The desert sky arched bright blue far overhead, like an inverted ocean. Caleb could still hear the distant sounds of singing and tambourines, blended with other instruments into a mystical kind of music that had lured him to join in. But he could no more join in than he could dive into that blue ocean suspended over him.
He was dead.
Caleb blinked rapidly several times, adjusting to the brilliant white light that swam on either side. Somewhere angelic voices talked quietly. He was maybe on a cloud, floating into . . .
He jerked his head up. He was in the desert. On the salt flats. Alive.
Caleb blinked again, struggling to remain propped on an elbow. A strange sound groaned from his mouth.
“Shhhhh. Easy now.” A cool hand rested on his shoulder, and he turned to look at a dark-haired woman kneeling beside him. Behind her a white tent stood on the sand. And beside that tent, a dozen more, forming a large arc. Two camels lay on the sand three meters from his head.
“What . . . Where am I?” he asked through slurred speech. It occurred to him that his shirt had been stripped off.
“You are with our tribe. We found you near the tower and tended to you,” the young woman said, smiling. “You are very lucky—we had almost left.”
Caleb looked around, noting now that a handful of children in loincloths and tan wraps were staring at him, all kneeling in a row, several paces to his left. Their browned faces smiled wide, but they remained perfectly silent. One of them had a thin trail of mucus leaking from his nose.
“Are you Afar people?” Caleb asked dumbly.
The girl laughed and spoke to the children. “He wants to know if we are Afar.” At this they all giggled, the one with the dirty nose, hysterically.
“I think that if we were Afar you would be dead, City Boy,” the woman said. “My name is Miriam. We are not Afar.”
“Are you Afar?” one of the boys asked, grinning.
“Don’t be silly, Daniel,” Miriam chided. “That’s not even funny.”
The other children cackled in long strings that suddenly struck Caleb as infectious. He chuckled once. Miriam looked at the boy with the mucus. “And, Peter, it’s impolite to walk around with a leaking nose. We have a guest.”
Peter, the smallest of them, ran his forearm along his upper lip shyly. The others smiled but didn’t seem at all put off.
“What is your name?” Miriam asked.
“Caleb.”
“Caleb.” She smiled. “You must be very hungry, Caleb. I saw you stirring and sent Ruth for some hot cereal.”
Caleb looked at her, unsure what to say. Like him, her skin was tanned dark, but not black—not what he would have expected for desert people. She was pretty, and when she smiled, her teeth flashed as white as the salt. Her tunic was tan, like the others’.
“Where am I?” he asked again.
“I’ve told you. You are with our tribe.”
“No. I mean where are we? I walked into the desert . . .”
“You’re still in the desert.” She motioned to the surrounding salt flats. “We have traveled one night north of the Tower Oasis. Do you know the Tower Oasis?”
“No.”
“Then you are even more fortunate than I had guessed. Perhaps God has brought you.”
“How far are we from the hills?”
“Two nights’ travel. And two nights the other way to the sea. But I don’t think you will be ready to go anywhere for a few days.” She nodded at his feet. He saw for the first time that they were bandaged with gauze strips. “The tops of your feet were badly blistered, but they will heal quickly. Thank the Father your soles were not hurt. Would you like to try walking?”
“Who is the Father?”
She looked at him with her dark brown eyes and blinked. “God.”
“God.” He nodded. “I came into the desert to find a Father Hadane. Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
“You do?” Caleb shoved himself up to a sitting position. “He’s here?”
“You’ll have to talk to Elijah about that. Please, there’s no rush. First you must eat.”
The one she had called Ruth suddenly ran around the nearest tent holding a bowl. She pulled up when she saw him awake. The girl looked to be in her teens.
“It’s all right, Ruth,” Miriam said. “You’ve never seen a grown man before? I can see you’re not one to take the vow.” Ruth flashed Miriam with a look of warning and then approached Caleb, smiling.
“Miriam said that you would be hungry. I have put salt in it for you.” She set a steaming bowl of porridge before him.
“Thank you.” Caleb picked up the spoon and took a bite. It tasted like grits. He shoveled the food into his mouth.
The children giggled, amused by whatever he did, it seemed. Caleb smiled with them and ate anyway. The meal was delicious after two days without food.
“You like our food?” the boy called Daniel asked.
“Yes. It’s very good.”
He grinned wide. “Then you should join our tribe. My sister is looking for a man to join us.”
Ruth picked up a handful of sand and flung it at Daniel. She took after him like a sprinter out of the blocks, and the two raced away, chased by hilarious cackles from the others. To Caleb’s surprise, even Miriam laughed.
She saw his look. “You will forgive us, Caleb. Daniel is an unforgivable pest and Ruth is too testy for her own good. A good man is hard to find in this desert, as I’m sure you can imagine. It’s not something we can afford to be too subtle about.”
She brushed her hands of sand and stood. “Now I’m sure you’re eager to meet the men. Time to see if those feet of yours still work.” She offered a hand and Caleb took it. Ruth and Daniel had come back already, Ruth leaning on her brother’s shoulder as if he hadn’t said a thing to embarrass her.
Caleb pulled himself up with Miriam tugging. His feet were tender, but not so that he couldn’t walk. He hobbled in a small circle, testing.
“The tops hurt a little.”
“Yes, they will for a couple days. But you seem healthy enough.”
He nodded and walked with a few even strides. “Good as new,” he said. “I’m a fast healer.”
“Good.” Miriam handed him a large white tunic, which was little more than a thin blanket with a hole cut for his head. “This will keep the sun off you.”
He pulled it on and then followed her when she took his arm.
“Run along now, children. He’s not going anywhere soon. I’m sure he’ll be here for your amusement later.” They ran off, all except Ruth who watched from a distance, pretending not to be interested.
“It’s time to meet Elijah,” Miriam said.
All of the men wore the same long white or tan robes, which swished above the sand as they walked. Some wore hemp ropes to secure the light gowns at their waist, others flowed by like curtains over the ground, and Father Elijah was of this later stripe.
The short Friar Tuck–looking monk was as jovial as he appeared, but he spun a heady philosophy that made Caleb blink. “I’ve been given the task of introducing you to the tribe,” he said with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “And I’m enjoying it already, like a bee who’s found a particularly sweet flower. You’re the flower, my dear lost traveler. You don’t mind if I feed for a few hours, do you?” He’d smiled and Caleb couldn’t help smiling back.
The man was an enigma if ever Caleb had met one. Actually the entire tribe, as they referred to themselves, was an enigma, but Elijah personified the heart of what made them so mysterious.
“Feed all you like. But you might find that my petals have wilted in this desert,” Caleb had said.
“Wilted? It’s a good start, my friend. Soon they will be dead.” He winked and turned for the flap. “Come now, let me show you the way the salt lies around this tribe.”
Elijah had led him from his sprawling tent and run through a litany of basic facts, as if he were the schoolmaster and this was Caleb’s first day of school.
There were fourteen tents in the tribe now, each staked to form a rough arc beside a large group of boulders. Several fires lay dormant on the eastern side of the camp, out of the wind’s worst, in case it took a notion to blow up. They built fires only twice a day and then only small ones because wood did not come easily—they either hauled it in from the hills or traded for it.
Traded?
Yes, the tribe cut blocks of salt from the flats, the size of any household brick, and traded them at several outposts on the edge of the desert. It was enough to sustain them, and not enough to ruin them.
They ate mostly meal and dried meat, with the occasional pudding. He rubbed his stomach and informed Caleb that, despite what some of the men might say, not all puddings were created equal. Miriam’s tapioca pudding, for example, was created with more equality than the others. He winked and strolled on.
They had lived on the desert for about eighty years, he said. Four generations for some. A mixture of old Falasha Jews and travelers of every stripe. Half of them had wandered in and stayed, and the rest had been born in. They lived simple lives in a harsh land, moving from camp to camp every few days or weeks, depending on food and water.
“Our quest is spiritual, away from the murderous din of materialism,” Elijah said. He took Caleb’s arm and tipped his head, as if intending to make a joke. “You won’t find a Mercedes or Corvette under our flaps, my friend.” He chuckled and walked on. “To us poverty is a blessing which bares the soul.”
Caleb was familiar with most monastic traditions from his studies, but the tribe fit none that he knew of. “You are monks,” Caleb observed. “What tradition do you come from?”
“No tradition, friend. Our own tradition. We follow One, and his name is Christ. Each man and each woman follows the same Lord, although not necessarily on the same path.”
“So you are Christian, converted. But you don’t all follow the same rules?”
“We are not Christian—not in name. We are apprentices of Christ alone and his teachings through the Gospels and the apostles. And yes, of course we follow the same rules. But not all of us subject ourselves to every rule of man.”
He motioned to a woman bending over a loom of some kind. “You see that woman there weaving? Her name is Elizabeth. She is forty-five years old and loves to dance. She has taken a vow of celibacy and is childless. But there, next to her, is Mary who is fifty-four. She is happily married to one of the monks, Brother Isaac, and has three children, one of whom is Miriam, your nurse, who has incidentally taken a vow of celibacy herself.” Elijah shrugged and chuckled.
“Married to a monk? How is that possible?” Caleb asked. “I’ve never heard of a monk that’s married. What makes him a monk then?”
“Well, my friend, I don’t know what men call a monk in your far-off land, but here, we call a person who has taken the vow to pursue God a monk. Whether man or woman, they must be old enough to hold a vow, but if they dedicate their lives to chasing after their Creator, we call them a monk.”
Caleb stopped at the explanation. “You’re serious? Then what are you giving up?”
Elijah turned back to him. “Giving up? You mean in your world monks are expected to give things up? We don’t toss up a few coins or a Mercedes in exchange for the kingdom. We give up our lives. And we gain him. We give up the unreality of meaningless pursuits and we find God.” He lifted a finger, as if to make a point. “There is no greater disaster in a spiritual life than to be immersed in a false reality. We abandon the false reality for the sake of a greater reality. Knowing God.”
The words swam through Caleb’s mind like a tide from the past. They could have been his own at one time, but they were spoken by this man in a robe who called himself a monk. This witty Friar Tuck who cared for no rule but the rule of God in his life.
Like Dada.
A small current of electricity buzzed down Caleb’s spine, and he shivered on the hot desert floor. For the first time in many years Caleb felt the once-familiar stab of desire swim through his chest. He wanted to be like this man. Like Dada.
“There is no greater disaster than to think that what we see with these eyes is the real life,” Caleb said.
“That would be another way to put it, yes.”
“I used to say that.”
“Used to? But no longer?”
“When I was a child,” Caleb said, avoiding the question.
“Then perhaps you are here to become a child once again.”
They walked again, in silence for a few minutes.
“You were saying that anyone may become a monk here, by chasing after the Creator. And how do you do this? How do you chase?”
“The pearl of great price,” the monk said immediately, as if everyone should know it intimately. As a matter of fact, Caleb did. He finished Elijah’s thought for him.
“Sell everything to buy the pearl. To do so you must first desire the pearl,” Caleb said.
“Yes. Then you also know that desire doesn’t come from the mind, but from the heart. The hope that burns under the ashes of our poverty.”
“Yes.” Caleb breathed deep. He became acutely aware of his steps over the hard salt. Suddenly he wanted to cry, and he wasn’t sure why. These pearls from Father Elijah—he had owned them once. What had happened to him?
He swallowed and walked on. “Do you take other vows?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, of course. All kinds of vows. Vows of poverty—we have all taken vows of poverty. It wouldn’t do to have a Mercedes drive through camp, now would it?” Elijah winked and grinned.
“You seem to think that a Mercedes is the definition of wealth,” Caleb said.
“A traveler once showed me some pictures of many cars. I fell in love with the big white Mercedes. At the time I thought about shooting my camel and leaving the desert with the man.”
They laughed.
Elijah thought for a moment. “But really, poverty is not about living without. Living without can be a fruitless death full of misery. Poverty is about needing. It is clearing space in your heart so that God can fill it, as the Father would say.”
“The Father. You mean God?”
“No, now I mean Father Hadane. Our teacher.”
Caleb spun to Elijah. “Father Hadane!” He had misplaced the urgency of his coming here. “I have to speak to him—”
“Yes, I know you do, Caleb. You are here because there is trouble at the monastery Father Matthew served in. Joseph told us.”
“You know? Father Hadane supposedly knew my father, I know, but how did he know there was trouble?”
Elijah shrugged. “Who’s to know? The Father could have told him, but now we have too many ‘fathers’ and you’ll forgive me, but my mind is spinning with them. I am a father, and Father Hadane is my Father, but my Father is really God. You have a father and I know it wasn’t Father Matthew because Father Matthew took a vow of celibacy. So perhaps we should just use names.”
“You knew Father Matthew?” Caleb asked.
“Yes. He was twenty when he left the tribe to go to the monastery.”
“Which was where I was abandoned as a child,” Caleb said. “He raised me as his own son. I’m now adopted by American parents who rescued me from the monastery when it was destroyed. Jason and Leiah.”
Caleb paced and bit at a fingernail. “Please, I have to speak to Joseph Hadane. Father Matthew told me to find him if there was any trouble at the monastery, and now there is. It’s been overrun by Jews, I think. They’re holding my parents captive.”
Elijah absently stroked his jaw with his hand, but made no move to lead him.
“Actually, I don’t know why I’ve come here,” Caleb said with sudden frustration. “I don’t know what a band of wandering desert monks can possibly do. What I really need is a way back to the monastery with some help.”
“A Mercedes.”
“No. Please, this is serious.”
“Yes, of course it is. And you are being pursued; that also is serious.”
“I am? We have to do something immediately!” He looked out to the desert and saw nothing.
“But we are doing something. I’m indoctrinating you. I may not be able to give you a Mercedes or guns, but I can point you to the way.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s more than you’ll ever need to set a few Jews straight.”
“Please, stop talking in riddles and take me to Hadane. I nearly died finding you; the least you can do is let me talk to him.”
“As I recall, we found you. I’m sorry, my friend, I can’t take you to Father Hadane. Not yet. You’re not ready. But I can tell you this. It’s the Tabotat the Jews want, not your parents. They will be safe. And without you, no one will find this Tabotat.” “Tabotat? You mean an Ethiopian Orthodox replica of the Ark?”
“Yes.”
“Why would they want one of those? They’re in every Orthodox church in the country.”
“Exactly.” Elijah shrugged. “Evidently they want this one. Father Hadane has instructed me to tell you that if God dragged you across this desert, it was for your sake, not theirs. You may find solace in those words.”
“Solace! I’m stranded in the desert while my parents are at gunpoint, and you want me to find solace in the words of an old priest who won’t even talk to me?”
“So you have faced some adversity,” Elijah said, still stroking his chin. “That also is good. Adversity introduces a man to himself. And we must know ourselves before we can know what needs to die.”
“Stop the riddles. I was handing out riddles when I was ten. You don’t have to feed them to me now.”
Elijah looked at him, silent. Caleb immediately regretted his tone. He scratched his head and turned away.
“It’s okay, my friend,” Elijah said. “You’re a delight to watch. It’s not often that God leads a man to us with bandits on his heels—my goodness, you are all the talk. But you should really rest in Father Hadane’s words. He’s sure that Jason and Leiah are safe.”
“Then ask Hadane to speak to me himself.”
“He will speak to you, my friend.”
Caleb turned to face the monk. “When?”
“He will speak to you when you are ready to listen.”