Sunrise on the Mediterranean (30 page)

“That idiot!” she said at the top of her lungs. I joined the back of the crowd of slaves: tribesmen and children, pagans and
women. “He willfully makes these choices with no concern for the upcoming festivals, the seasons.
Ach
! Men!”

I glanced at the other slaves. Kali’a, whom I saw on occasion, leaned over. “Her fit is because of N’tan’s announcement last
night. We have been preparing for Shavu’ot all week. Now he plans to leave the night after it.”

Though the times may have changed, my Mimi and my mom had said almost those same words about the men in their lives: people
were people, no matter when. I grinned at the thought.

“
Isha
! Is what I say so amusing?” Shana homed in on me. I shook my head violently. God forbid she think I was laughing at her!
She glared at me, though she didn’t seem as angry as usual. She continued. “So:
haMelekh
’s fields need
b’kurim.
”

My lexicon was not forthcoming.

“You and you,” she said, pointing to two young boys, “will be in charge of managing the sheep and the lambs. You and you”—she
pointed to two young girls, one a tribesman, the other a pagan—“will tie the branches of the orchards.” She chose ’Sheva to
join a group tying the grape clusters. “You,” she said with her customary antagonism toward me, “will be in the kitchen.”

Great, everyone else got to play outside. I felt as though I were grounded. “You are not a tribeswoman,” she said. “You cannot
touch the
b’kurim.
” She sighed. “I can tell from your expression you don’t know what it is.”

I shook my head. I was Pelesti, remember?

Shana turned to us all. “Yahwe brought us into this land, with
chalev oo’d’vash.
Three times a year our men are to present themselves at the Seat of Mercy. The
b’kurim
are the first fruits of the season,
ken
? Every farmer, every vintner, when he sees the first produce of this season, instead of eating it, he ties the branch with
a red thread.”

Shana gestured to some slave, then turned back to us. “These fruits are to be presented as a thank offering to Shaday, with
a prayer.”

“What is the prayer?” some other, braver soul than I asked.

She covered her head with a scarf and raised her arms, intoning the words.
“My father was a stranger in the land of Mizra’im. There he grew into a mighty nation. The Mizri were jealous and enslaved
us, afflicted us. With miracles and magic, Yahwe freed my people from their hands, and brought us into the land, rich with
milk and honey. So: I bring to Yahwe the first of what he has given me.
” She opened her eyes. “In this, we remember. Now go! We have much to do, and to prepare food for the seventy.” She walked
away,
tch
’ing.

Before I handled any food, I had to wash my hands and bind my hair. Then they showed me the dates.

A mountain of dates, an Everest of them! Each had to be seeded, then inserted with raisins or nuts. We’re talking millions
of dates, enough for everyone in the palace, including the thirty
giborim
and their families.

It would be Shavu’ot of next year before I finished this! My blade was a flint, and I started splitting the dates, throwing
them from one basket to another and thinking that if I were Catholic, this would be purgatory.

People bustled all around me. Wonderful smells came from the ovens, where cakes and breads were baked, then dusted with spices
or decorated with fruit, then wrapped in dried palm leaves and set aside.

I limped home that night, noticing the budding vines of grapes were adorned with threads, the
b’kurim.
Cheftu had gotten dinner, a few pieces of meat and a mash of lentils, for us. “From what I recall of my friends who were
married and both working, our lives aren’t much different,” I said, trying to sound positive. I was too tired even for lovemaking.

“Women work?” he asked.

I chewed, looking at him. “There really are light-years between us, at times.”

“A year filled with light?” he said, bewildered.

I just kissed him, too ragged to start explaining. “Have you heard what N’tan said last night? About the seventy, the dinner
with God?”

He sat back. “Indeed. It was all we talked about in the fields. Families are vying for a way to get their sons included. It
is an unspoken way of declaring the new rulers of their tribes.”

“There are seventy rulers of this tribe?” I asked.

“
Lo
, it is open to all the other tribes as well. They will join at Shek’im, then journey down the valley, past the Salt Sea.
From there they will board a ship that will take them to Midian. Then, I hear, it is only a two days’ walk.”

I put aside the bones of my meal. “Is it my imagination, or do you sound wistful?”

He looked away. “Think on it, Chloe: They know where to go. They know where the mountain of God is! In my time, we think it
is the Sinai. How wrong we are!”

“In my time I think we think it is the Sinai, too,” I said. “If anyone knew it was in Saudi Arabia, well, there would be another
war against Israel.”

He sat up. “Israel is a country in your time?”

“
Ken
,” I said. “My father is a diplomat, trying to establish peace between the Jewish state and the many Arab countries.”

“That is why you are here,” he whispered in wonder. “You know these things.” He shook his head. “I marveled at the way you
spoke with Yoav. You were arguing with a man from history,
chérie
! You dared to insult a Bible character.”

“Don’t tell me that. It’s too immobilizing. I can’t think of who these people are, or where I know them from.” I took a quick
drink of beer, spitting away the husks. As slaves we didn’t have the cups with the built-in filter. “So what is this story
N’tan was telling? Have you heard it before?”

He stood up, stretching, looking out over the vineyards where the leaves were just starting to show. He held a hand out to
me and we climbed onto the edge of the wall, sitting in the setting sun, looking out over the prosperity of the land. “
Chalev oo’d’vash
,” I whispered.

“It is,” Cheftu said. “According to the Holy Writ I recall, this story of Moshe sitting down face-to-face with
le bon Dieu
is unknown. In fact, he could not see God face-to-face, but only the back of him. Even that caused him to be burned, and
his face was so terrifying that the people, when he returned to the camp, begged him to cover his features.”

“Why?”

“He’d been in the presence of God, and it showed on his face and scared them.”

Whoa. Like radiation or something?

“I thought that to touch the Mount of God was to die,” he mused. “This story N’tan told, I know nothing of this.”

“Do you think it is true?” I said. The sky was streaks of lavender, pink, and gold. Cheftu’s strong fingers were linked in
mine. Tears welled in my eyes at how perfect this moment seemed. I didn’t even feel the chains anymore. My ears had healed,
and I realized that I’d probably made the whole enslaving experience worse by being so scared. Now, it was just as if they
were pierced; granted, they were pierced with quarter-inch holes through cartilage, but so insignificant. I squeezed his hand,
smiling. We finally had our corner of heaven.

“
Ach
,” he said. “How can I know? These people, they have kept these stories alive for generations.”

“Do you think it is a legend that was expounded on, or a fact? If it is a fact, why have we never heard of it?” I asked.

“For seventy men to have climbed the mountain, to have dined with God, this seems too extraordinary to be a falsehood.”

“Not a falsehood, just an exaggeration,” I said.

“Is not an exaggeration a falsehood?” he asked.

I frowned at him; I didn’t know. “When did they go up?” I saw Charlton Heston coming down from the mountain, as Moses, alone
with the Ten Commandments. “I thought God wrote the commandments on stone with his finger.”

Cheftu smiled, drawing me closer. Night had fallen, and the stars were starting to glimmer in sparkles of white, green, pink,
and yellow against the night sky. It amazed me that I could actually see the color, though I knew it had always been there.
Was that like the rest of my life? Had I ever been this happy? “You remember quite well for an
isha
who claims no knowledge of the Bible.”

“My Mimi would be proud to hear that,” I said, nuzzling his neck.

“Your
grand-mère
?”

“Oui.”

Cheftu laid his cheek against mine. The fuzz of his beard had finally passed from the sandpaper stage through the horsehair
phase and now was a soft pelt. The curls over his ears were growing, and he had taken to wrapping the long pieces of hair
around his ears just like an Israelite. “It must have been the second time Moshe climbed up,” Cheftu said, rumbling in my
ear, a vibration I felt through his chest. “When he took down God’s words in his own hand, maybe then?”

“I love you,” I whispered, pulling away to look up at him. “Your knowledge astounds me. You make me breathless with your mind.”

He crooked a brow at me. “Just my mind?”

“Well,” I hedged, chewing on my lip.

He took over my mouth, murmuring that perhaps he needed to remind me he was more than just wit.

Later, as we lay curved together like spoons, almost asleep, I asked a fatal question. “We are making love with no protection,
nachon
?”

Cheftu was silent so long, I thought he was already asleep. “You are,” he finally said.

“Why?” I asked, half-dreaming, half-awake. “I thought you hated the thought of having a baby here?”

He kissed my jaw, pulling me tighter against him, his fingers splayed across my belly. “I feared having a baby amid the disasters
we have seen,” he said. “I also feared what would happen if you were not in your own body.”

My eyes opened; suddenly I was completely awake. I’d never even thought of that, of me not being in my own body. Maybe because
to me, wherever I was felt like my body. It was almost as though other people’s skins were leotards I climbed into. They fit
that well around me. A trembling started in my throat as I rolled over and looked at him. The starlight fell on his face from
above, casting shadows of his lashes on his cheeks. His hair was dark against the bleached white of the pallet. “Are you saying
… what I think you are saying?” I asked. I heard the wobble in my voice.

Mimi always used to say that there were Coca-Cola moments in life. Snippets of time, which for however long one lived, one
would recall fondly over a Coca-Cola. My Mimi loved her Coca-Colas. We would sit on her screened porch in the afternoon when
I was at university, and she would relate her Coca-Cola moments:

When she married her first husband; when she received word that he’d been killed and almost lost her first baby because of
it. When she’d met the love of her life, my dad’s stepfather. When she’d heard my father speak his first sentence of Arabic
and realized he would never stay at home, that he was born to be a nomad. The first time she’d flown anywhere, which was to
Greece, to see my parents married. The first time she’d seen me, with green eyes so big, she said, that no one had to tell
her who was her grandbaby.

All of those were Coca-Cola moments.

Cheftu’s eyes opened. “What do you think I say?”

I searched his face, felt my life turn a corner: a feeling that would stay with me always, a definite Coca-Cola moment. “Whatever
it is, my answer is yes.”

Then I was flat on my back, my husband looming over me. The lines of his body, the muscles hardened by wielding a scythe,
by throwing sheaves of barley, by holding me, were sharply drawn. His eyes were dark, so I couldn’t see them clearly. But
I felt his desire, felt my body flood with my own. “My answer is also yes,
chérie.
However, it is a delayed yes. I will not have my child, children, should
le bon Dieu
bless us so well, born a slave.”

I felt myself choking back disappointment, while at the same time being relieved.

“I wish to see our lives commingled in this way, but not while these chains still bind me.” His voice was hard now; I knew
there would be no swaying him. “However, this time, I take the prevention.”

“You what?” I asked, completely startled. “It would be foolhardy of me to love you so often, so well, if these are my desires.
Therefore I inquired of a wise-woman what could prevent me from getting you with child, but allow me to love you. She gave
me an herb, to lessen the potency of my seed.” He pressed my face into his shoulder. “Don’t cry, beloved,” he said. “We will
be free, somehow, soon.”

His kisses were soft. I didn’t know why I was crying, but the moment felt cheated. So much for Coca-Colas.