Chapter 27: Mortar

 

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” said Prince-Consort Kaveh, with great portent.

Eleven months had passed, and he looked markedly happier, stronger, and more comfortable in his own skin. It wasn’t just the line of dark hair around his mouth and chin, and it wasn’t just his newfound muscles, grown from enthusiastic new work on the vineyard he now called his home and making his wiry frame look even more, as Farzin had once said, like a statue. The change was in the way he held his shoulders -- the sparkle in his eyes. It was in the comfortable smiles he shared with everyone else at the seder table. For the past several months he had finally felt glad to be Kaveh, instead of someone else.

When he first arrived at the vineyard, fear of being mistaken by the hardworking laborers for Farzin’s pampered lapdog had driven him to work twice as hard as anyone would have thought possible. Between that and the food he cooked for the farmers, he quickly won the hearts of his new neighbors. But that wasn’t his only reason to feel such joy. Beside him sat Farzin, comfortably pudgy again as Kaveh had promised he’d be, and in Kaveh’s arms squirmed a little brown beauty wrapped in guava-colored cloth. Princess Naomi, his daughter, stared all around the room with big eyes full of wonder. He was actually asking the Four Questions on her behalf, since at fifty-five days old she was naturally the youngest one there. But it made sense for him to ask, because he hadn’t grown up around seders and Passover.

“On all other nights, we eat all kinds of bread--” Here he met the eyes of the queen, and chuckled sheepishly. “We would eat all kinds of bread, if we could,” he ad-libbed. From behind the look of harried happiness that enveloped her constantly in these early days of motherhood, she gave him a crooked grin. “And tonight, we eat only this stuff.” He held up a matzo cracker, and Naomi’s tiny hand waved in its direction.

“See that, little one?” Farzin murmured through a jolly smirk. “Someday, you, too, will be able to eat cardboard.”

“That has seasoning,” Aviva retorted saucily. “Be nice, or I won’t let you have extra helpings of charoseth afterwards.”

“He said this stuff was supposed to be mortar!” Farzin protested with a grin. “You can’t deny a builder mortar. His bricks go everywhere!”

“It’s good, isn’t it,” Shulamit agreed. She loved watching people new to their culture discover charoseth for the first time.

“The secret is letting the wine soak in overnight and get friendly. It’s really time that works the magic.” Aviva chattered. “Time is the key ingredient. Otherwise the other ingredients never really get to know each other.”

“The secret ingredient is love!” said Shulamit with a silly grin.

“Let Kaveh finish,” said Captain Riv. The table fell silent, and everyone’s face turned back toward the prince consort.

“On all other nights, we eat lots of different kinds of vegetables, but tonight, we eat only bitter herbs.”

Farzin’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t say anything until Rivka folded her arms and stared at him. “What?” He smiled at her innocently. “I’m leaving that one alone. It’s too easy.”

“All other nights, we--” Kaveh looked down at Naomi. “Shula, she’s-- she’s trying to-- no, baby, I don’t have milk. I promise.”

“I’d better take her. That was most of it! You two did great!” Shulamit stood to receive her infant, and then sat down, wrapping herself in her lilac scarf for modesty before letting Naomi latch on.

“We’re here to remember that once we weren’t free,” Isaac began, his booming, low voice settling over the table like a soothing scent. “To be thankful for the fact that now we are, and not only free but surrounded by blessings. And to meditate on the fact that even today, plenty of people are still not free, or are still not fairly paid for the work of their bodies, and hope that God will show us a way to fight these injustices. Long ago, there was a king--”

They listened raptly as he told the story; Shulamit drinking in the familiar, comforting words and passing on that sense of peace to her nursing infant; Rivka stirred and inspired and feeling lucky that she was married to him; Kaveh fascinated as he learned for the first time about those who had been slaves, at least in legend, and about Moses who stood between them and their tormentor.

“That’s like you!” he whispered to Farzin, his eyes full of love. “With the bridge and everything.”

“More like you,” Farzin pointed out, “since he was raised in the house of the king, but stood up to him anyway.”

“--hailstones, of fire!” Isaac held up one hand with a pointing finger for emphasis.

A suspicious noise from the baby prompted the queen to surreptitiously check her clothing. “Oops, I think she needs changing.” Shulamit stood up and kissed Naomi’s forehead as she placed her carefully into Aviva’s waiting arms.

“I can pause,” said Isaac.

While they waited, Shulamit turned to her husband-in-name. “Your brother’s baby was born just recently too, I heard?”

Kaveh nodded. “A healthy son. My brother’s really happy.”

There was an expression in his face that Shulamit couldn’t understand. “What’s--?”

“Azar doesn’t want me to see him.”

“What?” Her jaw hung open.

“She didn’t come out and say it, but she wants Farzin and I to stay away from her children.”

Shulamit shook her head slightly, her eyes narrowing. “It’s...not... I don’t...”

“I think she’s scared he’ll see us the way we are and think it’s one of the ways to be normal.”

“It is.”

“Why is it so important?” Isaac pointed out. “Neither of you wants King Jahandar too involved in Naomi’s life, even though he’s her grandfather.”

“Zayde Isaac is a much better one,” Shulamit pouted.

“If you don’t like someone, why lose sleep if the feeling is mutual?” Riv shrugged. “The room is full of people who love you.”

“I’m still working on that.”

“You two are a funny pair of expert worriers,” Isaac pointed out. “I wonder how much of it the little one got!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Riv pointed out. “We’ll teach her to be strong and face whatever worries her.”

Aviva returned, the now-cranky princess in her arms. “She fusses when we change her,” she apologized as she sat down, bouncing slightly because she knew it would be soothing.

“Next, locusts settled over the fields...” Isaac had returned to the story.

Shulamit, with the others, listened and let herself be transported -- but not too far. Part of her was indeed in that far-off ancient kingdom, watching the power of God, working through Moses, teach the selfish king a lesson about human rights. But on another level, flowing through her, in the very familiarity of it she felt multiple branching veins of family connection. She was at seders throughout her life, listening as a teenager to her father tell the story in his own way, listening as a tiny child as her grandfather held up the matzo and explained what it was all about, thinking about her long-departed mother.

But she also relived recent seders in her reverie, as she welcomed Aviva’s parents into her household, and the strange pair of warriors from the north whom she had come to love and cherish as well. All her family, living and dead, on both sides, plus her in-laws, plus her golden-haired guardians, plus the family into which she had married. Now there was her little one, Princess Naomi after Shulamit’s father Noach, this magical little being who somehow made all the zooming in her head slow down every time she cradled her and felt skin as soft as flowers, and love like never before.

She had experienced it with them all, this tradition and this feeling. Each year happened one on top of the other simultaneously, mixing together like the fruit and wine and nuts in the little dish in front of her, and tasting just as nuanced and sweet.

 

END