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| Jean-François Millet's unfinished painting of "Hagar and Ishmael" from the Mesdag Collection in the Hague |
Is this where my story ends? Not quite back at the beginning?
Egypt, is
just over the horizon… Shimmering like a mirage. My mistress Sarai whose name
means “Princess” used to tell visitors to our encampment that I too was once a
princess, the daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt, but that when God rescued her
from Pharaoh’s clutches that I said:
“It is
better to be a slave in Sarai's house than a princess in my own…”
And that I
then went with her and Abram when they were banished from Egypt.
But she
never gave me the chance to tell my own story… The truth is, my
background was much, much humbler. I was a good deal younger than my son is now
when I was stolen from my village to become a slave in Egypt… I was so young I
can hardly remember what my parents looked like or indeed where exactly I came
from…
It was a punitive raid further
along the Nile by Pharaoh’s forces I presume. That’s where most of Egypt’s
slaves come from. But I wasn’t sold off in the markets like most of the slaves,
who were generally worked hard and died young. Instead I was kept in the royal palace
and trained in the basic household tasks by one of Pharaoh’s slave-masters. I was
given the name Hagar, meaning “My Reward” when I was presented to Sarai as a
wedding gift by Pharaoh when, thinking that she was unmarried “sister” of Abram,
a wealthy Hebrew nomad, he took her into his palace as his own wife. But actually
Sarai was really Abram’s wife… For some reason Abram thought that was safer to
pretend she was his sister… Safer for whom I don’t know… Certainly not for
Sarai… But when Pharaoh found out that he had been tricked, he threw Sarai and
all her belongings, including me, out of the palace and banished her and Abram
and all their household from Egypt… It’s a wonder he didn’t just kill us all…
Pharaoh is not known for his mercy… Though perhaps, in retrospect, death then might
have been a mercy…
I have never seen Egypt again…
my native Africa… I don’t suppose now that I ever will… That we ever will…
At first, as Sarai’s slave
girl, things were pleasant enough. I helped her with her routine tasks -
cooking, cleaning, making and mending clothes, as well as bathing my mistress
and applying her make-up, using all the skills that I had been taught back in
Egypt… But no-matter how much make-up I applied it couldn’t cover up the fact
that beautiful though she was, she was also getting on in years… and in all
those years she had borne Abram no children… Ironic given that his name means “Father
of many!” It was a source of great sorrow for them both, and sometimes, as I
applied kohl to her eyes, I had to wipe them clean and start again because her
tears had made black streaks run down her face.
But one day, after I had
been with them for about 10 years, I was bending over to pick something up
outside our tent, when I heard my mistress saying from behind me “Well now
Hagar, over these past few years you have developed some good child-bearing
hips. Perhaps we can put them to good use.”
I didn’t know what she
meant, but like all slaves, knew better than to ask. But that night, when we
lay down to sleep, my master Abram came and laid with me instead of with his
wife. I started to cry out in pain, but he placed his hand over my mouth and kept
reassuring me that everything was alright… that everything would be alright…
And as I looked across the tent I could see Sarai staring at me… and I stared
right back, through my tears…
This happened every night for a week… Then when
the time for my monthly bleed came, Sarai checked my garments day by day… I
felt like one of Abram’s prize heifers. But when nothing appeared, she was
delighted. She knew that Abram’s seed had taken. She told Abram and he too was
full of joy. He lavished me with gifts of fruit, perfumes, clothes and even
jewellery… I wasn’t sure that he even knew I existed before all of this, but
for a short time it seemed as if I became the centre of his life… He told Sarai
to excuse me from my daily chores… And I will admit, it all went to my head… As
the child grew within me my confidence grew, and I started to speak to my
mistress as an equal… until one day, while I was sitting under the tent awning
sheltering from the sun and massaging oil into my belly as some of the older
slaves had told me to do, I said “Sarai…” Not “Mistress” but “Sarai… would you
fetch me a cup of water?”
“How dare you!” she said, “Have you forgotten
who is the slave around here?”
“Have you forgotten who is carrying Abram’s
child?” I snapped back.
She said nothing. But I didn’t get my cup of
water.
The next morning however, she trailed me from
my bed.
“Abram says I’m to show you who is mistress…”
she said, “There will be no more lazing around for you. Go and fetch breakfast
for me.” And with that she pushed me out of the tent.
The next week or so were unbearable. Nothing
I did was right. Everything I did resulted in a harsh word, or worse, a beating…
Something that she never did before. Even Abram’s prize heifers weren’t treated
that way. I appealed to Abram but he said “It has nothing to do with me… it is
between your mistress and you.” He pretended not to see what Sarai was doing to
me… And his supply of gifts dried up…
Things became so unbearable that I decided to
run away… Though where I thought I was going to run to I do not know… But I was
on the road to Shur, when I stopped beside a well… It was there that I heard a
voice, clear as day, telling me “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”
I thought it was sunstroke. But the voice promised:
“I will increase your descendants so much
that they will be too numerous to count… They will flow from this desert land,
as numerous as the grains of sand within it. The son that you will give birth to will be called Ishmael… ‘God
hears’ because the Lord has heard of your misery. He will grow to be a
wild donkey of a man, standing up to everyone around him, surviving the hostility of his brothers.”
“What
brothers?” I thought… but I called that place Beer Lahai Roi, the well
of the Living God who sees me… God saw my plight even if Abram didn’t… And so I
went back to the camp of Abram and Sarai… And
while they didn’t exactly welcome me back with open arms, Sarai stopped
abusing me. Abram had bought her another personal slave, and I became just a
general household slave, seeing out the rest of my pregnancy avoiding my former
mistress as much as possible and she me. But when the time came for me to give
birth to my son, through my tears I could see her sitting watching across the
tent as she had when he was conceived.
Abram was not there. Men never are. He was
ushered in by the other women when I and my son had been made presentable
again. I suggested that he should give the boy the name “Ishmael” and Abram
said “Ah, ‘God Hears!’ How appropriate, given that God has heard my plea for a son…”
And I smiled… Looking across at Sarai who was definitely not smiling…
And my son has given me many reasons for smiling
over the past 12 years… I remained a slave… but he was granted the full rights
of a free-born son… Abram loved him and took great pride in him and I had every
reason to believe he would grow up to inherit his father’s wealth when he dies…
which he must do soon, I thought… And so, ironically, he would inherit me… his
mother, as his property…
But even that peculiar blessing was denied us…
Because just as Ishmael was due to come of age, Sarai, somehow, found a fertile
place within her wizened old bones for Abram’s seed to grow. At last she gave
birth to a son, which she called “Isaac” laughter… And she laughed at me as I
once had mocked her… But when the time came for her son to be weaned Abram threw
a great feast, and my son saw how Sarai was behaving… As that voice in the
desert had told me he was not one to shy from a fight and in response to Sarai’s
mocking laughter, he laughed at her and her scrawny son saying “Remember who
the firstborn is you old crone!”
At that point the laughter stopped. Sarai
snarled at Abram, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son…” She refused to use
our names…
“Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for
that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
And he won’t… Because the next morning Abram gave
me some food and a skin of water and sent us off into the Desert of Beersheba
towards Egypt.
I said “You can’t do this!”
I knew that he could do what he wanted with
me… after all he already had… I was only a slave.. His property… But what about
his son!?
He said that God had assured him that we
would be alright… That both Isaac and Ishmael would father nations making him not
just Abram, “father of many”, but Abraham “Father of many nations.” But fathers
should protect their children, not just cast them off into the desert…
But cast us off he did… We walked off through the desert back
towards Egypt… I suppose I was free at last… But we ate the last of the food two
days ago, and finished the water this morning… So I left
Ishmael to sleep under those bushes over there, and came here where I can’t
hear him whimpering and he can’t see me cry… Where now is the God who sees me…
the God who hears?
Did he really see me 12 years ago when I ran
away into the desert? Did I really hear him speaking to me? Or was it just
wishful thinking? Just the sun-crazed delusions of a slave girl whom no-one
ever sees or hears?
What about all the other slaves? Does God see
and hear them? Or am I and my son special?
And if by some miracle we were to survive,
what would I tell this son of mine, this son of a slave girl… this rejected son
of Abra-HAM who will himself father a nation? Will I tell him how special he
was in the eyes of God? Will I feed him on a diet of stories of his lost
inheritance? Of desert dreams? What will I tell him of his brother Isaac; the
one whose birth brought laughter while his brother Ishmael and his mother is
banished? Or what could I tell him of his forgotten family in Africa? Do they
still live there or were they too sold into slavery?
What sort of a nation is born from a story
like this? Perhaps it would be better if the story stopped here…
God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy as
he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he
was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from
Egypt.
Genesis 21: 16-21 (NIV)
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