LITMIR.BIZ

      The Visitation

      In the highlands of Elam, 5000 BC

      1.

      The visitation had come to our area in my great-great-grandfather’s day. Now there were just a few of us left, gathered around the altar. God, who circumscribed the paths of the stars and commanded light to shine out from darkness in the beginning, had divided us from the others. We were apart, we who had once been one. Up on a hill, almost out of sight, but nearby, most of our tribe, many of them our relatives, gathered around another altar. It was an old altar. There the chiefs and spiritual leaders led those other people in a song that we could only catch the whisper of where we were, far down in a valley by a little lake.

      Our altar was new, hastily built after we had been spit on and laughed at as we made our way out of the last gathering when we had split apart a few years ago. We had been set apart from those who were now on the high hill, by the beautiful shading oaks, with a view of the whole area where we always made our winter lodging.

      Of course I didn’t remember our departure very well. Mother said she wiped spittle off my little head, for she held my infant body in her arms, almost stumbling and dropping me, trembling, tearful, as she passed by the hissing on her way out of the gathering.

      “Why did we leave, mama?” I asked her.

      “Someone spoke the truth. There was an assembly of all the people in the entire area after the fall fruit-gathering. The one speaking the truth was bitterly accused. We said, we will listen more to the truth. They said, away with him. So we separated.”

      But, you see, we were only separated by invisible understandings. Because even though my best friend and cousin had gone with the other group, he still shepherded sheep with me every day. We fished together in the lakes brimming in the sun. We shot arrows together, we lay together with our backs in the clover facing the sky, guessing together how far it was to the moon, and speculating if any bird had ever flown there.

      “No, it’s too high,” my cousin Sar would say.

      “I guess I don’t know,” I would respond, with quiet discouragement.

      But on the day of rest, Sar went his way, and I went mine. He went with his family up to the big gathering. There they were surrounded by large trees with leafy branches growing heavy with burden of fruit.

      My group, our group, went down the sharp rutted path past a brine pit with our little handful. We greeted one another with a holy kiss. We sang, and one of my uncles or my grandfather or one of the others would talk about how the sacrifice on the altar was a picture of the sacrificing love our Creator had for us.

      We would watch the choking terror of the little lamb while a turtledove warbled in the branches on high. Then the light would die from the lamb’s eyes, as the blood from its heart drained into the cup after the priest cut its pulsing throat. The cup of blood was dashed onto the altar. Then we sang, accompanied by a flute, about the atonement for our sins by the mercies of our God. Sometimes the man who had come so long ago speaking the truth would come back and say the same things that my uncles or grandfather spoke.

      It was morning on the day of rest. Murmuring waters fell down the slope hills around me and the altar. Everyone else had left the altar after the service. I sat by it, pondering Sar. When he came down the grassy bank by the creekside I was surprised.

      “Why aren’t you with your folks?” I asked him.

      “We’re done.”

      “We are too. What should we do?”

      Sar shrugged.

      “Ur, what happened? Why aren’t you with us still?” He motioned to the new altar next to me. “Why did you all leave and build a new altar?”

      “Because you had all been in the truth, but when someone came and warned you that you had fallen away you rejected him instead of repenting.”

      “Really.” Sar looked back over the rutted and steep path he had come down to reach me. A fox crouched on the path watching him for a few seconds. Then it disappeared into the ferns. Sar motioned toward where smoke from the cooking fires went up nearby. “Why can’t we go hunting with the bigger boys?”

      “We’re not old enough.”

      “We are too. What am I supposed to do? Skin animals all my life? Pretty soon I’ll be helping my sisters sew.”

      “Oh, Sar, it can’t be that bad. Mama says to give it some time.”

      2.

      We worked all week. We ate well because I had a good fishing run. The air was cool and the smell of snow shivered in the air. I had no time to play with Sar. We only labored, side by side, tending our lambs, surrounded by everything that sinks or swims or creeps or flies, feeling the preparation activity of nature for the snows that were only weeks off. Some of the elders had gone on a trip to a neighboring village, so we had to do their work, as well as ours.

      On the day of rest, mama and I overslept. We awoke at the bold note of a swallow that was like a stone thrown into a lake.

      We were the last ones down by the creekside. As we got closer we didn’t hear songs, but a clamoring of people. Nobody was sitting down waiting for the preaching to begin. They were all standing around what seemed to be a mixed-up pile of rocks. The earth was as if wounded there, and all around seemed to feel it.

      “What is it, Ur?” Mama asked. “Go slip in and look.”

      I wound my way around bodies all gathered in a circle. When I could finally see what they saw, I saw the rocks of the altar, scattered and thrown around in the oddly multiplied light by the little lake.

      I went back to Mama. “There’s no altar. It’s destroyed.”

      Mama lowered her gaze, moving away from the vision of the people, a betrayed figure under the hesitating sky. Behind her a few poppies in a small meadow laid down the law. She turned toward a huge tree off to one side of the meadow. As she stepped slowly toward it, I followed her. I felt like a spy in the very veins of the earth.

      “Well, my babies’ markers are still here. They left them alone.” She stared down at the dead flowers we had put on the markers last week. Then she took my hand and tugged me down to sit next to the graves of my two little sisters. The forest stretched out behind her full of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

      Mama’s sister came up to her, fingering the wood and leather necklace she wore around her neck sadly. Her eyes revealed a mended soul. She sat down next to us. After a long

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