The Great Tower
Shinar (Mesopotamia) 610 BC
“What you are talking about can get you killed, Joktan. Not only do you defy King Amraphel, but you defy Almighty God. And there are others here who believe in the thing that we are doing, that maybe this is the only way to truly get God’s ear. I am surprised you have not already been struck down by God’s almighty wrath.”
Standing in the shade of the pavilion, Joktan glared at Elishah. The man had been a true friend throughout the forty years they had known each other. When they had been boys together, they had thought the graybeards too demanding and too watchful, preventing them from having the many adventures they had dreamed of.
Now they were graybeards themselves, men made lean and brown from long years of labor under the hot sun, with large families of their own. Families that depended on them to keep the wolf from the door and find work for their sons and soon-to-be grandsons. Being head of a family was hard, unrelenting work.
“I do not wish to defy the king, either, my friend.” Joktan meant that. “And if anyone is in defiance of God, it is the king. That tower he builds is sacrilege.”
Seated on a pillow under the pavilion they had raised near the brick kilns to escape the heat, Elishah shifted uneasily and pulled at his beard the way his father used to. “See? This is what I’m talking about. You cannot go around saying things like that. What if the king’s guard hears you?”
“My father, the king, will not have me beheaded. Of that I am sure.” Joktan reached for a nearby wineskin, brought it to his lips, and drank. Then he offered the skin to Elishah. “He will not be happy with me, and he will perhaps increase the quota of bricks my workers are supposed to provide for his tower, but he will not harm me.”
“You say that, Joktan, but this thing your father the king does drives him like I have never before seen. He is like a man possessed.”
“Now who speaks defiance?” Joktan smiled at his friend.
Elishah sighed heavily and spat in disgust. “Being near you gives me a treacherous tongue. Your father, if he should hear me, would have it cut from my head.”
That was possible. His father could be unforgiving these days. The hand of death lay heavily upon the king’s shoulder, and this tower was his father’s acknowledgment of that.
Joktan stared out across the hot expanse of land. Shimmering heat waves rose from the brown earth. Farther down the hill, the glittering waters of the two rivers looked cool and inviting. Fishermen paddled their boats and dragged their nets in search of a catch. Farmers drove their donkeys to the banks, filled the large water jugs for their crops, then drove the animals back. Toward the east, the watchtowers stood above the walls of his father’s city.
One day, God willing that day not arrive any too soon, the city would be Joktan’s. There had been a time when he relished the idea of being king. Then he had seen the king as being the freest man in the land. Now, however, he knew that particular mantle came saddled with many troubles and responsibilities.
Maybe those hardships of the mind were what had driven his father if not mad, then nearly so.
Joktan looked back out at the brick kilns in front of the tower. Armies of workers had been drafted into the construction. They constructed kilns, dug up the earth and made mud bricks, then they baked them to build the tower.
The structure grew every day. A week ago it was taller than anything Joktan had ever seen. It dwarfed the great pyramids of Egypt, even the Great Pyramid of Giza, which stood over three hundred and sixty rods tall.
This day the tower was taller still.
Men toiled all along the structure, baking brick, carrying brick, laying brick, building and building and building.
“Do you think it might collapse under its own weight?” Elishah asked softly. “It is not pointed like the Egyptian structures. The weight of the bricks is not dispersed in the same way.”
“I do not know.” Joktan stared at the tower, which was built as a ziggurat, in squares that set one atop the other, each one smaller than the last. It was an immense undertaking, looking dark and primitive against the clear blue sky.
“Is it wide enough at the base to reach to God?”
Joktan shook his head. “I wish I knew.” No one could say for certain how far away the heavens were.
Two kiln overseers walked over to join Joktan and Elishah under the tent canopy. Both men were dark-skinned, taller than the men of Shinar, with fierce black beards. They hailed from Mosul, to the north.
“Prince Joktan.” The older one bowed deeply, but his eyes never left Joktan’s and his hand did not stray far from the sword at his hip.
Joktan struggled to remember the man’s name. It was easier in the beginning, when there weren’t so many names to remember. These days the names, many of them strange to his tongue, flitted out of reach like horseflies. “Yes...Umar?”
“I would beg a boon.”
“If humanly possible, I will grant it.”
“I need a physician to visit my men. Some of them have come down with an illness the like of which I have not before seen.”
“I will see to it at once.”
“Thank you.” Umar bowed again and left.
Joktan waved over one of the young runners seated at another shade. Joktan gave him the message to take to the king and sent him on his way.
“A sickness?” Elishah rocked unhappily and spat again.
“When you have this many men in one place, sickness will happen. They eat like locusts, depleting our stores and emptying our orchards, and they create more foulness than the river can carry away.” Joktan folded his arms and stared at two men, one from Shinar and one from Mashhad, who were loudly arguing.
The two men squared off against each other as other men gave way around them. God was called upon, and the man from Shinar drew a curved dagger.
Joktan ran from the pavilion and kicked up a rake into his hands as he went. His father had not only had him trained as a bricklayer and an engineer. Joktan knew the ways of the sword and the spear, as well.
The Shinar man feinted with the knife. The Mashhad man dodged back. With cool calculation, the Shinar man whipped his arm around, intending to disembowel his foe.
Swinging the rake in an underhanded blow, Joktan struck the aggressor’s wrist, eliciting a yelp of surprised pain as he knocked the knife free. Reaching out, Joktan caught the knife by the hilt in his right hand. He tucked the rake under his arm, ready to strike again.
Joktan used his voice as a weapon, striking the two men and getting their attention immediately: “There will be no fighting! King Amraphel has decreed no blood will be shed on these grounds that does not come from brick work!”
The Shinar man debased himself in front of Joktan, dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead against the ground. “I beg forgiveness, Prince Joktan. I did not mean to offend, but this man—”
“Silence. I will acknowledge no reason for taking up arms against a man working alongside you as a brother. Violence against another is not permitted here in this place. It is an abomination in the eyes of God.” Joktan stared at first one man, then the other. “Go. Both of you. Find some place to work where you are not in each other’s shadow, and pray to God to forgive your transgressions.”
Joktan watched them go, feeling torn. His father, for all his ambition and possible defiance of God, had created something truly amazing by uniting all these tribes together. No matter how it turned out, Joktan would not allow the project to come to naught.
He gazed up at the tower, standing in its shadow now, not certain whether he should stand in awe—or in fear.