When she was a girl, the deep, hollow grinding of stone on stone was a common sound, an everyday occurrence. Whether it was the handheld rechim grinding the meal for their daily bread or the large donkey-powered stone wheel at the edge of town that crushed the oil from the olives, it always elicited in her a feeling of family, of intimacy among women, of the abundance of the earth.
But this sound had been different. This time it shook the earth. This time it rattled her bones.
This time …
***
Light!
Strange, intense, almost painful light. It was more than just the getting-up-in-the-morning readjustment of the eyes. It was more as if she’d been blind or had simply forgotten how to see.
She didn’t remember the act of rising but suddenly she was up. Standing, looking. But what she saw wasn’t her room with its rough-hewn furniture and clay oil lamps in each corner. She was out in the open, with sunshine glowing warm on her skin.
But, why did it feel so … so new to her? Hadn’t she felt its rays on her face for her whole long life? Hadn’t it turned her skin the leathery brown she’d gotten so used to? But this morning its radiance felt so clean, so fresh and new. It was, in a word, wonderful.
She took in a deep breath. That was different too. The breeze blew through the long brown hair that fell around her neck. Wait … Brown? Long? Since when? Was she dreaming? It had been, what, decades since she had hair like this. She curled a soft strand of it around her finger and pondered.
She looked around. What is this strange place? She stepped over the crumbled stones around her. Was there a building collapse? Had there been another earthquake? Their primitive architecture was not always the safest. Not like those greater civilizations to the south, east … and now to the west.
Then she looked up. Bleached stone walls loomed to her right. She was outside city gates. It was quiet. Deathly quiet. She was alone in the world. The only sound was the raspy buzz of a locust and an occasional bird chirp in a nearby olive tree. The breeze brought the taste of dust. And the putrid yet dry odor of death. But that was strangely mingled with the smell of flowers, and, as she turned her head to follow the breeze, there were the flowers of her youth growing nearby—the sweet-smelling, yellow puff-balls of the acacia and her dearest favorite, havazzelet ha-Sharon, the lily of the Sharon valley.
It was all so overwhelming. Near fainting, she sat down on a large stone nearby, a massive, hand-carved circular slab of stone.
***
Sitting down did not exactly clear her mind, but it forced her to think more slowly. As she sat, she felt the warmth that the stone had absorbed from the early morning sun through her thin, dusty, linen garment. Moments flowed, but not hurriedly. In fact, she slowly realized that the ancient, habitual, early-morning feeling of having to do something, to be somewhere … was gone. It was an effort even to recollect how it felt — the breathless urge of man and beast that chased the sun in its daily course. The tasks that had to be accomplished to survive the night, to prepare for the rising of another sun.
She swiveled her head slowly around again to survey her surroundings. A lock of her luscious brown hair blew across her face and she automatically swept it back over her ear. Then her eyes fell on a large stone box perched at an angle, protruding from a small cave-like hole in the ground, half obscured in the rubble to the left of the stone she sat on. It was about three feet long, maybe eighteen inches wide, and about eighteen inches tall. An ossuary. A bone box. She’d seen them for sale in the market. She’d always been intrigued yet repulsed by them, stacked high, with their beautiful painting or carvings on the sides. So beautiful, so functional, so … mocking. The remains of family loved ones would be moved into these as new bodies were placed in the several side shelves — the loculi — of their tombs.
This one looked to be carved of limestone, with a decorative botanical design on the one long side facing her. She twisted her head slightly to view the shorter end. There, scratched into the stone in a much ruder style than the exquisite carving on the other surface, were individual letters. She moved closer and saw that they spelled in her native Hebrew, “Elisheva.” The box’s top was broken.
Now she realized why the thin shreds of linen that wrapped her youthful figure still held a nearly dissipated aroma of dried spices and myrrh.
***
As she rose from her place, she realized she wasn’t as alone as she had thought. Over a slight crest in the rubble, she glimpsed people moving along a road that skirted the massive walls. Whether they had been moving there all along or whether they had just appeared she did not know. Some were in groups, some alone.
As she approached them, they seemed, like her, not as directed, not quite as sure of their way as they might have been. They seemed to be casting questioning glances at one another as they passed. None seemed to care to speak with her. None seemed to even notice. It was all so strange.
Following the slow flow, she approached a large gate gaping open in the wall. There was a small market there to the side. Open booths. Hanging fruit, meats, baskets of grain, colorful spices. Patches of memory of this stretch of road hovered in her mind. It was indeed the road she had followed from her home in the hills south of the city. But there was no market here before. That she knew for certain. But how could that be? She’d only been here yesterday.
She shadowed a small crowd for a handful of paces, then side-stepped slowly over toward a group of donkeys tethered around a trough next to the line of booths. She happened to glance down into the water in the trough next to one and saw a beautiful young woman looking up at her. She spun her head quickly to see who was behind her. But she was alone. The only people around were a group of merchants and some foreigners gathered in a stall hung with brightly colored fabrics. They were haggling, arguing; she couldn’t tell which.
Her mind still seemed numb with sleep. She looked again in the water and then down at her midsection. Her clothes, what there were of them, were … not exactly worn but, rather, disintegrated. Stiff with dust and strange dark splotches, they seemed to be crumbling even as she looked at them. She knew she had to do something before walking into the city or she would soon be indecent. She glanced up again and saw that there was a clothing merchant’s stand a few paces away.
Now she was conflicted. She, a good woman, had never stolen anything in her life. But in these rags she would soon be dragged away by the townspeople for public nakedness. She stepped over, glanced furtively around and, when she was confident no-one was looking, she reached quickly for a plain linen tunic hanging in the back of the booth. She retreated into a cluster of young olive trees nearby and pulled the garment over her head. With a second movement, she ripped off what was left of the rags from underneath. They fell away like dried clay shaken from a sandal.
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