'bad self-image.' It was a lot the same, Babylon and America, a lot the same.
"I would say that here in America I have found the nearest thing to Babylon in the good sense that I have ever found. We were not slaves to our gods! We were not slaves to each other.
"What was I saying? Marduk, my personal god. I prayed to him all the time. I made offerings, you know, little bits of incense when nobody was watching; I poured out a little honey and wine for him in the shrine I made for him in the deep brick wall of my bedroom. Nobody paid much attention.
"But then Marduk began to answer me. I'm not sure when Marduk first started answering me. I think I was still fairly young. I would say something idly to him, 'Look, my little brothers are running rampant and my father just laughs as though he were one of them and I have to do everything here!' and Marduk would laugh. As I said spirits laugh. Then he'd say some gentle thing like 'You know your father. He will do what you tell him, Big Brother.' His voice was soft, a man's voice. He didn't start actually speaking questions in my ear till I was nearly nine and some of these were simply little riddles and jokes and teasing about Yahweh . . .
"He never got tired of teasing me about Yahweh, the god who preferred to live in a tent, and couldn't manage to lead his people out of a little bitty desert for over forty years. He made me laugh. And though I tried to be most respectful, I became more and more familiar with him, and even a little smart mouthed and ill behaved.
" 'Why don't you go tell all this nonsense to Yahweh Himself since you are a god?' I asked him. 'Invite him to come down to your fabulous temple all fall of cedars from Lebanon and gold.' And Marduk would fire off with 'What? Talk to your god? Nobody can look at the face of your god and live! What do you want to happen to me? What if he turns into a pillar of fire like he did when he brought you out of Egypt . . . ho, ho, ho ... and smashes my temple and I end up being carried around in a tent!'
"I didn't truly think about it till I was perhaps eleven years old. That was when I first came to know that not everybody heard from his or her personal god, and also I had learnt this: I didn't have to talk to Marduk to start him off talking to me. He could begin the conversation and sometimes at the most awkward moments. He also had bright ideas in his head. 'Let's go down into the potters' district, or let's go to the marketplace,' and we would."
"Azriel, let me stop you," I said. "When all this happened, you spoke to the little statue of Marduk or you carried it with you?"
"No, not at all, your personal god was always with you, you know. The idol at home, well, it received the incense, yes, I guess you could say that the god came down into it then to smell the incense. But no, Marduk was just there.
"I did, stupidly enough, imitate the habit of other Babylonians of threatening him sometimes . . . you know, saying, 'Look, what kind of god are you that you can't help me find my sister's necklace! You won't get any incense out of me!' That was the way with the Babylonians, you know, to bawl out the god fiercely if things didn't go right. They would yell and scream at their personal gods: 'Who worships you like I do! Why don't you grant my wishes! Who else would pour out these libations for you!' "
Azriel laughed again. I was considering this whole question which was not unfamiliar to me as a historian naturally. But I laughed too.
"Times haven't changed that much, I don't really think," I said. "Catholics can get very angry with their saints when the saints don't get results. And I think once in Naples, when a local saint refused to work a yearly miracle, people stood up in the church and yelled 'You pig of a saint!' But how deep do these convictions go?"
"There's an alliance there," Azriel answered. "You know, there are several layers to that alliance. Or shall I say, the alliance