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might bake. Sometimes the men went off to hunt, bringing back an occasional partridge, which we added to our stews.
I was deeply affected by what a good mother Sia was to her sons, how uncomplaining when they clamored for her attentions. Her boys were little more than babies, and she sang them to sleep every night, determined not to relinquish all of the loving-kindness they’d known in the world we had left behind. Each time she sang I thought of the girl from Alexandria who had cared for me when I had no mother. I often fell asleep beside the children, imagining that Sia’s lullabies were meant for me. My new friend had tirelessly combed out the ashes that had fallen into my hair during the burning of Jerusalem. When we found a shallow pool, we rushed into it as soon as we spied the glittering water, able to forget, however briefly, what our circumstances were, splashing each other as if we were indeed sisters.
Secretly, I continued to record my time in the desert by etching each day into my flesh. I kept to myself, but I couldn’t help but be aware of Ben Simon, taking note of the scar on his face. Whenever I saw him watching me, I quickly covered my leg. I didn’t want him to know who I really was, a neglected, ugly girl with callused hands. And yet something connected us, perhaps because we were both scarred. Clearly he saw me as no one else ever had. I could see his face transform as he stared at me; there was something burning and reckless in his glance. It came to be that the only time I felt alive was when he looked at me. His very presence was like bee stings, riveting my attention. I began to brood over him, wondering how he had been scarred and what dark matters he had attended to in Jerusalem. I had persistent, slow-burning thoughts of him jumbled inside my head, ones that embarrassed me and made me feel that I was a traitor, though I’d done nothing wrong.
Once, when there was a pale moon, I went to the pool where Sia and I had bathed. During my time of monthly bleeding, I had sequestered myself away as was our custom. Now it had ended and I needed to cleanse myself. In Jerusalem, we had gone to the mikvah to bathe. Here there was only the pool in the nachal, the ravine where birds came to drink in the evenings, flocks of ravens, larks, and huge griffon vultures, the strong, fearless creatures we called nesher that nested in the cliffs. I found that the water was fast disappearing with the rising heat of Av . Still, I took off my tunic and splashed myself and felt some relief. I heard a rustling in the tamarisk trees, a variety that can be found growing in the harshest of places. Quickly, I drew on my cloak, fearful that one of the leopards whose territory we had entered might be stalking me, hungry enough to consider me his prey.
There was an echo of footfalls, and I froze until they vanished. I returned to our camp, cleansed but on edge. Everyone was sleeping inside our small goatskin tent, which was fastened to the ground with bolts made of horn. Only Ben Simon was awake. He seemed restless. I flushed to think perhaps he had seen me at the pool. He called me to him, and I went, my eyes lowered.
“It’s dangerous,” he warned.
He had never spoken to me before. I didn’t know if he meant there was danger in walking in the wilderness alone or in raising my eyes to meet his. I felt outraged that he might think he could tell me what to do, treating me as he would a child, or worse, his slave, and yet I felt a flicker of pleasure when I noticed the spiky green leaves in his hair. They were from the tamarisk that grew by the pool, a tree that lifted its boughs toward heaven in a place where nothing else could survive.
TWENTY-ONE CUTS and then the night when it happened. Afterward I wondered if I had been marking off the time until it did.Was that what I was waiting for? Was that where my desire had led me? Perhaps I had peered into the Book of Life, which metes out fate, and while in the depth of my slumbers