WRITING

Excerpt:

Yshai was not Tomah’s favourite.

He was young, needy, and had a solemn demeanour even when horsing around. But he was always bringing Tomah things.

“He’s bribing you, so you’ll play with him,” Merovel would say, while he and Matti tried to grab a few of the nuts out of Tomah’s fists.

He could see them out of the corner of his eyes, as they ran after him, playing both chase and hoping to extricate a few of the treats. Yshai was a little way behind.

And so the morning spilled into the afternoon. Just as the letters spilled on to the wax tablets. We were not supposed to have our own. They were not marked. But I liked to choose a particular one when I could. Recognising it from the grain of wood.

The choosing of the reed pens always caused a commotion among the younger boys.
 

“They are all cut exactly the same boys! There’s nothing to choose!”

But we did all the same, or tried to.
 

“The reed will choose you,” the teacher had once said, while he prepared his pens and quills.

So I began to look at the reed…
 

…and ask it in my mind, “Do you choose me?” They would always answer.
 

I became so good at this, that I could tell just by looking at the reed if it would write well. I didn’t even need to run my thumb on it, to hear the perfect “khsh” sound.

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“You always get the best pens!” Matti would say, jealous and hurt at the same time.
 

I wouldn’t always let him take what’s mine. It had chosen me. This was now a sacred bond. I had to honour that. Even if the reeds did not last forever.
 

The Nile reeds were the best. The Jordan river ones were coarser……and rougher. The ink needed a lot more adjustment to make it flow smoothly for the Jordan ones.
 

A bundle of the pre-cut and roughly finished reeds would arrive depending on which of the older boys or elders had returned from Yerushalayim or the occasional trip to Dammesek (Damascus).
 

Pens, quills, ink cakes, rulers would all be inspected with great excitement, while being told continually to be careful.

We’d wait eagerly for days if someone was to arrive from Dammesek bringing with them almond and pistachio sweets wrapped in cloth.

It was always served with tea.

And even the elders would take a break, and allow us one as well to celebrate the arrival.

In the evening, we’d sit around the fire, while the elders would tell stories. The younger boys just would not sit still. Even after promising.

The crackling fire, the smell of the wood in my nostrils, and the stars in the night sky. It invariably made me think of Immi. My mother. Was she sitting somewhere, perhaps with my sister, looking at the fire, and thinking of me too?

I kept one of the two linen vests she’d made for me, even after it no longer fit me.

“Look,” Shed said. “You see this little stitch here?” She said, pointing to a little stitch pattern made with light-blue linen.
 

“This is to remind you of my love,” Shed said. She hugged me once, and then quickly folded the grey-white vests.
 

I’d sit by the fire or lay at night, playing this scene back over and over in my mind.

I didn’t choose to always. Sometimes it would just be there in my mind even as I did other things. Like walking to the goats.