This is not a poem. This is a story.

Technically.  Technically not a poem.  But then again I think in verse so it kinda snuck into my prose a few times.  Wups.  

 

This is a historical fiction from the Pentateuch.

 

 Enjoy.

 

 

The God Who Sees Me

 

 

 She looked up.  The sandy hills seemed to wave and warp in the heat, and the sand burned the sides of her feet, unprotected by the thin sandals.  She took a few more steps towards the east.  A muffled sob.  She looked back.  Her boy, Ishmael, lay under a tamarisk bush, exhausted and thirsty, the sand burning him from below and the sun from above.  She wept.  “I named him Ishmael -God listens- but where is God now?  Why does He not listen to the weeping of my child now?”  She walked forward blindly, eyes closing in her weariness. She fell.  

Her weary feet had carried her only a bowshot away from her son.  As if by putting distance between them she could lessen the pain of his dying.  “El Roi!” Her voice didn’t echo, stopped and muffled by the endless sands.  She lifted her voice from where she had fallen, but it was barely above a whisper.  “I called you the God who sees me.” Her breath rasped, and she choked on the hot air. "El Roi. For when I was broken in the desert when my child was still within me, you saw me and rescued me.  But now, where is your promise?” Her tears hissed as they fell off her face and onto the rocks.  “You said my son would become a man, but he lies there dying, still a boy, and I cannot help him.”  There were no more tears now, just a dry sob.  

Her voice hurt from calling out into the emptiness, her tongue was swollen for lack of water, and her feet blistered from wandering in the burning desert.  “My only comfort is I do not have to watch my son die.  But what comfort is there in that?” She was limp, gone for a moment, and back again.  Her eyes opened and she squinted at the sky, blue and bright, like the water of the Nile river of her homeland when the floods had receded.  She reached up, as if to try to grasp the water in the sky and drink it.  Her hand fell, the dry skin cracking, bleeding, and clotting as the sand and wind dried it again.   She slept.  

Troubled visions of Sarai, Sarah, flickered through her head, Sarai weeping over her barrenness, Sarai telling her she would bear a son for her, Sarai shouting at her when Ishamel was forming within her, Sarah rejoicing over Isaac’s birth, Sarah rejecting her before Abraham, Sarah convincing Abraham to send her out, out into the wilderness.  Sarah’s voice tumbled over itself, rising and falling like the flooding Nile, loud and quiet, full and empty. It joined itself and rose up and up but never reached a climax, turning and returning and replaying, running the same path but finding the end of it was only the beginning, the voice that was Sarah’s but not Sarah’s echoed in her head, it wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t...The voice cleared, focused.  “Get rid of that slave woman and her son,” Sarah’s voice, “for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”  The sound of pottery breaking.  She was standing outside the tent, listening, hearing Sarah’s raised voice, her tears and her anger, and Abraham’s gentle voice, placating and soothing his angry wife.  The food beside her, unprepared, the acrid smell of the oil burning in the pot as she listened.  Her fear.  Her worry. Then Sarah leaving the tent, emotions leaving a trail of broken pottery behind her.   And then it was quiet.  She remained standing beside the tent.  Listening to the silence emanating from within.   Then Abraham’s voice emerging out of the silence, quiet, but full of anguish, calling to the God who answered him, explaining and entreating, confusion and fear and worry wrestling with the eloquence of his prayer.  And she listened. Then silence came again as he received his answer, the answer only he heard.  And then the words that broke and condemned her, spoken in humility and submission, “Yehovah, I am your servant, it will be as you have said.”    Abraham’s voice faded.  Her memories rewound.  

She was just pregnant again, had just discovered the life within her.  She was overjoyed, proud.  She felt the first small kick of Ishmael.  She knew the pride of motherhood.  She was superior, above those who could not conceive, above Sarai.  She was exalted, put in a position she had never dared to hope for before.  She was loved, and she loved.  As her condition became apparent to the household she was as respected, given a place to be, and not made to work.  She did not respond to her mistresses calls.  Sarai was ‘broken’, she could not conceive, she could not give birth.  Yet she was whole, she carried life within her.  She despised her mistress.  Despised Sarai for her brokeness, for her barrenness.  Despised her every time Sarai called her to do work, for how could she work?  How could she work in her condition?  She despised Sarai for giving her no choice, even though she already loved the child forming within her.  She grew indifferent to Sarai.   She treated her as her equal.  Even treated her as lower.  Did not serve as she once had.  Did not serve, and let herself be served. When she spoke to Sarai she did so with condescencion, and let that be evident in her voice.  And Sarai knew.  She knew Sarai knew.  But she went to far.  She saw Sarai go into Abrahams tent, angry.  She saw her leave, triumphant.  Her heart stilled within her.   And the mistreatments began.  It started as words, angry and condemning.  Then she was made to work.  Sarai kept her up late and woke her up early.   She filled her days with work and her nights with discomfort.  Sarai’s voice was constantly uplifted against her.  She endured three months.  

She woke up early, the day after the Sabath.  Her only day of rest.  It was the first day of the fourth month since the life had begun within her.    She took water and food and ran towards Egypt.  She ran until the sun rose.  The day burned on.  No one pursued her.  She stopped at the spring on the road to Shur.   She refilled her water, and washed the desert off her skin.  She rested.  Leaning against a rock she closed her eyes, remembering why she had run.  Her heart broke for her child within her, but hardened against Sarai.  The one who had caused her pain.  Footsteps.  She knew fear.  She opened her eyes, a man stood beside the spring.  He looked at her and his eyes saw her heart, heranger, her sin, and her despair.  “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”  She trembled, why did he ask if he knew? “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai”  The man spoke, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”  Her mouth opened to protest, to tell him of Sarai’s mistreatments, to tell him she could not, could not go back.  But he looked at her, and she was stilled.  He spoke again, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”  Her heart praised the LORD.  And he spoke again, in power and authority,

“You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son.  You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”  She was kneeling.  She felt his presence leave her, and the silence of the desert returned.  She raised her hands to heaven and praised the LORD.  “El Roi.  You are the One who sees me.  I praise you for you have seen me in my misery.  You have seen me and answered my unspoken cry.”  She rose.  Turning her back on her homeland, she walked in the way the LORD had commanded.  

Memories merged and the desert sands faded, turning to the colored fabric of a tent.  She felt the first pains of childbirth, the waiting and the expectancy.  The daze of pain, and weariness after hours of laboring.  The final moments before her son breathed.  Calling out for her mother, and the wisdom contained within her mother.  Then Ishamel.  Her beautiful son.  They placed him in her arms, and she beheld him.  She heard his first cries, and knew relief.  He was whole, and beautiful, and he was hers.  She didn’t notice when Sarah came in.  Breathing heavily she watched her son take his first breaths.  He was worth every pain he had given her.  Then hands came, to take her child from her, she held him tightly.  Sarah’s voice, “Let me hold my child.”  No.  No. This is my child.  I bore him nine months. I hurt for him.  He is mine.   But her tired mind could only whisper, “No.  He is mine.”  Sarah’s surprise, astonishment, and anger filled the silence.  Abraham came in.  She looked up.  His eyes were on his son.  Full of love and joy for his firstborn son.  She gave up her child to him and fell back on the blankets beneath her.  

Eyes closed, she heard Abraham whispering his blessing over Ishmael.  “May God bless you and protect you.  May God show you favor and be gracious to you.  May God show you kindness and give you peace.”*  She smiled.  Her son had the blessing of his father, a father both powerful, gracious, and prosperous.  He would be well cared for.  But Sarah…she heard Sarah again, speaking to Abraham, “What will we name our son?”  Our son.  Ishamel was not Sarah’s son.  Ishamel was her son.  And he already had a name, the angel in the desert had called him Ishmael.  She lifted her voice from where she lay, “His name is Ishmael.”  She heard Sarah turn towards the bed, and heard the astonished anger under her words, “Why would you name my child?”  There was silence.  Then Abraham’s voice, “His name will be Ishmael.  For surely God has heard our plea for children.”  Sarah left.  Abraham walked towards the bed and laid Ishmael in his mothers arms.  She held him, feeling the small beat of his heart against hers as the sounds of the household faded into the murmur of sleep.  

A cool wind blew through the desert.  She woke.  Eyes closed, she could almost imagine she was sitting near the river of her childhood, feeling the cool breeze coming off the water.  She moved her leg, and the sores on her feet stung, the sand burning her again.   She opened her eyes, squinting up at the blue sky. “Why am I alive?” The wind blew again.  She struggled to sit up, head spinning as she mirages of lakes and rivers and wells sprang up out of the ground and disappeared.  There was a sound of thunder.  She looked up.  The sky was filled with brightness; she sheltered her eyes in her arm.  A voice like thunder and the roar of a lion filled the air with gentleness.  “What is the matter, Hagar?”  She hid her face, fear and trembling shaking her body.  “Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.” A whisper of praise crossed her lips. “He sees me…”  Again the voice spoke, “Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”   

The light was gone. The voice was gone.  But the air was full of expectancy. She opened her eyes and saw a well under a tamarisk tree a tent span away.  She blinked.  It remained.  

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

*  Fox, Tamar. “Blessing the Children.” My Jewish Learning, 19 Mar. 2020, www.myjewishlearning.com/article/blessing-the-children/.

Holy Bible. Genesis 16, Genesis 21,  New International Version, 2011