Harvest of Rubies
HARVEST of RUBIES
TESSA AFSHAR
M
OODY
P
UBLISHERS
CHICAGO
© 2012 by
T
ESSA
A
FSHAR
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Scripture references are from Psalm 46:1–2; Job 3:25; Psalm 18:1–3; selections from Psalm 25; Psalm 25:7; Psalm 31:8–9; Hosea 2:14–15a.
Achor
in the Hosea citation in chapter 26 means “trouble.”
Some Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version
®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
™
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
www.zondervan.com
Some Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible, New Living Translation
, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189, U.S.A. All rights reserved.
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370,
www.booksandsuch.biz
.
Moody Publishers editor: Pam Pugh
Interior Design: Ragont Design
Cover Design: Brand Navigation, LLC
Cover Images: iStock, Dreamstime, and Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Afshar, Tessa.
Harvest of rubies / Tessa Afshar.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8024-0558-6
1. Scribes—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.F47H37 2012
813’.6—dc23
2011045869
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For my mother and father:
Thank you for teaching me to laugh and to love
.
Chapter One: The Eighth Year of King Artaxerxes’ Reign* Persia
Chapter Two: The Sixteenth Year of King Artaxerxes’ Reign* Persepolis
Chapter Three: The Nineteenth Year of King Artaxerxes’ Reign* Persepolis
| 587–586 BC | Judah is captured by Babylon, and the Temple is destroyed. |
| 559–530 BC | Cyrus the Great establishes the largest empire the world has ever known and founds the Achaemenid dynasty. In 538 Cyrus sets Israel free from its Babylonian captivity as foretold by Isaiah(44:24–45:5). He donates money from his own treasury toward the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. |
| 530–522 BC | Cambyses, Cyrus’s eldest son, conquers Egypt. His reign is briefly followed by his younger brother, Bardia, who dies shortly thereafter under strange circumstances. |
| 521–486 BC | Darius the Great expands the Persian Empire so that at its height it encompasses approximately eight million miles of territory. Next to Cyrus, he is the most admired Achaemenid king. He is probably not the king referred to in the book of Daniel 6:1–28, since Daniel would be quite old at this time. |
| 486–465 BC | Xerxes takes over his father’s great dynasty. He is best known for his notorious attack on Greece and for choosing a simple Jewish girl named Esther as his queen. The date of this event is not known. For details, see the book of Esther. |
| 465–424 BC | Artaxerxes is known as a benevolent king who replaces several harsh laws with more humane rulings. He sends his cupbearer, Nehemiah, back to Jerusalem in 445 in order to rebuild its ruined walls. |
| 334 BC | Alexander the Great conquers Persia. |
| Approx. 33 AD | Jesus of Nazareth is crucified. |
CHARACTERS
in order of appearance or mention
Sarah—
senior scribe to the queen
Simeon—
Sarah’s father
Leah—
Sarah’s aunt
Nehemiah
—relative of Sarah and Simeon; cupbearer to the king
Artaxerxes—
king of Persia
Damaspia—
queen of Persia, wife of Artaxerxes
Amestris—
the queen mother
Frada—
steward to Damaspia
Nebo—
scribe to Amestris
Parisatis (Pari)
—handmaiden to Sarah
Gaspar—
scribe under Frada
Alogune—
concubine to Artaxerxes and mother of his son Sogdianus
Lord Darius—
Sarah’s husband
Lord Vivan
—Darius’s father
Teispes—
steward of Darius’s household
Shushan—
cook in Darius’s household
Teispes—
steward of Darius’s estate
Bardia—
the gardener
Mandana—
an
arassara
Gobry/Gobryas—
Bardia’s grandson
Aspasia—
a courtesan
Arash
—Damaspia’s nephew
Vidarna—
Darius’s new steward
*
Persia
O
n my twelfth birthday, my father discovered that I could read.
He came home long before the supper hour that night, an occurrence so rare that in my shock I forgot to greet him. Instead, I sat stupefied, clutching a forbidden clay tablet.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his gaze arrested by the sight of the tablet clasped to my chest.
My father, a royal scribe in the Persian court, treated his writing tools as if they were the holy objects from the Ark of the Covenant. Before I had learned to walk or speak, I had learned never to go near his scrolls and tablets for fear I might damage them.
“You know better than to touch this,” he said, when I didn’t respond right away.
I swallowed the ball of gathering dread in my throat, knowing myself caught. Truth seemed my only option. “I was reading,” I said, as I replaced the tablet on the floor with extravagant care.
He studied me from beneath lowered brows. “Even if you could read—which you cannot—you should not be anywhere near my scribal supplies. It is very wrong of you to lie, Sarah.”
“I am not lying, Father.”
He heaved a sigh. Spreading his hand in mock invitation toward the tablet, he said, “Demonstrate.”
The tablet was in Persian, one of the most complicated languages of the world. I could have chosen to teach myself Aramaic, a simpler language for a beginner and more appropriate for a Jew. But most Aramaic documents were recorded on parchment, and I had decided that there would be fewer chances of accidentally damaging clay or stone tablets than fragile parchment scrolls.
Licking my lips, I concentrated on the complex alphabet before me. The symbols looked like a series of delicate nails standing upright or lying sideways, an occasional incomplete triangle thrown in for confusion. With halting accuracy I began to read the first line from left to right. Then the second and the third.
My father sank to the carpet next to me, his movements slow. He was silent for a long moment. Then he asked, “Who taught you to read Persian?”
“Nobody. I learned by myself. I’ve been studying for five months.”
He seemed speechless. Then, with jerky movements, he fetched three small clay cylinders and placed them before me.
“What’s this word? And this? Can you make out this sentence?”
We must have sat there for hours as he tested my knowledge, corrected my pronunciation, and demonstrated grammatical rules. He forgot about my months-long transgression of secretly handling his scribal supplies. He forgot to remonstrate with me for having taught myself to read without his permission.
But then he also forgot to ask me
why
I had wanted to learn. Although I was surprised by his lack of anger at my behavior, his lack of interest was all too familiar. In the years since my mother’s death when I was seven, my father had rarely spoken to me of anything save mundane household matters, and even that was rare. My desires, my motives, my hopes, held no appeal to him.
Late that night, after so many hours of his company, when I crawled onto my thin cotton-filled mattress, my mouth spread in a wide smile. I had finally found a way to hold my father’s attention. He had spent more time with me on this one night than he was wont to do in a fortnight. Months of hard work had won me the desire of my heart; he had found something in me worth his while.
After we lost my mother, Aunt Leah, my mother’s only sister, began coming once a week to our home to help us with the housework. She tried to show me how to sew and clean and cook. Our conversations around these topics tended toward frustration—for her—and pain for me.
“Weren’t you paying attention when I showed you how to pluck the chicken?”
“No, Aunt Leah. I beg your pardon.”
“You can’t use a broom like that, Sarah. You only move the
dust from one spot to another. That’s not called cleaning. That’s a migration of dirt.”
“Yes, Aunt Leah. I beg your pardon.”
“This pot won’t clean itself just by you staring at it and sighing.”
Silence seemed the best response at times like this. I could not offend my only aunt by telling her the truth: that I would rather hit my head with the pot and make myself lose consciousness than have to face the frustrating boredom of scrubbing its black bottom.