The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [131]
ALL THE WHILE you were growing up, I was your brother. You followed me as the dove follows the fields of grain. I dressed in blue robes, my hair caught up, then tightly braided in the fashion of young boys. Your father taught me to ride a horse, how to use a slingshot and a spear. I was a natural warrior, made for iron. It was my element from the start. Rather than frighten me, it brought me comfort. Metal was cold and heavy and reliable. It did as I asked. In return I was dedicated; there was never a day when I did not speak my gratitude to the sword I carried and the horse I rode.
Evil spirits have an aversion to metal, and there are those who whisper that the name of iron when invoking it before the Almighty is Barzel, what some believe is a combination of letters taken from the names of the matriarchs of Jacob’s family, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace. I was watched after by the grace of the foremothers of our tribe, Rachel and Leah, but I did not walk the same path they had traveled. I never learned what it meant to be a wife. I never worked a loom. I did not go with the girls to welcome births, and for that I was especially thankful. Your birth was enough for me.
I preferred to be your father’s son, waiting with the horses in silence while the men made their attacks. I held on to the reins as the warriors crept down on foot along the narrow pass to attack caravans traveling west toward Egypt, the carts and fearless horses laden with goods from the east. I helped carry piles of frankincense, strands of lapis and coral and jade, baskets of cardamom and cassia, purses filled with bars and coins of gold. I saw more blood on the ground than any of the girls witnessed at the birthings. I knew things they could not begin to understand: how it felt to ride through the hot night with a spear upon my back. How we swooped across the Iron Mountain, one creature, with one heart, hollering war cries, slick with sweat, darting beneath the moon. On these occasions it was possible to imagine that I had wings and was free as any bird of prey, fierce as any man.
My secret became my daily life. Our mother made certain that I bathed alone. When my breasts began to show, she bound them with a swathe of linen. That binding made me stand up straight, my full height, so that I might have been cast of iron rather than flesh. I could hit harder than the boys. I was faster, as well, and more nimble with a sword. In time your father grew proud of me, almost as if I was his own, as if our lie was the truth. At night our mother taught me to read and write. I learned Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew. There were girls who teased me and pursued me, as they did all the boys they admired. One kissed me during these games, and I laughed, thinking her a fool. I was above such matters. And yet I was confused, for when my friend Nouri pulled me away so we could flee from the girls, my blood raced. When he grabbed me, his fingers upon my arm stung, as though he’d burned me without meaning to.
I went to our mother and wept, like any other silly girl, as I told her what had happened. I fought the urge to be close to Nouri, but he drew me to him, as steel calls to steel. Our mother said it was time for me to understand I could never be like those heedless sheep who chased after boys. She told me she had seen my fate. Love would be my undoing. She whispered that she didn’t tell me this out of cruelty, but out of concern. She had thrown down stones on the day of my birth, and my fortune had appeared on the ground before her, a warning she now shared with me, as her mother had once shared the divination of her future with her. I was not to look at boys or think of them as anything but brothers. On the day that I did so, my fate and my undoing would claim me. There were tears in our mother’s eyes as she instructed