THE HOUSE OF ESHMUN
Palmyra, rose from an impossible oasis, surrounded by desert, and for days they traveled southwest over sand until they reached great and ancient Damascus, filled with four thousand years of smells, fruit, food, women and men, animal dung and incense. They could have made a home among the busy hum of life, but moved quickly west into the Lebanon Hills.
Many nights they slept in clearings and on the sides of roads, two keeping watch. James had been afraid to go into the towns, but Jesus said that if Elijah could make home in Zarephath, then they shouldn’t be afraid to make home here.
“It’s strange,” said Magdalene.
“Our whole lives they say we must not speak to Samartians, we must not speak to the Canaanites, but do you notice they are no different than us? Their prayers are no less religious. They’re skin is not darker or lighter. They light lamps and send their prayers to God, but we say we do it right and they do it wrong? Why do we make divisions where there are none?”
“To be holy,” John said. But the way he said it carried no finality the way James would have said it.
“Abraham separated Isaac from all of his sons and made him holy. He sent him to the land of Aram to marry his cousin Rebecca because none of the women in Canaan would do. And then Isaac did the same thing with Jacob, till Jacob came back with four wives and they turned their back on Aram for good. Jacob’s sons married Canaanite women, and when Joshua came into the land he killed the Canaanite men and stole their wives, but we never talk about this. And later when we returned from Babalon, Ezra cast out all the Canaanite wives of Jewish men and cast out their children as well. This is what the holy books in Jerusalem say, though I do not know how it could be done. And all that we say, all that we do, revolves around us being holy, and to be holy means to be other and separate yourself from all.”
“And men from women,” Magdalene said. “And women from men.”
John looked at her because she had murmured it and he had not heard it all.
“The curse of the snake. God said the woman would grind the serpent under her hill, but men said they would grind women, and we have been ground under hill ever since.”
“Take all men to you,” Jesus said. “Take all to you?”
Now John looked at his cousin and though they had walked and walked and his robes were grey with the travels of the day, in the light of the fire he seemed transformed, white.
“While we travel here, Yocanon is down in the south, speaking of the Kingdom of God. The ruler of that Kingdom is the Christ, and it appears to me that we are not simply traveling north. No, we are being sent.”
“Sent?” John said.
“Sent to learn what the Christ is,” said Jesus.
“Christ is a thing wholly different than what we thought. Abraham made one son holy by separating him from all the others. The Christ will make all holy, but linking the all to the all.”
In those next days they joined a group of travelers headed for Sidon, and as they went higher and higher into the hills, Magdalene imagined them cresting a hill and seeing not the city, but the great sea. Jude took out his harp and sang:
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore!”
That night they slept in the ruins of a temple and Jesus and John remained awake, vibrating with the power of the night, the stars burning white in a black heaven alive with the mystery of God. And it seemed God was bigger than they’d ever known him, and Jesus wondered, “To what God or Goddess was this place built…?”
They rose and and walked about what remained of the pillars, and John smiled at the same time he shuddered as he slipped his feet into great footprints which were made in the stone. Those footprints went to a black doorway and John walked in them only a little before stopping.
“These were the footprints made for the God, the ones in which they said he trod into his holy of holies,” Jesus said.
“The prophets said those gods were demons. But what I feel… this trembling...”
“All Gods are God,” Jesus said.
“James would say…”
“All Gods are God.”
“You would be stoned in Jerusalem.”
“All Gods are God.”
“And in Capernaum.”
“I have a feeling,” Jesus said, “that stoning is necessary, that the world will be saved by stoning.”
“Cousin, I love you, but you say such things.”
“I think you love me when I say such things.”
“Let us rest,” John said. “For we will be in Sidon in the morning.”
They were always delighted and surprised to run into other Jews, though Lazaros said, “Why should we be surprised. We’re everywhere.”
For John it was a confirmation that the things they sought they were not alone in seeking, that everyone was not as ironic and resolved to life as it was like Jude, or as unquestioning and afraid of what lay beyond the borders of Galilee and Judea as James.
“Of course not!” Said one young man who was handsome and lively with eyes grey green in the night like a cat’s. “The world is changing everyday! And we must change with it. More Jews live in Babalon—in the heart of Parthia—than Israel, and more live in Rome than either.”
He shook his head, and he had a clay pipe from which he smoked a strong scented leaf which vapors filled the air.
“We have been an inward people, making up a fake history and gazing at our navels far too long. If God is anywhere,” he pointed excitedly about them, “he is in this world, in the trees, the rivers, in you. In me.”
He had a thin black moustache which accentuated his green grey eyes and his flashing teeth.
“A voice spoke to me. It said, ‘I am God. Do not look for me in the bright high places, in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the words of old dry men, but look for me in the lush places!’”
He took a deep pull on his pipe, coughing, and blew smoke out through his nostrils.
“‘Look for me in the dark.’”
Jesus sat across from the green eyed man, legs spread, hands joined, firelight making his robe bright ivory in the dark, his hair rising like electric tendrils, and John said, “What do you say to all that?”
“It is extraordinary” Jesus said. “It sinks in me like a stone in water.”
James made a dismissive noise, rose, shrugged and said, “I’m going to bed.”
In the Torah, Sidon was the first born of Canaan, Noah’s unfairly cursed grandson, and in ancient times the tip of the tongue of Zebulon, one of the twelve children of Israel had its frontier there. According to the ever aspirational books where Joshua had conquered the whole of Canaan, and God had given his favorite people dominion they’d never known in life, Sidon lay in the old tribal holdings of Zebulon’s brother, Asher. The Sidonians were the oldest of the Phoenician cities. From them had sprung great Carthage, old enemy of Rome. As long ago as the days of King David, Sidon’s power gave way to its daughter city, Tyre, but Solomon entered into a matrimonial alliance with the Sidonians, and so brought idolatry into Israel. Jezebel, the wicked wife of Ahaz, was the daughter of King of Sidon, and of course, after he had incurred her wrath, it was to the land of Sidon that holy Elijah had fled, settling in the suburb of Zarephath.
The hills revealed the broad sea, and there was the great city of stone and marble, high towered with a blue bay spreading to the endless sea. Dry mouthed and foot weary they arrived at the greatest city they had ever seen. A great bridge of a pier stretched out to the water and at the end the city extended to an island, and beyonds its stony tan walls, stretched the sea, deep and dark as wine.
“God is great,” Jesus whispered when he beheld the city, the land and the sea.
“God is great.”
Among the other Jews with them as they came through the eastern gate into the roaring city was the man with wild green eyed and the sharp moustache. He was still smiling brightly. Square shouldered, solidly build, bronze colored and handsome in a knee length tunic, he raised a finger and recited:
The word of the Lord came to me:
“Son of man, set your face against Sidon;
prophesy against her and say:
‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“‘I am against you, Sidon,
and among you I will display my glory.
You will know that I am the Lord,
when I inflict punishment on you
and within you am proved to be holy.
I will send a plague upon you
and make blood flow in your streets.
The slain will fall within you,
with the sword against you on every side.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.
No longer will the people of Israel have malicious
neighbors who are painful briers and sharp thorns.
Then they will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.”
He laughed, then said, “And yet here it is!”
“And now I am off,” he said, clasping John and Jesus about the waists, “but maybe I will see you all soon enough.”
And so he laughed, trotting away from them, and though Jesus stared in dazed admiration, John saw James frowning.
The ancient city, mightier and older than Jerusalem, was a contrast in itself, nothing they had expected. For one it had been built up by Great Herod himself and was full of theatres and well as temples, but then here were the ancient monuments from long ago. The tombs of great kings and the temples of gods worshiped before the Lord of Israel, blessed be his unspeakable name. And while there were Greeks and Canaanites and many other peoples, there was synagogue upon synagogue. More Jews, Lazaros reported, were in this bustling city of covered bazaars and dancers and singers and moving chariots, than in Jerusalem itself. John and Jude were fascinated by the wonders of the broad busy streets, but now and again, John turned to see Jesus looking east his eys, yes, full of the wonder of the city and the variety of passing people, but also turned toward Mount Hermon rising in the east, touched by snow at its top, the mountain the people of Sidon called Sirion.
“He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young bull,” Jesus quoted.
“Imagine making that mountain move,” Jude said. “Or any other.”
“Well,” Jesus said with that dazed and ridiculous smile he often wore, “That’s the point. Isn’t it? God can do anything.”
Where they would stay, what they would eat and what they would drink were taken care of by Cyron, a well of factor of the family of Magdalene and Lazaros who possessed a generous spirit and lived a rich live in a massive stone house by the sea where, had he not been kind and generous, there was so much room he need never have seen his guests and gone completely unbothered.
But he did wish to see them, and they wished to bathe, and there were hot and cold pools in this house, and after that a dish of cucumbers, lentils and boiled wheat. There were dates and pressed figs wrapped in grape leaves served with fresh juice, and on the great roof top, under a sun whose light was gentled by a red canopy, they slept through the afternoon, hearing the passing sounds of city life beneath them, and the ships coming in from ports all over the world.
“I could fish,” James said.
“Never in my life, did I hear anyone say they could fish, that they wished to.” Lazaros murmured langorously.
“You are a city man,” James told him in a mock affected tone.
“We fishermen work by the sweat of our brow.”
Jesus cleared his throat at this, for around Lake Tiberius, regardless if they worked by the sweat of their brow or not, fishing was a lucrative life. One could arely tell wealth by the outside of a house, for all houses in the looked more or less the same. But once you entered the household of Zebedee, there were the mosaic floors, the courtyard, the steps leading to the cool wine cellar. Aunt Salome had never wanted for anything, and Jesus remembred her own private room where, when she and his mother talked, he would watch Salome brushing her lustrous hair and holding out jewelry to the bronze mirror while she imagined which necklace of what earrings would suit her best before coming out into the rest of the house. And Zebedee was certainly not the only well of fishermen.
As the sun was setting, though, John looked over the rooftop, for Cyron’s house was high and high up, and in this tme of the year much was done on the canopied roves where servants and lounging guests could have the breeze and see the activity of the city and port below. Jesus smelled the marketplace, still loud. Now the fishermen were preparing to take their boats out at sundown. The hills of Sidon were dotted with massive, many pillared temples. Once they had looked something like the Temple in Jerusalem. Some very old ones even had horns on their sides, like the ancient ones that his traveling cousins said were in the isles inhabited by the fathers of the fathers of the Greeks. But these new temples were done like the Greek and Roman temples, for Sidon had become a Greek city over several centuries.
These people were so like him, it was hard to imagine them as the dreaded Canaanites. The old scriptures said that God had declared all of this land, even to Mesopotamia, for Israel, and Israel had failed to take it or failed to keep it. Joshua’s sword had mowed down all of Canaan ruthlessly, and yet here Canaan still was. Joshua, his namesake, the bloody conquerer of Canaan. God had cursed Canaan who had founded Sidon, and the prophets had cursed Sidon, and it had been destroyed and destroyed all over again and stood now, this teeming city, and had no end in any direction he looked, save the sea.
Lazaros gripped him by the elbow and said, “Tonight I will show you the bazaar.”
“Night?”
“Yes,” the handsome man nodded, stroking his chin. “This is not Nazareth.”
“I will buy silks for myself,” Magdalene said. “And something more durable.”
Lazaros was so used to his sister by now, it never occurred to him to say that a woman should not be with them at night.
