Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (38 page)

Right through the streets of Sodom he dragged them. “We’re poor now, did you think of that?” said Qira. “All we have is those stupid sheep and cows out in the desert. Nothing left to show that we ever lived in a city. Did you ever think of that? How will the girls find a husband now? What dowry will you offer?
Cows?
”

“Cows are what I paid for you,” said Lot.

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

They were outside the city now.

“You can let go of me now,” she said. “You’ve made your point.”

But he dragged her along anyway. The girls joined in her complaints. “Father, you’re hurting her. There’s no reason to act like this. You’re just being mean now.”

He paid no attention. Not until they were in the foothills did he finally let go. Her wrist hurt so badly that she cried as she rubbed it. “I hate you,” she said to Lot.

“Tell me something new,” he said. He handed her a carafe of wine. “Sling this over your shoulder and carry it yourself now.”

“I’m not a servant,” said Qira.

Lot ignored her as he put carafes of wine on the girls. It broke Qira’s heart to see her beautiful daughters carrying burdens as if they were beasts. But she took her own carafe of wine then, to show them that she, too, would submit to the rule of this cruel man. They were not alone—their mother was with them, and somehow she’d make this all right.

They hiked another hundred steps up into the hills when Qira stopped. “Enough of this. We’re in the hills southeast of the city, just like they said. Let’s not go any further, so we don’t have so far to go when we return.”

“We’re never going to return,” said Lot.

“We did what they said,” Qira responded patiently. “They told you we wouldn’t have time to get this far if we delayed at all. Well, here we are. I don’t see any destruction, do you?”

“It will begin at any moment,” said Lot.

“We made very good time, with you dragging us. We have plenty of time. In fact,” said Qira, “it’s still early enough that I’ll bet no one has found our trunk. It was foolish of you not to let me bring at least a few of the nicest pieces. Those are very expensive and it will take years to find others just as good.”

“You’re not going back,” said Lot. “If you do, you’ll die.”

“Is that a threat?” said Qira. “Are you threatening to kill me?”

“I’m warning you again of what the Lord is going to do to anyone in Sodom.”

“I can go and come back again in no time,” said Qira.

“I forbid you.”

Qira looked at him and assessed his intentions. He was talking very firmly, and yet he did not take a step toward her to restrain her. He had lost some of his resolve, she could see it. “You can forbid me all you like, but am I not a free woman?”

“Don’t leave your daughters motherless,” said Lot. “They’re already going to lose three of their sisters.”

“Pay no attention to your father,” said Qira. “Come back with me, girls.”

Now Lot moved—to grab hold of the girls. But with his hands occupied holding them, he couldn’t possibly stop her now. He’d have to let go of someone.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Qira.

Then she turned back to the city.

“Mother!” cried her daughters, but when Qira glanced back, she could see that Lot was dragging the girls farther up into the hills. Finally he had come to his senses and realized that his wife was the daughter of a king, and not someone to be dragged about like a disobedient child.

If she hurried, she could surely reach the jewels. Even now, the sun was just beginning to cast light on the tallest buildings in Gomorrah, which was not so close to the hills in the east. No one was awake at this hour, surely. Though Qira couldn’t be sure—she had never awoken so early in all the years she had lived in Sodom.

She was distressed to see how many servants were out on the streets already. Not crowds, but enough that someone was bound to have noticed the trunk. And slaves were such natural thieves that they were bound to steal at least one piece of jewelry. She began to run. She had to get there before it was all gone. She had to salvage
something
of her life in Sodom, didn’t she?

A terrible roar sounded in her ears, and a hot wind blasted through the streets. The earth seemed to heave underneath her, and she fell sprawling in the hard-packed street. What was it? What had happened?

People were emerging from their houses, looking frightened. Someone climbed onto a roof and shouted down what he had seen. “Gomorrah is on fire!” he cried. “It’s all smoke, and half the city is gone!”

Suddenly terror struck in Qira’s heart. Half the city gone! And the earth shaking like that—the visitors had said nothing about earthquakes. This was worse than she had ever imagined. Why didn’t they tell her it would be so bad that half of Gomorrah could be wiped out in an instant? Why didn’t Lot stop her from going? She realized now—he
wanted
her to go. He dragged her and ordered her about just because he knew it would make her angry enough to make her run back to the city. This was what he planned from the start. He was trying to get her killed!

She started to run back the way she had come. Lot might want her dead, but her girls still needed her. And now that they knew it was real, her sons-in-law would surely not forbid her to bring her older daughters with her. The house of the eldest was just over this way—she could run past there and get her daughter and bring her out of the city and . . .

And a stone about two cubits across tore through the sky and exploded in the air just above the city of Sodom. The shock wave flattened every building. The fireball instantly burned everything within a half mile. The sound of it could be heard as far away as Hebron. Qira’s sister Sarah heard it, and felt the trembling of the earth.

Later, there would be stories about how one of those pillars of salt near the dead sea was Qira, turned to salt by the power of God because she turned back to watch the destruction of Sodom. But the truth was what Sarah knew in her heart when she heard the sound of the explosion, and felt the shaking of the earth, and then saw the brightness in the sky that lasted all through the following night. Five great stones hit the earth or exploded above it, one for each of the cities of Siddim. No one was left alive except for the few slaves who had made their escape during the night. And Lot and two of his daughters.

Sarah grieved for her sister. For many days she grieved. Not because Qira had died—Qira was not young, and death was not the worst thing in the world. No, Sarah grieved because she knew how wasted her sister’s life had been, and how pointless her death, and how empty the soul that she would have to show before the judgment bar of God.

O God, was there something I could have done to save her? Sarah prayed.

The answer came from her own heart, for she knew that there was never a time in Qira’s life when anything Sarah might have said or done could have reached past her pride and touched her heart. Qira controlled her own life, and so she had nothing at the end of it. While Sarah had given her life to others, and never controlled it at all—and so her heart was full of treasures, and if she died, she would die with little fear of seeing the face of God.

She had something else, too. For several months later, it was very plain that Sarah, old as she was, had a child in her. Conceived on the night before Sodom was destroyed. God had performed many wonders that day. Lives were taken. A life was given. In Sarah’s womb, a great nation had been given its first moments of life. His name would be Isaac. Sarah’s grief for her sister was lost in her joy at the stirring, finally, of life in her belly.

Part VIII

Isaac

Chapter 22

For all these years that she had been with Abraham, Sarah had cared for the smooth running of the camp. Abraham could leave when he needed to and stay away for weeks at a time, knowing that all would be in good order when he returned, for Sarah would deal with any problems that came up.

So it galled her that her pregnancy might cause the good order of the camp to be disrupted. Her plan was to live as she had always lived—to spend her days in the door of the tent until the morning of the day her son was born, and then, by evening of that day, to again be in the door of the tent, keeping her ear to the heartbeat of Abraham’s household.

After all, Qira had not been ill with her pregnancies, not the way Hagar had been. Why shouldn’t Sarah expect to be more like her sister than like her handmaid? And, in fact, despite some nausea, Sarah never did get particularly sick. But that didn’t mean her life could go on as it normally did.

Because she was not young. As her belly grew, the joints of her hips began to feel loose and painful, as if they might dislocate at any time. Her back ached so that she could hardly rise in the morning or lie down at night. And one thing that was utterly out of the question was for her to sit, hour after hour, distaff in hand, at the door of the tent.

So because her body did not have the resiliency of youth, she ended up lying down in her tent. For three days she lay there, sending servants away because she wanted them to be about their regular duty, then having to call out for them because she needed help to do things that it shamed her not to be able to handle for herself.

Through it all, Abraham stayed close to the camp, even though Sarah urged him to go about his business. “
You
are my business,” said Abraham, “and so staying by you is going about my business.”

“I don’t want anything to change because I’m having a baby,” said Sarah.

“Everything has changed already,” said Abraham. “You’re the only one who refuses to see that.”

Sarah understood exactly what he meant, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t abide staying cooped up in her tent while the life of the camp went on around her. She told Abraham, “I don’t want Eliezer to know that he doesn’t need me.”

“He knows he doesn’t need
me,
” said Abraham. “What makes you think he doesn’t know the same about you?”

“He does need you,” said Sarah. “You’re the authority in whose name he makes all his decisions. The only thing that brings him to me is . . .”

And then she realized how foolish she had been. Eliezer did not come to her anymore because he did not know what to do without her wisdom. He came to her because of loyalty. Because she needed to be a part of everything.

She could stay in her tent and be pampered and it would make no difference.

But if that’s true, I could die in my tent and it would also make no difference. And when you come down to it, everyone eventually dies, and life goes on, so no one is needed for anything if that’s the test. When I’m out there by the tent door, I do relieve Eliezer of much of his burden. He doesn’t need me to tell him what to do—he needs me to settle petty problems so he can deal with more important ones. I serve him and I serve Abraham by easing their burden. I don’t do these things because they can’t do them, I do them so that they don’t have to. And even though they’re happy to take up the slack during my pregnancy, I will be far happier if they don’t have any slack to take up.

So she ordered a litter to be made, and every morning had two maidservants lay her upon the litter and arrange her clothing around her. Then two men came in and carried her out into the shade at the door of her tent. Lying there, she could not use the distaff, but she could embroider so her fingers would be busy while she listened and talked to those who came to her. Several times during the day they would move her litter so it would stay in the shade, And by lying down so much, she conserved enough strength and flexibility that she was able sit up to deal with personal needs, shielded from view by the maids.

That was the compromise that allowed her to get through the months while the baby grew within her. It helped keep her mind off her fears for the baby. What if the child was deformed or feeble-minded? She had heard so many stories of what could go wrong. Of course she knew that it was a miracle for her to have the baby growing inside her at all, and that God, having done that much, would have no difficulty in protecting her child and making sure he was born hearty and strong. But she could not help but fret, all the same, and it was good to stay busy.

The one thing she never feared was to die in childbirth. As long as the child survived, she would have accomplished her purpose. Oh, if she were twenty or thirty years old, she would long for the years she might spend with her child and fear death greatly. But at her age she knew that the chance of her living long enough to see Isaac reach manhood was slim indeed. The rearing of this child would almost certainly be in other hands someday. He would most likely learn of his mother through the stories he was told. Let him be told that his mother worked to help his father until the day she died. And if that turned out to have been the day he was born, it made for all the better a tale around the fire.

Only one of her fears was real, and therefore that was the one she could not face. Hagar.

Ishmael was born to be the heir, but only because Sarah could not have a child of her own. Now that Sarah was pregnant, the child within her was the only one who could inherit when Abraham died, for only he was a child of Abraham’s wife. Hagar was not even a concubine.