But the walls stay, the roof remains strong and immovable, and we can only pray that if these rooms have memories, they are not ours.
If I were younger (and in being younger, sharper, less prone to biting my tongue) I might have asked her what kind of doctor she was, to allow her brother's condition to go undiagnosed. I might have asked her what kind of sister she was, to recommend such an "alleviation" to his condition and yet--
I suppose I do not have all the information. I suppose that I cannot make such intense conclusions from so little knowledge, but I nearly ask what other suggestions she has for his health. Instead, I say nothing. My silence, I imagine, conveys more than my words would ever be able to: seething disapproval. For all the contempt I feel for my sisters--
I must stop myself there.
I have no relationship with them to speak of. So how can I make comparisons? Perhaps even in this context Ruth exceeds me as a sibling. At last, I remark, simply: "Perhaps." Already, I am unnerved by the eyes and ears the manor possesses; even in solitude, I do not feel alone. It makes me ask myself if I will ever return at all.
She answers my question in a noncommittal way, that says very little about herself. "And what quality is that?" I inquire further, but do not sound any more interested than before.
What I would like to say: Where I am from, women are nothing.
They are not doctors, or politicians, queens, or priestesses. They are at most mothers or sisters to great men. In my world, she would not even seem to quantify as that: when I regard her again, after that long glance over the balcony to the desert below, it is with that thought: war would strip of her all that she is.
That thought in mind, her qualities do not matter. For this, I want to hate her.
Instead, I only feel dryly disinterested; instead, I only feel further from home and all that I have ever known. I did not expect that meeting one of Adonai's sisters would leave me with such a feeling of disconnection, of distance: nothing is as it ought to be, in the desert city.
I suppose I do not have all the information. I suppose that I cannot make such intense conclusions from so little knowledge, but I nearly ask what other suggestions she has for his health. Instead, I say nothing. My silence, I imagine, conveys more than my words would ever be able to: seething disapproval. For all the contempt I feel for my sisters--
I must stop myself there.
I have no relationship with them to speak of. So how can I make comparisons? Perhaps even in this context Ruth exceeds me as a sibling. At last, I remark, simply: "Perhaps." Already, I am unnerved by the eyes and ears the manor possesses; even in solitude, I do not feel alone. It makes me ask myself if I will ever return at all.
She answers my question in a noncommittal way, that says very little about herself. "And what quality is that?" I inquire further, but do not sound any more interested than before.
What I would like to say: Where I am from, women are nothing.
They are not doctors, or politicians, queens, or priestesses. They are at most mothers or sisters to great men. In my world, she would not even seem to quantify as that: when I regard her again, after that long glance over the balcony to the desert below, it is with that thought: war would strip of her all that she is.
That thought in mind, her qualities do not matter. For this, I want to hate her.
Instead, I only feel dryly disinterested; instead, I only feel further from home and all that I have ever known. I did not expect that meeting one of Adonai's sisters would leave me with such a feeling of disconnection, of distance: nothing is as it ought to be, in the desert city.
