Then on a night I can hardly remember, before you were born, bandits came into our tent, nomads who had no law and no gods. They came as thieves, but when they saw our mother, their purpose changed. She was so beautiful with her long black hair, still so young, and there were those who said she possessed the ability to hypnotize a man with one look, as she could heal the sick with a single word of prayer. She told me that, as they held her down, one of the intruders swept me up, though I was yet a little child, thinking he would have me as well, tearing off my tunic. I don’t remember the screams she vowed I cried, furious wails that recalled the shrill cries of a mouse when it is caught and struggling in a trap, but my throat hurt anew when she told me the story of that night. She disclosed this account only once, when we left Moab to travel to Masada. I tried to remember every word she said. I knew she would not tell me again.
Just as I knew that night was the reason for my fate and for who I had become.
YOUR FATHER, alerted by his kinsman that there were intruders, returned before he was expected, his blue scarf over his dark, scarred face. He was like a whirlwind. Our mother held me close, hidden in her robes, while your father killed each of the thieves. The crude, keening sounds he made were terrible, like the wind when it falls upon you. It was said people could hear him far to the south, where there was a city rising out of red rock, its great temple and carved columns a wonder to be seen. Many among us swore that he possessed the cry of a mazzik, a demon from another world.
After the struggle was over, your father was the only man left alive in our tent. My mother confided that outsiders often whispered that the blood of your father’s people runs blue, and indeed they were a tribe so fearsome even the Romans avoided them. But I remember that he knelt beside our mother with great tenderness, even though he was slick with blood. When he did so, he seemed like one of the thousand who watch over our world, an angel who had rescued us from the wilderness.
After that night our mother cursed what it meant to be a woman. Her life had been molded by all she could not do and all she never would be. But there was a gift she had as well, one no man would ever understand. Her mother had given her a book of spells, magical recipes that would offer her protection while they were apart. She carried that manuscript with her, the most precious of her belongings, along with the gold amulets she wore around her throat, preferring them to all other jewels she might be offered. No protection against evil was stronger.
But what was magic on that night? My mother had tried to bind the vile intruders by reciting an incantation, but we’d had need of another sort of protection, one made of iron, a man, a sword, a rescuer. Our mother offered thanks to the Queen of Heaven for our salvation. Still, her blood was hot and she was unsatisfied. She wished she had been the one to wield the knife so that she might have slain the robbers instead of merely standing mutely by to watch your father do so.
It was on that night that our mother decided to change who I was. She took me with her when everyone else was asleep. Even the horses were dreaming, quick, powerful steeds, left to stand in place without need of a rope, loyal to their riders until the day they could no longer run. Most people of Moab rode camels, but your father’s people owned the most beautiful and fierce horses, who were granted water only every third day so that they might have the great attribute of camels and be inured to thirst, their fortitude surpassing that of any of our enemies’ horses. Our mother chanted the song of protection, then she began the naming rites to Ashtoreth. When you change your name, you change your fate as well. The person you had been vanishes, and not even the angels can find you. We stood on the Iron Mountain, beneath the red moon. There was no afterbirth to mark this occasion, no sacrifice to give back to the earth. Instead our mother buried her own monthly blood. Then she cut my arm and let three drops fall into the earth as an offering to the Queen of Heaven.
My arm burned, and I might have wept, but my heart was full when our mother proudly said I was not to be like anyone else. From that time forward only my mother and God would know of my past life. My name had been Rebekah, but that name disappeared on the night of our blood. I never heard it spoken again. As for your father, he allowed our mother her wish, as he had allowed her to take me with them through the wilderness.
From then on, I was a boy.
SHE CALLED ME Aziza, a name of your father’s people. It can mean one who is beloved, but it also means one who is mighty and fierce. There are those who believe the name is an ancient word for archer, one who is never without a weapon, never at anyone’s mercy. That was what our mother wished for me. The people who lived on the Iron Mountain worshiped a great goddess among their gods; they saw the strength in their own women as well. Now when I witness my sister working in the field with the Essene people, adhering to their strict ways, crooning to the goats that she herds, a servant calmly waiting for the End of Days as if she was nothing more than a passive and beautiful ewe herself, I think that flesh and grass are one and the same, so fleeting, changing before our eyes. My sister was made in the country where the sky gleamed silver and the men were fierce. Had her own father spied her walking in the dust behind the Essene men, her head lowered, he would have been ashamed. But no matter how you might bow before others, my sister, the bond between us will last all eternity, until we meet again in a place where nothing can separate us, as it was on the night you were born, in your father’s tent, with my breath inside you and my life the thread that kept you in this world.