Free Sarah by Marek Halter Page A

Abram. She liked the way the syllables coiled in her mouth.
    Abram certainly wasn’t afraid of the night. He moved about in it as if it were broad daylight. He didn’t even seem to dread the demons.
    Perhaps that was what being a
mar.Tu
meant?
    In truth, she liked everything about this boy. It may simply have been because she had been scared of being lost and alone in the night. Or it may have been because he wasn’t anything like Kiddin. Or the bridegroom her father had chosen for her.
    It amused her to think how horrified they would all have been if they had seen Abram take her hand so unceremoniously! A
mar.Tu
daring to touch the daughter of a lord of Ur! What a sacrilege!
    But she had not even thought of withdrawing her hand. She had felt no shame, no repulsion. Even his smell, so different from the scents with which the lords of Ur anointed themselves, did not disgust her.
    Even the fact that he was a barbarian, a
mar.Tu,
pleased her!
    Sarai wondered what he thought of her. She must be a dreadful sight, she knew, yet Abram had shown no reaction. Perhaps that was the way these
men without a city
behaved. Both her father and Sililli claimed that they were crude, cunning, inscrutable people. It didn’t matter: This one hadn’t hesitated to come to her aid.
    Unless Sililli and her father were right and she never saw him again.
    She hated herself for thinking such a thing. She put more wood on the fire and forced herself not to let her mind wander again.

    HE woke her by dropping two thick white sheepskins and a big leather bag by her side.
    â€œIt took me a while because I didn’t want my brothers to see me,” he explained. “They might have thought I wanted to sleep under the stars in order to get an early start hunting, and they would have followed me. They always follow me when I go hunting. I’ve already killed ten lynx and three stags. One day I’ll face a lion.”
    Sarai wondered if he was boasting or trying to impress her. But he wasn’t. Abram unrolled the sheepskins, took a coarse dress from his sack, and handed it to her.
    â€œTo replace your toga.”
    He himself had swapped his loincloth for a tunic held in at the waist by a belt. The handle of dagger protruded from a leather sheath hanging from the belt.
    While Sarai withdrew into the shadows to change, he ostentatiously turned his back on her, stoked the fire, and took food from the bag.
    When she came back and squatted again by the fire, he looked at her with a slightly ironic smile, which made his cheeks seem rounder. In the shifting light of the flames, the brown of his eyes was even more transparent.
    â€œThis is the first time you’ve worn a dress like that, isn’t it?” he asked, amused. “It suits you.”
    Sarai also smiled. “Are my eyes still black?” she asked.
    Abram hesitated, then burst out laughing: a laugh he had been holding back for a long time, which made his whole body shake. “Your eyes, yes!” he said, catching his breath. “Your cheeks and temples, too. In fact, when I first saw you, if I hadn’t seen your stomach, I’d have thought you were black all over. They do exist, you know—women who are black all over—far away to the south, by the sea.”
    Sarai felt her cheeks burning with rage and shame. “It’s the kohl they put on brides.”
    She seized her toga furiously and tried to tear the bottom of it, but the cloth resisted.
    â€œWait,” said Abram.
    He took out his dagger. It had a curved blade of very hard wood. Sarai had never seen one like it before. It sliced easily through the damp cloth. When he held it out to her, she seized his hand.
    â€œWill you do it?” she asked, her voice shaking more than she would have liked. “You can see in the dark,” she added, trying to sound more confident.
    He shook his head, embarrassed. So that they should both feel less awkward, she closed her eyes.