Read Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) for Free Online Page B

unworthiness—Sarai did not care, as long as she did not end up bound into the service of a god in whom she no longer believed.
     
    The years passed. Sarai watched as her father tried to arrange this or that marriage, but always it was the bored son of a rich man trying to add some luster to a family that had no standing. Father tried to persuade her that each one was really a good husband, but in truth he was never even able to convince himself.
     
    By the time Sarai was eighteen, she had no idea what was going to happen to her. By her age, most women were already married. Almost every day Sarai was reminded of how well her older sister had married—with Lot’s wealth to back her up, she was head of a worthy household in Ur. But to Sarai, the prizes in Qira’s household were the two little girls who, truth be told, saw more of their aunt than of their mother. Is this my destiny, Sarai wondered, to be a spinster living in my sister’s house, tending her children and someday her grandchildren, always subservient, never to have a child of my own in my arms?
     
    The one thing she could not let herself think of was the man who had come from the desert so long before. Lot sent messages back and forth to Abram at least every week, and servants made the journey often. Sarai heard of every movement Abram made, each new encampment. He would be in the ruins of this or that city in Canaan, empty because all the years of drought and windborne dust had forced the people to flee to other lands. Or he would be selling cheeses in Akkad or wool in Babylon or leather in Ur-of-Sumeria, and the next month, south of the Dead Sea in Sodom or Zoar, he would be selling jewelry or clothing from Akkad, Babylon, and Ur. She heard of him trading along the Phoenician coast in cities like Tyre or Byblos, or north among the Assyrians or the Hittites or the Hurrians. Not once did Lot ever tell Sarai that Abram had so much as asked about her. Not once did she receive a letter or a message or a gift or even a glance from a servant that would tell her that perhaps her name had been mentioned in Abram’s tent.
     
    And yet . . . she knew he was a man of honor. He had said he would come for her. She had promised nothing to him. Yet even if his words were merely a jest with a child, it did not change this single fact: If he did come, she was determined that he would find her waiting, ready to be a good wife, ready to be the mother of his children. And she would never be like Qira, making him live in a city so she could wear fine gowns. No, she would live in his tent, travel when he traveled. If he came for her, she would go with him, and stay with him forever.
     
    If the ten years passed, and then an eleventh, and he did not come, she would never send word to him, either, nor give a hint to anyone, not even Qira, that she had waited for him. She would simply decide, then, what to do with the rest of her life. By then it would probably be too late for her to marry any other man. But having once known Abram, she could not be content with a lesser man, and apart from Lot, she knew of none that came close to being Abram’s equal.
     
    Did it hurt her? Yes, there were times when she felt a pain so sharp that it was all she could do to keep her weeping silent and secret in her room.
     
    But then, in the midst of such suffering, she would remember: Abram told me the truth about God, and saved me from a life wasted in the service of false gods. I would rather have had that hour of truth with Abram than any other possible life in which I did not have the truth and never met that man. She would pray at such moments, and soon her heart would be lighter, and even though she had no sign from God that her future was being watched over, still she was content. She could wait to see what life would bring.
     
    It was a hot day in summer, the kind of day where there is no shade except indoors, and indoors there was no air that one could bear to breathe. No breath of