Take This Cup Read Free Page B

and your precious mountains and pastures.”
    Lamsa leaned forward slightly and studied her face. “You would love my mountains, I think.”
    Sarah nodded once. “Yes. I think. I think . . . I will. Yes. I would like to go see such a sight. Asparagus growing on a mountaintop . . . and such things. Thunder.”
    Lamsa leaned back and laughed loud and hearty. He patted his chest. “Oh, my heart! My happy heart!”
    Sarah laughed with him. “All right, then.”
    Boaz and Rebekah embraced. “Praise be to God! Praise be!”
    When things quieted down, Lamsa instructed, “Have the Ketubah drawn up, Boaz. I think it would be wise that we would marry here and stay here in Jerusalem with you until the rainy season is over. Sarah, would this please you?”
    All was well. The matter was settled over breakfast, and by dinner the contract was signed.

    The wedding took place in Jerusalem that very next week. From the first night, Sarah was happy with her husband. He was gentle with her, and she was cherished by him. It was a good match.
    By the time the rainy season ended, Sarah had intricately woven her husband a beautiful prayer shawl. She was more than content; she was in love. When the rains were over and the camels packed for their return journey to Eden, Sarah told her parents a secret: “I am carrying Lamsa’s child. I will send word when the baby is born.”
    So my mother, with her loom and carrying me, left all her family behind and traveled a thousand miles east and north by caravan.

Chapter 2
    A ll in the encampment tending my father’s herds were asleep, except for the watchmen posted around the flock.
    A chorus of summer breezes curled down from the heights, filling the valley with whispers of tall pines and the creaking sighs of yews and junipers.
    My mother, heavy with me, had chosen to follow the grazing sheep with my father, rather than stay behind in a stone house in the fortress town of Amadiya to await my birth. There was a midwife in the shepherds’ camp and an elderly rabbi named Kagba, a wise man, who knew the secrets of Torah and taught the children. If I turned out to be a boy, Kagba would perform the circumcision.
    Sarah stood framed in the dark entrance of their tent. Her arms tenderly embraced me, dancing in her womb. “Your father is tending the flocks tonight, my little lamb.”
    Watch fires had burned to embers that winked and sparkled on the improvised stone hearth. The pleasant sharpness of wood smoke scented the air. Shepherds and vigilant herd dogs ringed the meadow. A psalm of the shepherd boy David came to her: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
    Beyond the circle of guardians, an outer hoop of cedar trees protected the lush grazing grounds. A herd of a dozen roedeer cropped the grass at the near edge of the meadow. For a moment Sarah thought she saw the ghost-like form of a white hart watching from the shadows.
    The words of the psalmist continued, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
    The crescent of a waning moon climbed over the peaks, and a myriad of stars reflected on the surface of a small, pristine lake.
    “He leads me beside still waters.” 1
    Night birds called from the rushes lining the shore. In the middle distance an owl hooted fitfully.
    There seemed no separation between earth and sky. Sarah caught a glimpse of Rabbi Kagba standing on a low hill, surrounded by her three stepsons and a half-dozen other children attending his astronomy class. He pointed out constellations and the movement of the stars.
    She had never really thought about the constellations or the names of stars when she lived in her lonely rooftop bedchamber in Jerusalem. But now she enjoyed the bits of information in the rabbi’s lessons.
    “A man will not be lost in the wilderness if he learns the path of the stars,” the rabbi told his students.
    Sarah whispered, “Stars above and stars shining up from beneath the surface of the water.”
    Turning, she followed the direction