kill your husband; God did,” I said, relieved, but vaguely disappointed, too.
“Yes, but his death was brought about by my prayer. It’s why I cautioned you to take care what you wrote in your bowl. When the longing of one’s heart is inked into words and offered as a prayer, that’s when it springs to life in God’s mind.”
Does it? “Earlier tonight, I sent my bowl across the room with my foot,” I said.
She smiled. Her face looked ancient and somehow beautiful. “Ana, your betrothal has stolen your hope. Return to your longing. It will teach you everything.”
Her words seemed to release a raw power in the air around us.
“Be patient, child,” she continued. “Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find.”
She went on describing the rumors that had circulated about her in Alexandria, stories that grew so dire she was arrested by the Romans, whose punishments were well known for their brutality. “Our oldest brother, Haran, is on the Jewish council in Alexandria and he struck a deal with the Romans to allow the council to determine my fate. They sent me away to the Therapeutae.”
“Therapeutae?” I repeated, feeling how thick the word was on my tongue. “What is it?”
“It’s a community of Jews. Philosophers, mostly. Like me, like you, they come from educated and affluent families with servants to chew their food and haul their dung, yet they gave up their comforts to live in little stone houses on an isolated hillside near Alexandria.”
“But why? What do they do there?”
“They contemplate God with a fervor you can scarcely imagine. They pray and fast and sing and dance. I found it to be too much fervor for me. They do practical work, too, like growing food, hauling water, sewing garments and such, but their real work is to study and write.”
Study and write. The thought filled me with wonder and stirring. How could there be such a place? “And are there women among them?”
“I was there, wasn’t I? As many women dwell there as men and they bear the same zeal and purpose. They’re even led by a woman, Skepsis, and there’s a great reverence for God’s female spirit. We prayed to her by her Greek name, Sophia.”
Sophia. The name shimmered in my head. Why had I never prayed to her?
Yaltha grew quiet, so quiet I feared she’d lost the desire to go on. Turning, I saw our shadows against the wall, the bent stick of Yaltha’s spine, the waves and tangles of my hair spewing like a fountain. I could barely sit still. I wanted her to tell me everything about the women who lived in stone houses on the side of a hill, about the things they studied and wrote.
As I gazed at her now, she seemed different to me. She’d lived among them.
Finally she spoke. “I spent eight years with the Therapeutae, and tried to embrace their life—they were caring; they didn’t judge me. They saved me, but in the end I was not suited to their life.”
“And you wrote and studied?”
“My job was to tend the herbs and vegetables, but yes, I spent many hours in the library. Mind you, it’s nothing like the great library in Alexandria—it’s a donkey shed by comparison—but there are treasures in it.”
“Like what?”
I was bouncing a little on the bed. She patted my leg. “All right, all right. There’s a copy of Plato’s Symposium there. In it he wrote that his old mentor Socrates was taught philosophy by a woman. Her name was Diotima.”
Seeing my eyes grow wide, she said, “And, there’s a badly stained copy of Epitaphios written by a female named Aspasia. She was the teacher of Pericles.”
“I’ve heard of neither of them,” I said, pierced to think of my ignorance and awed that such women existed.
“Oh, but the real treasure is a copy of a hymn, the ‘Exaltation of Inanna.’ It came to us from Sumeria.”
This I’d heard of—not the hymn, but Inanna the Goddess, queen of heaven, and Yahweh’s adversary. Some Jewish