The Esther Paradigm (A Contemporary Christian Romance) Read online

  I let my body lean toward him a bit. Picked up the smell of burnt palm and fig. A feeling of coming home settled in the far corners of my heart. I may have been born in the heartland of the United States, but belonging washed over me amid this nomadic desert tribe. Their vibrant traditions and determination inspired me…as much as their eternal hope.

  I wrapped myself around the feeling, let it clear away the loneliness of the last half dozen years, and smiled up into the face of one of my oldest friends. “If you, the sheikh’s son, could not teach me such things, no hope laid within the classroom.”

  He laughed then, and against the laws of natural science, the sound echoed off the sloping dunes. “Come. Let’s get you home to your mother and father. They have been anxious for your return.”

  Joy welled in my chest. The sense of urgency that had prodded me into hiring a driver to bring me this far from the city poked me again. Mom and Dad were supposed to meet me at the airport tomorrow, but I had caught an earlier flight so I could surprise them. Imagining their faces as I paraded back among the pitched community tilted my lips and urged my feet toward Karim’s camel.

  With a cluck, he commanded the camel to kneel. I approached with slow and steady steps from its side, wishing again for pants as I threw my leg quickly over the middle of its hump. Thankfully, my clothes were long and flowy and I could arrange the material over my legs modestly. As the camel stood with its back legs first, I leaned backward so as not to be thrown into its neck. The momentum shifted, and I moved along with it, leaning forward as Karim’s camel rose from the ground. Adjusting my seat, I wrapped my legs around the saddle post to save my tailbone a sound beating.

  Karim smirked up at me from the ground but didn’t say anything. He knew my dislike of this particular conveyance. Once, when I was little and had still been trying to make friends and prove myself among the people, I had challenged him and a few of the other boys to a camel race. The girls had looked at me in horror, but the gleam in the boys’ eyes had urged me on enough that I thought if I beat them, then maybe I would be accepted as one of them.

  No and no. Not only did I suffer a lecture from the clan elders, Karim’s father in particular, not to mention my own parents, but I also had to endure a sweaty, itchy cast on my left arm for seven miserable weeks.

  A cluck from Karim’s tongue propelled the camel forward, rocking my hips with the motion. My muscles reflexively tensed at the herky-jerky movement, but I forced them to relax and allowed my body to sway with the camel’s gait.

  I had so many questions I wanted to ask Karim. About my parents. The clan. I wanted to know everything that had happened since I’d left. Mom and Dad wrote letters and even a few emails when they could get to an internet café in the city. But those correspondences were a bit like a fill-in-the-blank puzzle, and I had never been really good at puzzles.

  I got it though, their need not to share too much information. Even I had to be a bit secretive when my classmates and friends had asked where we were missionaries. My pat answer had always been that we served the Lord in the 10/40 window. Unfortunately, that usually reciprocated blank stares, and I would have to go on to explain that the 10/40 window referred to the regions located between ten and forty degrees north of the equator. A geographical area where the people had the least access to the Gospel message. Some of my friends would accept my response and leave it at that. Others would allow their curiosity to outweigh good manners and probe further. It was dangerous though to tell people exactly where we were and who we were sharing the Good News with. Proselytizing was illegal, and it wasn’t uncommon for missionaries to be imprisoned or killed.

  I looked down at Karim, the top of his head covered by his dark-blue turban. Had he taken on the full responsibility of clan leader? Married? Had children? Would his little ones be among my students?

  He looked back at me. Caught me staring. I quickly averted my gaze, but I doubted he’d believe my sudden fascination with the threaded bangles edging the saddle blanket. Risking a peek out of the corner of my eye, I caught his grin.

  The horizon offered little change until my attention snagged on black dots amid the endless sandy brown. Blood pulsed in my veins, and I straightened in the saddle. I wanted to leap off this lumbering creature and sprint into my parents’ arms, but good sense kept me grounded. Or seated, really. Surefooted I was not. Even at this plodding pace, I’d arrive sooner on the camel’s back than if I attempted to run there myself.

  “If I was not afraid you’d break another bone, I’d let you experience Jamal’s speed.”

  My fingers itched to take the reins, but Karim was probably right. I’d never been an expert at camel riding, and six years away would not have improved that fact.

  He laughed and tugged Jamal to a stop, looking up at me with amusement. “You are like a viper ready to strike at the camp with the speed of lightning but you are stuck coiled around a boulder.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks, though I doubted anyone could notice. My face had been flushed from the sun since stepping out of the airport. I was not chagrined, however. Even though Karim wore stoicism like a cloak, I preferred to experience the full range of emotions, ride them like a roller coaster, even. And right then I was coasting high on excitement and anticipation.

  Jamal knelt, and in one fluid motion, Karim mounted behind me. The heat radiating off his chest seeped into the muscles of my back. My body swayed toward him like I had been in danger of hypothermia and he was the source to thaw me. But then Jamal started to rise, and in my unpreparedness, I was thrown into Karim’s solid chest.

  His chuckle was deep in my ear as he leaned forward, pressing into my back to counterbalance the camel’s final movements of standing. “Ready for the ride of your life, Kanz?”

  A double entendre? From Karim? No…surely he only meant the words for what they were—a camel ride to the clan and my parents. My years in the States had impressed upon my mind beyond what I’d thought to even consider the almost-stodgy son of a sheikh, not to mention my oldest and dearest friend, to have layered his words to mean more than he’d said.

  I started to turn, to see if his expression would give me any clues, but a “hut-hut” sounded in my ear, and my body jerked. We were flying over an ocean of sand.

  Chapter 2

  Karim

  Hannah throwing her leg over the saddle and sliding down Jamal’s side before he even came to a stop hadn’t fazed me in the least. That was who she was. Exuberant. Expressive. Even after passing the age of womanhood, she still held to her childlikeness. I envied her a bit, that.

  What must such carefreeness feel like? As the only child of the clan leader, my life had been planned out before I’d left the womb, the eyes of my people looking toward me, so much in their expressions. Respect. Censure. Hope. Doubt. Submission. Acceptance. Wading through the turning tides of emotion had often left me reeling, the weight of responsibility crushing my young bones until I felt like an old man in a young man’s body.

  A squeal rent the dry air, the joyous sound having the physical ability to tug a corner of my mouth upward. There hadn’t been much to smile about lately, but Hannah bounding toward the open arms of her parents, watching her engulfed in the display of their love, eased a bit of the pressure squeezing my rib cage. Situations in life often seemed dire, but there was always hope, goodness, to be found if one but looked. And Hannah had always been goodness. And amusing. And beautiful.

  Yellow strands of hair worked their way of out her hijab, teasing my gaze and causing my fingertips to tingle. I’d nicknamed her Treasure in my youth, her sapphire eyes and golden mane mesmerizing me at first glance. Never had I laid eyes on someone like her. But as the years went by, as I grew and my perspective widened, I’d realized not just Hannah but her parents as well were precious to my people. More so than any diamonds that could be mined from the earth’s belly. No guile within them, they had labored tirelessly for my people, often saving clan members from the clutches of severe illness.

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sp; The cinch around my middle tightened as it often did when I dwelled upon the Pratts. They were a problem for which I’d yet to find a solution. The undercurrents of which swirled stronger with each passing day.

  Tapping Jamal on the shoulder, he lowered until he lay on the ground. I dismounted and gave him a pat.

  “She has returned.” The voice behind me was one I’d heard and conversed with nearly every day of my life. Samlil, my best friend.

  I turned toward him, a bit weary even though our hearts had bonded one to another more than brothers. “This is not unexpected.”

  He shook his head. “No. But is it welcome?” His steady gaze met mine for a second before moving beyond Jamal to the reunion of the Americans.

  I followed where he focused. The reunited family parted the flap to their tent and disappeared inside. We would need a feast. Though not a lot of time for preparation, my mother would be up to the task. If anything, the celebration would solidify my support of the doctors and now the new teacher.

  I peered back at Samlil, trying to peel back the layers of his expression. Recently I had witnessed more to him. Hidden things that festered in his spirit. “Welcomed by whom?”

  “Do not play ignorant, Karim. It is not befitting a sheikh.”

  “No, ignorance is not a robe I wish to don. But neither is forgetfulness.” I allowed my gaze to bore into him. Let him see exactly where I stood. Although that knowledge was common, it had lately been defied. “Or has your memory so left you naked that you cannot recall when you were but thirteen years old, more in the afterlife, in Paradise, than in the present. How those doctors stayed by your side day and night, coaxing you back to the realm of the living?”

  His lips pressed into a thin line. He wanted to say more. He always wanted to say more. But this time he stormed off, and I let him go, too weary to beat a dead camel.

  Jamal brayed in my ear. Saliva dripped from his muzzle and sprayed my white thawb, leaving dark, wet splotches across the tailored top. I led him to water and let him drink deeply, waved over a boy to care for him, and then strode across the encampment to find my mother.

  At the cooking pot behind her tent, she stirred a cauldron of aromatic lentils. Another woman crouched beside her, pounding and stretching the dough that would be cooked into flat bread.

  “Our sister has returned.” I bent down and kissed Mother’s pleated cheek.

  She looked at me, intelligence in her watery eyes. “Hannah Pratt?”

  Although the Pratt family had been with us for sixteen years, their name on our tongue sounded foreign compared to when they spoke it themselves. A bit more tonal, lyrical. Like a shabbaba flute instead of a djembe drum.

  “Yes, ’Ami.”

  “I will prepare a Madfoona.” She leaned against a stick to help her stand and shuffled away. Older than most mothers of men my age, my parents had conceived me late in their marriage after over a decade of trying to fill their arms with a child. My father hadn’t given in to the voices that encouraged him to take another wife to produce an heir and successor. Allah had heard their cries, and I was born. If it wouldn’t offend her, I’d ask one of the other women to shoulder the responsibility of the impromptu feast. As it was, .the women would rally around my mother, helping her with preparations. The banquet was in good hands. I could already taste the maklube, a stuffed chicken served on a bed of rice and wreathed with roasted vegetables and potato wedges. Not to mention hummus, tahini, and the small tomatoes seasoned with fresh herbs.

  It was a small step. A reminder, of sorts. While not of our blood, this American family had dwelled among us for over a decade. Had respected our culture and called us their friends, never once imposing their beliefs upon us like mercenaries pouring water down the throat of a drowning man.

  The disease spreading through the sheep flocks had not originated at their tent, no matter the whisperings among the most superstitious. Punishment did not come from Allah’s hands for harboring unbelievers within our borders. The hand of a loving God would not fist about his followers’ necks in such a manner. Instead, the sickness crippling the sheep was scientific in nature, not supernatural. They had but to find the cause and weed it out, discover a medicine and administer it.

  A scapegoat would not end the shadow of darkness looming over the distant pastures, nor our clan’s not-so-distant future existence.

  The banquet a few hours off, I headed toward the flock and checked in with the men in charge of the sheep. Maybe things had changed, turned in their favor. Maybe the ewes were no longer aborting or giving birth to stillborn lambs. Maybe emaciation wasn’t shrinking the flocks’ girths and bulbous goiters weren’t forming beneath fleece that fell from backs by the fistfuls.

  The trek to the livestock helped center me. Reminded me who I was, my position. I could not allow my feelings and emotions to dictate my actions, not when the entire clan depended upon me. The responsibility was too heavy to allow even a fleeting moment of spontaneity. Everything needed to be thought through carefully, considered, and then the good of the many, of all my brothers and sisters, put forward. My will placed upon the altar.

  Pathetic bleating cut through the arid atmosphere like a child’s cry for help. My heart twisted at the sound, knowing the shepherds who had to listen to the constant pleas felt powerless and frustrated at their lack of ability to fix the problem.

  I approached Mahabat as he leaned heavily on his staff, his keffiyeh billowing behind him by an unexpected yet welcomed breeze.

  “Assalaam Alaikum.” I truly hoped peace was upon him…and the livestock.

  “Waalaikum salaam.” He nodded at me, his mouth pinched in the corners.

  I let my gaze blanket the sheep, noticing the weak and the strong had been sifted, separated. A startling contrast. While the healthy ewes and rams stood erect, their fleece full and thick, the sickly sheep hobbled, heads low, barely moving, as if putting one hoof in front of the other was a task beyond their reach.

  “Any changes?” I asked Mahabat.

  His gaze caught mine, the same tightness around his lips encircling his eyes. He was concerned, and rightly so. “Yes, although none good.”

  My throat dropped to my stomach, understanding the full range and implications. Fear had infiltrated our family. So much of our lives revolved around the animals in our care. If they began to die, we would soon follow. If not our physical bodies, then our history, our culture, our traditions…the beat of our very hearts. My dread only sank deeper, knowing who would be blamed. Knowing how malleable a mind could be and, when frightened, how a person’s actions could take a turn.

  He had warned the Pratts of the growing discord, the tide of hatred beginning to simmer in impure souls. They’d only smiled as if in peace, as if in possession of a hidden truth that eradicated any concern they had for themselves. Adamantly they’d refused to leave the clan, calling us brothers and sisters. Their family. While in Allah I believed this true, I had been surprised that their following of Isa, or Jesus, as they called him, had allowed them to recognize our ties.

  A young lamb wobbled in front of me, collapsing at my feet.

  “Look in its mouth,” Mahabat directed.

  I bent and stuck a finger between its lips, pushed down on its jaw. A swollen tongue lolled to the side, dirty blue in color.

  I stood and wiped my hand against my thigh. Looking at Mahabat, I asked, “Do you know what it is?”

  He peered out over the horizon. “Some symptoms are familiar. The mangy fleece I have seen before when mites take up residence among the thick wool. The boils, also not so uncommon.” He shook his head. “But all of it together?”

  No answer was needed. Even with our deep agricultural history, this illness had the most knowledgeable shepherds among us stymied.

  Mahabat pierced me with his gaze. “Animals are dying. No lambs have been born unaffected. I do not need to tell you what this means for our people.”

  His tongue stopped producing words, but his eyes continued to communicate.
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  I needed to find a solution.

  I needed to save the family.

  Chapter 3

  Hannah

  “It’s so good to have my baby back in my arms again.” Mom squeezed me to her chest, Dad right behind her, beaming down on us. Every dry and cracked place in my soul that had suffered from the drought of separation soaked in their touch, their presence. My parents and I had always been close, and just because I’d reached an age where I was an adult, didn’t mean I didn’t need them.

  Mom loosened her hold, and I took a step back, her hand still on one of my shoulders. She squeezed and moved aside for Dad to wrap me up and squish me. He finally set me back on my feet, and we made our way to the oversized pillows lying amid the tapestry rugs covering the tent’s floor.

  Mom patted my knee. “Tell us all about college.”

  I shrugged. “What’s to tell that I didn’t say in my letters?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A boyfriend perhaps?” Mom’s eyes gleamed.

  Dad’s chest rumbled with a chuckle. “Leave the girl alone, Elizabeth.” He looked at me with a grin. “I’m convinced women have more than one internal clock. Everyone know the first, but my theory is the second is even stronger—grandbabies.”

  Mom slapped Dad’s shoulder. “Oh, stop it, Ethan.”

  “As soon as you stop trying to marry off my girl.” He winked at me. “I kind of like having her around.”

  I loved it when they went back and forth this way. My parents, my father especially, was the most jovial person I’d ever met. Always an eternal optimist, his outlook on life, and his love for my mother especially, was unshakable.

  “So, unlike the epistles that I mailed you, your letters were a bit sparse. Fill me in.”