The Dovekeepers

“If he knew your father was not of our people, he wouldn’t want you,” I said.

“But she won’t tell him.” Nahara nodded at my mother. “It’s too late. He’s had me and I belong to him.” Nahara seemed overcome with her power to hurt us. Her hands were on her hips, as if she were the queen of this stench-filled goat house. “If you want to save someone, save her.”

She nodded at me, my sister whom I loved like no other, who had now become my betrayer. I thought of how tenderly I had cared for her when we lived in the tent on the Iron Mountain. Whenever our mother was called to her husband, I had sung my sister to sleep. She’d always slept well, her thumb in her mouth, drowsing as soon as I began the first phrases of a song which told her that the stars were above her, watching over her. I promised to take tamarisk leaves and use them as a broom to sweep the night away so that morning could come again.

“You’re blind to all she does,” Nahara now said of me. She faced my mother without any attempt at respect. “She has been with Amram a hundred times and you haven’t seen a thing. Open your eyes now.”

My mother turned to me.

“What did you expect?” my sister went on. “A whore learns her business from the one who knows it best of all.”

When our mother reached out, I imagined she would grab Nahara and force her to leave with us. Instead, she slapped her. Our mother, who had never done anything but embrace us, had been driven to this.

I heard Nahara’s sharp intake of air. She raised her hand to her reddened cheek, but she didn’t cry. She smiled, more composed than before, more certain of what she wanted, her father’s daughter in this if nothing more, fierce and single-minded.

“You may try to silence me, but you don’t deny it,” she said to the one who had brought her to life.

Outside the desert wind had risen once more; the door of the goat house was thrown open with such force that the wood split apart. It was too late, just as Yael had warned. The wind would be with us for days, forcing us to cover our heads, to eat grit with our food, to listen to its wailing far into the night. I, who knew only iron, felt tears burning my eyes. Though she stood before me, my sister was no longer mine.

Our mother bowed her head, disgraced. I thought of the way she had labored to bring my sister into this world, for I had been her witness on that day.

Save her, she had commanded.

Never once Save me.

ON THE NIGHT that we left the Essenes, my mother tore at her cloak, as women did when they entered into mourning. There are those who say that our word for grave, kever, is also used to describe where a child dwells inside a mother, for life and death are entwined. The child my mother had labored to bring into this world was gone to her now. She would not tell the truth of who Nahara’s true people were, for Nahara would then be a dishonored woman. Instead, she gave her up. We did not speak of my sister again, although my mother chanted for her for seven days, as one chants for the souls of the dead, for that is how long the spirit lingers near the body, unable to part with its earthly form.

From that time on we lived side by side in our chamber, but as time passed, we rarely spoke. It was only the two of us, for my brother had moved to a tent near the barracks, to better serve the warriors but also to avoid the silence between my mother and me. A deep pool of distrust had come between us, a drowning place. Anyone with sense would stay away from such bitterness, and Adir was a practical boy.

I took to working in the smallest dovecote, set apart from the others. I couldn’t make amends. I had lied to my mother and deceived her. I had been with a man before marriage. What had been done could not be undone, for even in the hands of a witch, a ruined woman could not once more be pure.

AND YET, when I lay down to sleep, I was someone other than the woman I’d become. I often dreamed I was riding through the acacia trees. I thought of my old friend Nouri, and how I had betrayed him, pretending to be something I wasn’t, a creature cast from sinew and muscle rather than a woman of flesh and blood. I had pretended no such thing with Amram, but perhaps I kept from him what was most important. I never told him my given name. Because of this he didn’t know me and he never could, no matter how many times he might possess me, or how I might try to offer my love in return.

Because of this, even when I was beside him, I was alone.

He was not the one for me, for he would never accept the hidden part of me. He called me his sheep, his dove, his darling girl, but I was none of those things. I began to avoid our meeting place. He who had known me as a husband would, waited beside the fountain, burning for me. But I watched from the shadows, as angels watch our kind from their lonely distance. I longed for what I dreamed about, the freedom I’d once had. In my dreams I asked the father of my sister if he had seen the person I was at my core. He gazed at me sadly and did not answer, for he had lost us all and could not follow or respond, not even in a dream.