Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (26 page)

“Nothing could weaken your place here,” said Abram. “If she attacks you, your patience with her only makes you seem more of a saint in the eyes of all.”

“A saint, but a weak one,” said Sarai. “You know that even a beloved leader is weakened if he tolerates insolence. You would never put up with it, and neither would I, except that when it’s my sister
and
my guest, my ability to control her is limited. And today it came to blows.”

“You gave her a beating?”

He sounded so delighted that it shocked her. “I did not!” she said. “I don’t even beat the servants! I would hardly beat my sister.”

He laughed. He’d been teasing her.

“Abram, this is serious. She hit me. Only a glancing blow, but she meant it to hurt. I had to throw her to the ground before she finally stopped. And this was outside my tent, where all could see. I’m surprised you didn’t already know.”

“There are some things that people are reluctant to tell me,” said Abram. “You’ve said enough. Qira has to go.”

“Easily said.”

“I’ll get Lot to reopen the house in Sodom and send her back to it.”

“And keep him here with us? I think not.”

“He’s done with her, Sarai. She makes his life unbearable in Sodom, constantly pressing him to take part in a society that makes him sick at heart and sick to his stomach. He can’t live there again.”

“He’s not tempted by their sins, is he?”

“Of course not. But from the king on down, the men of Sodom are entirely given to debauchery and cruelty, and they don’t have much tolerance for men who don’t join in. When he stands aloof, they accuse him of judging them. Apparently the only sin that Sodom doesn’t embrace is the sin of choosing not to sin. And they’re right, of course. The fact that a man like Lot even exists is a constant affront to them. Because he’s there, all can see what a man of honor and decency acts like, and the contrast is clear.”

“When I ask her about Sodom, Qira says that all men are like that in their hearts, and that it’s hypocritical to pretend otherwise. When I tell her that you’re not like that at all, nor are any of the others in this camp, she just rolls her eyes and says, ‘They spend weeks and months on end away from their women, with only the sheep and each other for company. Don’t fool yourself, my dear.’ As if that somehow proved her point.”

Abram’s face reddened. “She accuses even me?”

“She’s repeating the story that the women of Sodom tell each other in order to make their lives bearable.”

“But she needs no such story—
her
husband is not like that.”

“If she said that to them, then wouldn’t they mock her for her blindness? Besides, she’s weak, she’ll believe whatever her friends believe, or say that they believe. Abram, I know that Lot’s life in Sodom is unhappy. But if he sends her back and doesn’t return at all, it’s an insult to Qira, to me, and to my father’s house.”

“Less of an insult than if he sent her back to your father’s house.”

So Lot
had
talked about divorce. “Abram, all I ask is that Lot keep up appearances. Spend enough time in the city to keep a good face on things. Then he can return to his herds. A few days in each month should be enough.”

Abram sighed. “Until Qira decides that he needs to be in attendance on her at a banquet or a feast day.”

“If Lot can be forceful enough to close up the house and come here—”

“Sarai, Lot was not
forceful
when he did those things. He
fled.
He hides from her even now. The only way he can have peace in his life is not to see her at all.”

“And what does that do to the girls? To have their father gone all the time?”

“What does it do to them to have their mother constantly criticize him and demean him?”

“She does that whether he’s there or not,” said Sarai. “But if they see him, they can make their own judgment and realize that their mother is wrong. Abram, there’s no happy solution to the problem. If Lot decides not to live with Qira, I’ll try to make my father understand. Certainly
I’ll
understand. But the trouble is that my father may end up paying the highest price.”

“Your father! If Lot sent Qira home to him,
then
he’d pay dearly.”

“When Qira and I both married into the greatest of the herding houses, it gave my father prestige—which gave the king of Ur-of-the-North a reason to continue to support my father’s pretensions to royalty. But if that same great family repudiates the marriage and treats the daughter of the deposed King of Ur-of-Sumeria as worthless, then my father is weakened. Enough that the king of Ur will turn him out? Probably not.”

“But it’s the beginning of the end for him,” said Abram. “I didn’t think of that.”

“If Sodom is truly dangerous for Lot, then don’t send Qira back, either. We’ll make things work.”

“What if we divide the camps and Lot simply takes Qira with him and deals with the problem on his own?”

“No!” cried Sarai.

“Why not? It’s his problem, ultimately. He said as much to me.”

“Because she would turn all his men against him, Abram. Some would become her tools in undercutting his authority and giving her whatever she wants, and the rest would turn against him because they despise a man who can’t control his wife.”

“So let him control her.”

“How?” said Sarai. “She doesn’t respond to reason—she doesn’t hear it. She always has an answer, a foolish one, but it’s an answer. So what does he do, beat her? Is Lot the kind of man who can beat his wife bloody and call it love?”

“If he were, she’d already be crippled by beatings.”

“Or
he’d
be dead—after the first time he beat her. Abram, if Qira does not return to Sodom, she has to stay here with us—in a place where she has no authority.”

“No,” said Abram. “Because what you don’t know is that the quarrels between Lot’s herdsmen and mine seem to be Qira’s idea.”

“What?”

“She’s constantly at his steward and his most trusted men, making snide remarks about how Lot’s herds aren’t really his, they’re just a gift from me. She says things like, Be careful how you treat those sheep, Abram may want them back someday. Or, Don’t get in the way of Abram’s men, they have
real
work to do, herding isn’t just a hobby for them.”

“I had no idea,” said Sarai. “Though why not? She’s so angry that if she thinks of something nasty, she’ll say it.”

“She knows what she’s doing,” said Abram. “She never says such things in front of you or me. Or Bethuel or Eliezer, either, for that matter. But she shames Lot’s men. Makes them feel second-rate. Naturally they’re more belligerent.”

“The only reason she has the power to do so much evil,” said Sarai, “is because you and Lot are so good. Lot is too patient with her, and you’re both too loyal to
me
to do anything that would insult my sister.”

Abram laughed. “Don’t call it virtue, my love,” he said. “If I were
really
loyal to you, I’d have thrust her out of the camp into the desert the first time she made one of her vicious little remarks about how
she
is a mother and
you
don’t know anything.”

Tears leapt to Sarai’s eyes. “I didn’t know you heard those things.”

“She never says them in front of me, if that’s what you mean,” said Abram. “But the men and women of this camp love you to distraction. Do you really think that I don’t hear an outraged report of every insult she offers you? Don’t you understand that if anyone but your sister had said such things in this camp, his life would be forfeit?”

Sarai pressed her face into Abram’s chest and wept. “If only her insults weren’t the truth,” she said.

“You are more of a mother to every child in this camp, and every grown man and woman, too, for that matter, than Qira is or ever can be. All she did was what any cow or cat can do—give birth.”

“The one thing I
can’t
do.”

“I only told you that so you’d understand that our loyalty to you is a reason for getting her
out
of the camp, not keeping her here. No, Sarai, they love you, they honor you—not as much as I do, but only because they don’t know you quite as well. No one thinks ill of you. We all know that you’ll have my children when God wills, and not sooner. And in the meantime, we all rejoice in the great blessing of having you as my wife, as the mistress of this camp. And they have never loved you
more
than since Qira has been here to show them just how awful life could be if you were a different kind of woman.”

Sarai laughed through her weeping. “So Qira’s doing wonders for my reputation.”

Abram held her tighter. “You are the wise one, as usual. I’ll lay your suggestion before Lot, and I think he’ll do it. A few days in Sodom, a few weeks in the field—and he can visit here, too, without bringing Qira. It wasn’t a mere coincidence that his defiance of Qira finally came just after we returned from Egypt. The time we spent there was very hard on him. He had nowhere to go then. But if he knows that he can come to see us, then he can visit Sodom, too, and spend most of his time there with his daughters. It’s still not a happy life, but sometimes happiness consists of nothing more than finding the right balance of misery.”

“And is love, then, finding the right balance of loneliness?”

“Love is you,” said Abram. “Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you.”

“Oh, Abram, that’s how I feel about you, but I have no idea what I have that you could ever need.”

“And one of the things I love best about you is that you are completely oblivious to your own virtue.” He kissed her. “And back on the subject of having children, do we intend God to give us sons by miracle alone, or shall we do what we can to help?”

That was the end of conversation for the night. And the next day, Abram and Lot walked for a few hours in the first light of day. When they came back, the plan was set. The herds would be divided. The long drought had ruined most of the great herding houses. Now rain had returned, the great grassy plains and hilly pasturages were almost empty. Abram gave Lot the choice, and he decided to keep his herds here, east of the Jordan. It was farther from most cities, but closer to Sodom, so he could more easily stay in touch with his men when he was in the city.

Qira’s reaction was just what Sarai expected. She immediately became cheerful and charming to everyone. But her sweetness was still laced with poison—for she could not resist barbs at Lot. “I hate to leave my dear sister,” said Qira, “but when a man decides to move his household, his wife has to bite her tongue and obey.” It was Sarai, however, who bit her tongue and said nothing. Let Qira spin the story however she wished. Everyone in camp knew the truth.

Lot and Qira and the girls left first, with their household servants in train. No tears were shed, though Qira looked for a moment as though she was trying to work up a nice little flurry of them. Sarai put a stop to that by pulling her close, hugging her, and whispering, “Don’t bother crying, Qira, everyone knows you wanted to return to Sodom, and this move represents your victory. You can put on the tears for the women of Sodom.”

Qira flashed her one sharp glare as she pulled away from the embrace, but the smiles returned at once, and she put on a show of graciousness and charm until they rode away. Her departure lifted such a burden from everyone, Sarai especially, that even the work of packing up the camp for a move was like a holiday.

For it was Abram’s camp that would move, leaving Lot’s men in possession of this place. It was no hardship to Abram, though, except for the loss of Lot’s company. The hills of Canaan had always spoken to his heart in a way that the great flatlands to the east never had. The drought had almost emptied Canaan, so that Abram could tear down the idolatrous high places and cut down the groves of Asherah, and no one was there to complain. Wherever Abram went, Canaan became a land where only God was worshiped. It was the land of promise, after all, and never had it been more beautiful than in this year of plenty after so many years of desolation.

Part VI

Kings and Judges

Chapter 16

They lived on the plain of Mamre, near Hebron. The town had stood empty for many years, but it was one of the first villages to come back to life as the rains returned. Most of the old houses were still empty, since the new villagers, not wanting to live in a house that had been unlucky for the previous owners, simply took stones from the old dwellings and built new ones.

Sarai did not envy them the dwellings of stone. Once she had thought of a tent as flimsy and impermanent, but now her tent was home. In a dust storm, the tent could be sealed much more tightly than any house of stone, yet it could also be opened to catch every breath of a breeze. When they moved from place to place, she gloried in the new scenery, regretting nothing about the move because she knew that she would sleep each night in her familiar chamber. Now she looked at the builders of stone houses and wondered why they would want to be so rooted to one piece of ground.