The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [136]
Our mother carried her small woven bag of belongings. When she reached inside, I dreaded what might be revealed. Perhaps a snake or a scorpion, or a knife meant to mark me a sacrifice, as Abraham had been commanded to bring up his only son, Isaac, before God. It took a moment for me to understand what she intended even after she revealed what she had brought with her from Moab. It was a skirt and a cloak made of silk that your father had given to her, a treasure from India, spun by butterflies. I dressed, slipping on the unfamiliar garments, along with a pair of fine leather sandals. It was dark that night, which was a good thing. I would not have been able to look at myself. I had become a stranger in my own skin. I still felt the wings above my shoulder blades, yet they seemed bound in a way they never had when there was a sheet of linen wound around me, concealing them.
Our mother and I said prayers together, those that are recited when a child is born and a human soul has entered into our world. It was the night when I became a woman, though I kept my name. Aziza, the compassionate, the powerful. Aziza, the woman who knew what it was to be a man.
In the morning a messenger arrived from Masada. He had been made aware of exactly where we would be waiting. He gave us fresh water and food, then told us he was meant to lead us to safety. He looked at me in a way no man had before.
It was the first time in my life that I understood who I was to the rest of the world.
I made certain to lower my eyes.
EVEN NOW I am drawn to the ways of my old life. I spend as little time as possible inside the dovecotes. Doves do not interest me, no women’s work does. I cannot weave or sew without pricking my fingers. When I cook, I burn the flatbread. My stew is tasteless no matter what ingredients I might add to the pot. There is not enough salt or cumin in the world to make my attempts palatable. I am clumsy at tasks my sister could complete with ease when she was a mere eight years old.
I often find myself beside the barracks, pulled there especially on the evenings that mark the new month, Rosh Chodesh, when the women gather to celebrate, for it is not with them I belong but here, alongside the warriors. When I find arrowheads, I hold them in the palm of my hand, talismans from my past. The blades fit perfectly in my grasp. Their cold, flat weight is what I yearn for. Metal alone can reach the center of who I am.
I have been in this fortress for so long, but I still dreamed of that other time, though I told no one, not even Amram, to whom I have pledged myself, despite my mother’s warnings. Some things are meant to be kept secret, I learned that young, and I have kept our secret well. My mother may be flooded with doubts, but she has no proof that I have disobeyed. She’s piled salt outside our threshold, so that I might leave footprints, but I leap over, leaving no trace. She’s tied a strand of her hair across the doorway, but I merely crawl beneath it. I can outwit her at some things; all the same, I think of her prophecy every time I meet Amram. I am his, yet I know I have disgraced myself in keeping the truth from my own mother, the one who gave me life not once but three times.
From the start my sister was my accomplice. We had been here for nearly a year, working beside our mother in the dovecotes, when Amram first arrived. We spent days devoted to toil. The three dovecotes were like a family of goats—the father, built as a tower, then came mother and child, square and squat, small and then smaller yet again. They were my world then, as I avoided our neighbors and kept away from other women, afraid they would somehow see through to the differences