anonymous
September 2009
I was sitting in the sun beside the wall of Rachel’s house. My feet were still cold but, now I was out of that awful wind, my hands and body were warming and I’d stopped shivering. I thanked the Holy One for that and for the shelter of Rachel’s wall.
While I was warming myself I’d become aware of people singing and shouting, distant but drawing nearer. Then the hillside below me began to fill up with a mixed crowd, mostly men and boys but a few women too, even some from the upper streets, those women with pretty clothes, elegant hands and feet, clean fresh skin, and their servants carrying bags for them. Those women who had too much were mixing with the ones who had too little, women like me, and others who had enough (though few of them ever seem to know that!).
“There he is! That’s the magician, the healer! That Nazarene healer!” someone called out. The crowd surged up the hill toward where I was crouching, onto the terraces and the path that runs across the slope below Rachel’s house. A lot of shoving, some curses, some apologies as people craned their necks or jumped up and down to catch a glimpse.
From my place by the wall I was above everyone. That’s how I saw him then, coming along the path in the sun. He was short, bearded but his hair was already drawing back from his forehead so I thought he looked old. I was only fourteen, anyone past twenty was old in my eyes. He was dressed like any wandering magician – we used to see quite a few of those characters, mostly men but a few old women, too. Those magic women did some midwifery on the side. I had a relative like that. I heard she even delivered a woman of three babies all at one time. My grandmother said it was her, anyhow. Those kids all lived past weaning, people came from all over to see them. Two girls, one boy. That takes magic, wouldn’t you say?
But the magic man I was telling about. What I saw that day from my sunny spot out of the wind by Rachel’s wall. When I was fourteen and all alone in the world.
There was this boy, almost a man, Joel from a herding family. Joel didn’t speak. Some claimed he didn’t hear. Rumour had it that he preferred sheep to girls, that he ‘spoke sheep’, not human. That a demon was in him which was why he had a gift for making his sheep follow him to good grazing they never could reach on their own, that other shepherds couldn’t find. People despised Joel, the sheep-lover – that’s what they called him, behind his back or to his face. “Here comes Joel the sheep-lover!” He couldn’t say a thing so he’d just scurry off with his flock. I would never even look at him in case someone might start in on me. That could happen and I didn’t dare fall any further than I was. Being a single woman and a homeless orphan with a witch as a relative made my life cheap enough.
That Nazarene – Jesus, they called him – he caught sight of Joel at the edge of the crowd, down the hill from the rest of them, with his dozen ewes and a couple of lambs, late-born ones still with their mothers. In fact, there’d been some boys calling things at Joel, “Get away from here, filthy sheep-lover!” and worse words about what they’d do to him because of what they said he did with sheep. You know.
The shepherd looked down at his feet while they mocked him, didn’t speak of course, but didn’t leave either. Someone tossed a pebble. Someone else threw a handful of gravel. The sheep started to mill around.
Then, the magician. His face sort of lit up? Like he’d just seen someone important – he looked at Joel the way my father did at me when I walked into the room when he was so sick that last time, his legs swollen too much to walk, and I was bringing him a bowl of soup. Like love. You know? – The magician turned back. He clambered off the path and all the way down that steep hill until he reached the shepherd. The crowd went quiet. The boys scuffed their bare feet and watched as the little dust clouds they raised blew away.
The wind dropped. So I heard every word the Nazarene said, the sound rising up the hill: “Joel. Our Father in Heaven loves you. You are dear to Him. Your words are free now. The demon of silence has left you. Speak to me, Joel, you good shepherd whose sheep prosper from your care”. That rough, guttural Nazareth accent.
Joel looked up, right into the face of the magician from Nazareth. And his face sort of lit up, too. I thought of how our farm dog had looked at me when I’d found him all tangled up in thorn bushes and cut him free. Grateful. Joel’s face looked like that. Then he spoke: “My God. My God. Can I sing? If I can speak, can I sing, too? My God. I have words. Thanks. Thanks. My Friend. Thanks. My words.” And he spoke and talked and sang that psalm, the one about the Lord is our shepherd and being safe in the valley of death. And he said that’s where he’d been, in that valley of death’s shadow. Then he walked off with his head up, singing, his sheep following along.
We were all amazed, though in the midst of it I heard someone muttering that the Nazarene must have used Beelzebul’s strength to free the sheep-lover’s voice. Sour grapes, eh?
Long ago and far away, yes. I’m old now, the Nazarene – Jesus – I heard they killed him, though some say he’s alive. I don’t know. But I was there when Joel walked off singing to those sheep. I remember that.
Luke 11: v14-15. “He was driving out a devil which was dumb; and when the devil had come out, dumb man began to speak. The people were astonished, but some of them said, ‘It is by Beelzebul prince of the devils that he drives the devils out’.”