’d lived in Saudi, I’d had a friend who swore dates were roaches without legs. The thought grossed me out then, and
it held the same power now. Putting Kafka from my mind, I stuffed them with pistachios and I stuffed them with raisins, listening
to the women gossip around me.

Somewhere in the palace, a door slammed. The whole building rattled with it. In the kitchens, we all froze. Even the constant
babble of children playing was silenced.

“How dare you?” we heard. The sound came from the windows, though I also could hear it closer. An irate woman, screaming at
the top of her lungs.

“Dare? You say such a thing to me, the princess of the monarch of our people?” Irate woman number two, also screeching.

“You were princess until your father pissed away his right to be king!”

The voices were recognizable: Avgay’el and Mik’el. The translation in my head was of a man not only urinating, but keeping
the urine as a precious commodity. Someone whose priorities were twisted. I glanced around; we were all listening avidly.

How embarrassing for these princesses and how humiliating for Dadua.

“Royalty is never lost,” Mik’el said. The frost in her voice could have iced the windows. “I would not expect a person in
your station to understand such a thing. You are just the proof that deep calls to deep. Or shallow to shallow.”

We all gasped. Though he lived in a slummy house and ruled over a band of religious ruffians, the man was king. King! He was
a man with the authority to say, “Off with her head.”

“Now you dare to call Dadua shallow?”

I guess Mik’el could say that, since we all knew Dadua didn’t care for her. I almost saw her shrug. “He is a commoner. Mixed
blood of a Yudi farmer”—she laughed—“and an Apiru slave.”

This was a grave insult, I realized now.

Mik’el laughed again. “Only his brawn has gained him the throne. It is not his right; he wasn’t chosen, he snatched it!”

“
Ach
, she is a fool!” one of the kitchen slaves whispered. “You would understand snatching,” Avgay’el said, her voice sharp with
disgust. “Did you not snatch at the first doddering fool willing to take you in, a rejected wife?”

“Dadua didn’t reject me,” Mik’el hissed, still deafeningly loud. “He knew I was too fine to live in a cave!”

“This is true,” another of the slaves commented. “She wouldn’t know how to change her own straw!”

I winced because that was a harsh dig: Tribeswomen sat on straw when they had their periods. I wanted to shush the slaves;
we were going to miss the next part.

“Nay, he knew you were too cold to live with a man,” Avgay’el shouted.

“Nay, I lived well with a man. He knew I was too much a
g’vret
to scramble for some oversexed Apiru’s attentions like a rooting pig!”

Silence. Poor Avgay’el didn’t have a choice except to compete with the other women in Dadua’s life. It was her lot; it was
the time period. But it was a taboo subject. You didn’t mention it because it was tasteless and painful and there was no equal
retort. It just was.

Then there was the additional insult with the pigs. In my time pork was a grave sin in both Muslim and Jewish cultures. Had
that rule begun already?

“At least he offers his bed to me,” Avgay’el said archly. “With me, his energy is never lagging, his passion overflows. He
wants me.”

“Ouch,” I whispered aloud. Everyone knew that although Dadua had required the return of Mik’el, he had not bedded her. Not
even on their renewal wedding night. There was nothing Mik’el could say. For the first time, I felt genuinely sorry for her.

It was one thing to endure him even though she didn’t want him; it was another to be rejected and the whole court know it.
Public humiliation at its most base.

Now doors slammed in stereo.

In the kitchen, none of us looked at each other. We simply continued our tasks, the model of decorum when Shana showed up
a little while later. Her color was high. I knew she knew we’d heard. I kept stuffing my cockroaches and adding them to the
jar.

“Don’t forget the almonds,” she told me.

Almonds? She’d never mentioned almonds. Before I could figure out how to protest, without making a fuss, she told me that
the mushroom would bring them to me and I could use them to finish out the dates. I ducked my head and continued stuffing.

By the afternoon every muscle in my body ached. My arms screamed, because I’d done nothing except stuff dates, my haunches
were sore from my miserable position, and my neck ached. I was concentrating on getting through just a few more before quitting
time when another woman touched my shoulder. “
Isha
, your husband is outside.”

I looked at the dates, my hands covered in sticky goo. “Go on,” she said. “I will finish for you.”

“
Todah
,” I expressed my thanks. “I will owe you.”

She smiled. “I love dates. I can’t promise I will add to your jar, but I will clean up for you.”