Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (46 page)

According to the original plan,
Timin intended to wait until the beginning of the third watch and
to run with his body hunched for the remainder of the night, making
his way through the reeds along the banks of the irrigation canals.
He planned on hiding in the reeds for the duration of the day and
then continuing to run the following night until he was out of the
range of immediate danger, the land belonging to master Savsesser.
Timin continued to execute his plans in secret and would most
certainly have been caught in the fangs of the soldier's hounds or
become prey to the swamp wolves, were it not for Rukha's
involvement.

Rukha noticed the changes in
Timin's behavior. He decided to speak candidly with him about it;
this was a number of months beforehand.

“Are you mad at me? Did I
unwittingly insult you?”

“Heaven forefend, Rukha my
brother.”

“Have I imposed on you with the
harvest quotas that you completed on my behalf?”

“No, Rukha,” answered Timin, upset
that his secret had led to a misunderstanding, “You do not mistreat
me. I easily complete the rest of your quota, keeping the whip at
bay without detracting from my own quota.”

“If so,” inquired his friend, “how
come you no longer enjoy my companionship? Why have you stopped
drinking liquor with me toward evening, as we used to do? Why do
you disappear with the demons during the evening hours and leave me
all alone in the hut?..”

Rukha's hurt feelings convinced
Timin to finally cave in. After making him swear in the name of a
host of Gods and a slew of curses, he divulged his secret. As
expected, Rukha objected. Though he was concerned that Timin would
leave him alone without a kindred spirit in the world, Rukha was
more frightened that Timin would be caught and tortured to death.
He was unable to understand the extent to which freedom was worth
risking life, for Timin and for the other slaves who had been born
as free men.

Timin tried to explain the concept
of freedom to Rukha. “There is no harvest quota, no whip, and no
taskmaster overseeing your labor. You choose when to get up and
when to sleep, when to eat and when to drink. You can earn money
and purchase a plot of land, buy a wife from her parents or
purchase a work animal to lighten your load. You don't have to
lower your gaze in submission before other men and the elders who
sit at the city gates are attentive to your plight and will protect
you from injustice. You are free to sow, harvest, ferment, filter
and drink liquor to your heart's content without rationing. You are
free to move about as you please throughout the kingdom and even
ride a donkey if you can afford one.”

Even though he was surrounded by
hired laborers who were freemen, Rukha regarded these stories as
sorts of legends and drank up every minute detail of this magical
world. With shining eyes he asked:

“Do you sleep upon down quilts? And
dip your bread in fat? And are your offerings accepted in the
temple? And do your sons and daughters grow up with you and your
wife? And can the talented ones among them learn to write?” And so
on and so forth. His words painted an image of the wonders of
freedom until jealousy seared his soul. Then he came back down to
earth and comforted himself by thinking about the dangers of
escaping. He was content with his lot: things could always be
worse.

Rukha avoided thinking about the
possibility of escaping together. Why should he be a burden on
Timin and force him to turn him down, or worse, impose unnecessary
risks by escaping together? Timin did not invite Rukha to come
along with him in order to protect him from danger. Because Rukha
succeeded in meeting his harvest quota by himself now, he could
survive. After having a taste of freedom in his imagination, Rukha
understood that it was his duty to free Timin, but he conditioned
this on aiding him escape.

Timin refused. He knew that the
sentence of a slave collaborator was the same as that of a runaway
slave. Only after Rukha conceived an escape plan that was far
better than Timin's, cultivated its every detail and covered any
potentially incriminating holes in the plan did Timin agree to
listen to him.

“According to your plan, Timin, I
might as well start mourning you now,” he teased. “By the third
watch, you won't have gone any farther than the boundaries of
Master Savsesser's property. During the course of the day, the
masters' hounds or the swamp wolves will have picked up your scent,
and if you survive their teeth, remember that upon Shamash's
rising, green leaves shall be scattered on sizzling coals, and
white smoke shall announce your bounty price. If you have resolved
yourself to carry out your plan for freedom, at least give me a
chance to suggest a safer way to escape.”

Timin recognized that Rukha's sharp
mind compensated for his frail body. It was no coincidence that
through Rukha's guile the two were able to fool the taskmasters and
raise harvest sheaves to his credit. Rukha's wit also earned the
attention of his masters following his suggestion to irrigate the
fields at night during the dry season in order to maximize the
meager water ration. Timin only agreed to listen to Rukha's advice
after repeating his demands several times and after Rukha promised
not to run away with him.

Rukha shook himself awake from his
memories. He was alone now in the hut; he spread out the palm frond
mat in preparation for bed. One hour prior, he had hugged Timin for
the last time before joining the other slaves for the evening bath
in the laundry pool. Rukha was the first one to return from the
bath. He felt a sense of terror only when the last bather returned
from the pool. Timin remained inside the water.

Timin waited patiently until the
last bather left the area. He scrubbed himself with aromatic sage
leaves, as was the custom of bathers who could not afford essential
oils, in order to mask his scent from the swamp wolves. As he cast
a final glance toward the barley fields, the slave huts and the
washing stones on the banks of the river, he thought about his
parents. Were they still alive? He thought about his brothers and
sisters in Elam, who certainly believed him to be dead by now. He
waited: only when he could see the blaze of the bonfire between the
taskmasters' huts blinding their eyes did he dare venture to dive
through the watery mud.

Rukha peeked between the rushes of
the hut's walls and watched the taskmasters' fire being kindled.
This was the sign to begin counting the time. He stretched out on
his back at the entrance of the tent and tried to relax, to
regulate his shortness of breath, to overcome the trembling in his
hands and wipe the cold sweat from his skin. He raised his eyes to
the stars while forcing himself to hum the harvest song. At the end
of the first verse, he said to himself, 'Now he is breathing
through the reed.'

Rukha's small lungs did not allow
him to hold his breath for the duration of more than half a verse,
but Timin had practiced for months and finally succeeded in holding
his breath for an entire verse plus the chorus. This was the amount
of time needed to take out the curved hollow reed he had hidden in
linen fabric near his loins. While still submerged, and while
grasping the roots of the reeds on the pool's floor with one hand,
he placed upon his head with his other hand the loops of fresh,
supple sheep's artery. Timin threaded the reed between the sheep's
artery and his temple, placed the tip of it in his mouth, sealed
his nose with a clip he had made out of a split piece of wood and
began to breathe freely through the reed.

Rukha silently hummed the second
verse to himself and thought, 'Now he is removing the stones from
the inflated cow stomachs on the floor of the pool.' Timin spent
hours working on the cow stomachs that he stole from the offal left
by the wolves. He rolled them back, scraped and cleaned out the
stomachs inside and out and dried them in the sun. He then softened
them with urine and inserted stiff and hollow plant stems inside
the intestinal duct to prevent it from closing, sticking to itself
or shrinking. Using a fish bone needle, he delicately stitched all
of the stomachs together in a chain. At the end, he coated the
stitches with a layer of bitumen sealing.

Timin breathed heavily through the
narrow reed as he fastened the inflated stomachs to his body with a
harness made of wickers. The cow stomachs and the stone weights
connected to them were impeccably designed and tested by Rukha so
that, when Timin fastened them to his body, he was suspended in the
thin mud at a suitable height above the floor of the pool yet below
the surface of the water.

Rukha hummed the third verse and
thought to himself, 'Now he is fastening his sandals.' Rukha had
prepared long-soled sandals made from strips of reeds woven with
sturdy green palm fronds. He figured that these sandals, like the
tail fin of a fish, would enable Timin to double his swimming
speed. Without them, he doubted if Timin would be able to travel
the distance needed to reach the river tonight.

Suddenly, he noticed a movement.
Rukha sat up at the entrance of his hut and saw the silhouettes of
two taskmasters advancing toward the laundry pool. 'What are they
doing?' A terrifying thought crossed his mind as his breath became
short. Did one of the maids fail to bring them all of their
laundry? Perhaps they were checking that no slaves remained in the
pool, or maybe they were looking for a maid for the night. Could it
be that their liquor jugs were empty and they were thirsty for
water? He decided to divert their attention.

Timin was groping the walls of the
pool when, all of a sudden, he heard footsteps on the riverbank.
Their voices indicated that they were merely several cubits away
from him, though under the water he could not make out their words.
With his blood frozen in his veins, he calmly thought that as long
as he remained still, didn't make a sound and continued to breathe
through the reed, they would not detect him. He settled into a
mindset of serenity, much like the calmness that hovers at the
threshold of sleep, and anticipated the moment when they would
leave. Had it been daylight, a keen eye would have noticed the
unnatural phenomenon of a reed floating vertically. Reeds either
grow vertically or float horizontally; but in the darkness of
night, no one noticed. To his relief, someone called out to them.
Rukha was contorted with stomach pain. Timin silently hummed to
himself the harvest song from beginning to end before daring to
continue groping toward the narrow and muddy opening of the
irrigation channel. With a slight push of his feet, he set out on
his journey to freedom.

Despite his exhaustion, Rukha did
not sleep. He imagined that every dog's bark or jackal howl would
awaken an uproar that would storm on Timin. Rukha trusted Namu,
Goddess of water, not to betray his scent. With the first light,
the slaves came out of their huts to kindle their fires and put
water on to boil for the morning barley porridge. Shamash would
reach a height of four fingers above the eastern horizon before the
taskmasters would notice Timin's absence. By then, though, he would
have already passed the opening between the narrow channel and the
broad channel and would have found shelter like a nutria under an
island of raspberry thickets. During the course of the day, he
would doze with his head above the water and the reed in his mouth,
always ready to noiselessly retreat back into the water should the
need arise.

All night, Eo tossed and turned
between his straw mattress and feather quilt, unable to sleep.
Finally, he rose from his bed and began to dress.

“What's going on, my dear?” asked
his wife.

“Four donkey loads and water
rations of two months, Tashritu and Arahsamnu? Wherever shall I get
them, Kishmi?”

“King Meskiagasher loves you, Eo,”
replied his wife as she rose from their bed. Eo was a nickname,
short for Eogulades, the name his teacher had given him upon
ordaining him as an Eazo, healer of oils and spirits. The name
meant 'He who the Medicine Goddess Gula lays within him'.

“And what makes you so sure of
this?”

“Did anyone of all the king's
doctors receive the seal besides you?” she asked, combing his thick
hair and square beard with a comb made of hippopotamus ivory.

Eo glanced with pride at the
cylindrical seal, made of blue lapis lazuli, which he wore around
his neck. Kishmi was right, as usual. Even his rival, the Ezo,
healer of water and flesh, did not get such an honor.

“Ever since you banished the Spirit
of the Dead from the palace halls two harvest seasons ago, you have
been remembered favorably.”

“Indeed, yes, my dear.” He stroked
her black curls and gazed at the love of his soul. He loved every
eyelash that framed her large almond eyes. Eyes that always gave
him strength. He cherished her touch, which never failed to warm
him, and every curve of her plump body, from her smooth shoulders
down to her abundant hips and her wide, barren thighs.

“Don't worry, Gula has blessed you
with the gift of healing. Take with you a fat goose for the high
priest at the ziggurat temple, along with a sheep for him to bless,
and go to the king with the sheep as a gift and request the price
of a slave.”

“I will have to meet with one of
the king's ministers. In this vipers' nest, I have no idea who
leans in my favor and who does not. How will I get past them to
reach the king?”

“Be patient. Advance slowly. Turn
to whoever you need to and return home. Then we will consult
together about how to progress. I'll be waiting for you with a
sweet dish of pork neck meat with cherries and apricots in saffron
and date honey, just how you like it.”

“I cannot even afford the slave
that I need and here you are planning a royal feast,” grumbled Eo
as he looked into Kishmi's face. She dipped her hand in sheep's
milk butter and peppermint extract and slid it over his beard. He
kissed her hand and regretted his words.