Kissa
A report reached us by messenger: Ptolemy Soter and his mercenaries had sailed back to Cyprus, the island to which his mother had earlier banished him. Jannaeus, king of Judea, met with Cleopatra III, and that queen allowed him to keep his throne largely because a Jew named Ananias, one of her generals, told her that to do otherwise would antagonize the Jews of Egypt.
In a personal note delivered into my hand, Shelamzion wrote:
How fare my sons? The worst part of all this, my friend, is realizing that Ptolemy Soter was Cleopatra’s own dear son. I will never understand how the bonds of familial love can become so feeble that a son would make war against his mother and a mother fight against her son.
I trust my children are well, for how could they be otherwise in your care? Kiss them for me and tell them I will be home soon. The king and I will return together. According to the terms of the treaty with Egypt, Jannaeus must not wage war against Egypt again, so I am filled with hope and peace.
Shelamzion’s letter should have brought me great joy, but instead my heart ached as I rolled up the scroll. Her sons had done well during the weeks she remained away, but her mother . . .
Sipporah was gone.
Shelamzion had not spent much time with her mother since becoming queen, yet the fault was not entirely hers. Day by day, Sipporah had retreated into a private world of her own, a place inhabited by dire memories and the ghost of her daughter. The servants took care of her, making certain she was bathed, clothed, and fed, while Sipporah, when she spoke at all, credited these kindnesses to Ketura, not Shelamzion. I became convinced the woman thought Ketura was queen, not her younger daughter, and many times I stepped into the woman’s house and found her talking to Ketura. She would often stare at the space where the statue of Ketura had once stood—it vanished during Aristobulus’s reign—and speak as if her daughter’s ghost were in the room.
In her last days, however, Sipporah did not leave her bed. She had fallen, one of the servants told me, and after getting up she did not have the use of her right arm or leg. Even the right side of her face seemed ineffective, so eating became difficult.
“What will we tell the queen?” one of the anxious maids asked when I stopped by the house where Shelamzion and I had become fast friends. “We have not failed in our duty—”
“The queen will understand,” I assured them. “Her mother has been . . . unwell for some time.”
Now she was dead.
I moved to the balcony and looked past the courtyard, into the busy street where Shelamzion and Jannaeus would soon appear. I had hoped to understand the Jewish God one day, but certain situations left me more puzzled than ever. HaShem, it seemed to me, did not allow His people to experience joy unless it was accompanied by a commensurate portion of sorrow.