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source."
    "The other day I spoke to Hi about. . . Him," the boy said, turning his eyes upward, "and Hi became very angry. He told me that I must not offend Ishtar, Isin, Inanna. . . ."
    "And why did you speak to Hi of Him? "
    "Because I never stop thinking about what you tell me. Uncle, I cannot believe there's a spirit inside the figure of Ishtar, which I can see and touch. But because I cannot see the one God, I am all the more certain He exists."
    Abram was surprised by the boy's reasoning; he believed in what he could not see precisely because he could not see it.
    "Does He speak to you?" Shamas asked with a glint of hope in his eyes.
    Abram, cautious not to override Hi's teachings, responded reservedly. "I feel that He does."
    "And does He speak with words, as you and I speak?"
    "No, but I can hear Him as clearly as I hear you." Abram knelt and put his hands on his nephew's shoulders. "But you must refrain from angering your teacher with this."
    "I will keep your secret, then."
    "I'm not asking you to keep a secret, Shamas—I am asking you to be discreet. Go, now, off to school with you—and no more provoking Hi."
    The boy got up from the rock on which he had been sitting and stroked the long neck of a white goat chewing grass with obvious pleasure, indifferent to everything around it.
    Shamas bit his lower Up and then, smiling, made a request of Abram.
    "Uncle, if you tell me how He created us, and why, I will write it down. I will use the bone stylus that my father gave me. I only use it when the dub-sar gives me something important to write down. It would be good practice for me, Uncle—please."
    Abram's eyes gazed long upon Shamas before he replied. The boy was ten years old—was he able to understand the complexity of this God who would be revealed to him? Abram made a decision.
    "I will tell you what you ask of me, and you will write it down upon your tablets and guard them jealously. You will show them only when I say you may. Your father shall know what we are doing, and your mother also, but no one else. I will speak with them. But I will do this only under one condition: that you not miss school again. And you are not to dispute with your teacher—you must listen and learn."
    The boy nodded happily, then turned and ran off to school. Hi would be angry with him for returning late, but he didn't care. Abram was going to tell him the secrets of God, a God who was not fashioned of clay.
    Ili frowned when he saw Shamas run into the house of tablets, sweating and still breathing hard from his exertion.
    "I shall speak to your father," the scribe said to him sternly, then went on with the lesson that Shamas had interrupted. He was teaching the boys mathematics and, more than that, leading them to understand the mysteries of numbers, the abbreviations with which the tens were drawn.
    Shamas' reed moved over the wet clay tablet, documenting everything Ili explained, so that later he might read it to the satisfaction of his father and mother.
    "Father, I'd like some tablets . . . for my own use," Shamas meekly proposed.
    Jadin raised his eyes from the tablet he was holding, astounded by his son's request. He had been noting observations of the sky, as he had done for many years. Of his eight children, Shamas was his favorite but also the child who gave him the most concern, for his curiosity was perhaps too great.
    "Has Ili given you lessons to do at home, then?"
    "No, Father. I am to record Abram's story Has he not spoken with you about this?"
    "He has not—not yet anyway," his father responded with a tinge of curiosity.
    "Abram has found our Creator outside the clay figurines we are taught to worship."
    Shamas' father sighed. He knew it would be useless to forbid Shamas to listen to Abram's stories; his son was devoted to his uncle. Abram was a man of clean heart—and too intelligent to believe that a piece of clay contained a god. Jadin knew better as well, though he never expressed his disbelief. Abram believed