Setting: Genesis 12:14-20
The woman Sarai would be beautiful even in her own land, let alone here where she is a foreigner and so all the more rare. I suspected upon their arrival that she was indeed the wife of this man Abram, whatever he told our king about her. The husbands of beautiful foreign women have been known to die when traveling through Egypt, and Abram presumably wished to avoid this outcome.
My suspicions were confirmed soon enough, for once Sarai was taken into the harem, I was assigned to be her handmaid. She so delighted Pharoah that he called me at once and said to me, “go, my daughter, for it is better for you to be a handmaid to Sarai even than to be the head mistress in a great house of Egypt.” Thus he gave me as a reward to Sarai, for her grace and charm, and renamed me not Bastet but Hagar, which is to say, a reward.
We were instant friends, and in her despair she told me everything not many days after her arrival. If the men of this nation knew even one part in seven of the secrets its women carry in their bosoms, what a different world this would be! But a secret is safe with a woman not only if she keeps it hidden but even if she tells it plainly, such is the value of a woman’s word in our gates. Unless her husband trusts and confides in her as an equal. I have no husband and therefore no risk of being taken seriously by any man.
Sarai never treated me harshly. In fact, she seemed determined to serve me as much as I served her. This was a source of discomfort and confusion on my part, for it is an unholy thing to the Egyptians for a slave to be treated as a noblewoman. The cosmos cannot tolerate such upside-down behavior.
On behalf of the beautiful Sarai, Pharoah lavished many gifts upon Abram. In our land it is understood that once the bride price has been sufficiently paid, the virgin’s guardian will throw as great a feast as a reasonable portion of the dowry will allow, and the marriage will then be properly consummated.
I have never seen so many animals in my life as passed from the hand of Pharaoh to Abram. But what are sheep and oxen and donkeys to Senusret? He is a man of crops and monuments, not of flocks and herds. For him, livestock are to be spent in the acquiring of virgin wombs and military allies, and to those ends they are liberally spent.
Why El Elyon, the god of Abram and his household, had closed the womb of Sarai she did not know, for she was aware of no great iniquities in herself that might have brought this punishment. I sought to reassure her that El has no jurisdiction in the land of Montu-Ra and our god-king Senusret. For whatever prudish god it was that had closed the womb of a woman so beautiful, the gods of Egypt would surely bestow fertility on such a princess.
Yet Sarai clung to the hope that her Abram had not really abandoned her, and that her El Elyon would protect her from harm. As time went on, there were indications that she was correct in both respects. Abram tarried long and yet threw no marriage feast, perhaps an indication that he was having second thoughts about abandoning his wife? Even more disturbingly, from the time that Sarai was brought into the harem and her preparations for the sacred union were begun, there was a remarkable drop in the fertility of the women of Egypt. Knowing as I did that Sarai was barren, it seemed that she had brought this curse with her and spread it like a plague to the women of Egypt. And yet, how could it be that a curse from El should alight in a land not his? The frogs of the Nile suffered no infertility; they multiplied so greatly that they filled our land with their rotting corpses. What was transpiring between El and Heqet? What did our goddess of fertility mean by blessing her frogs but not our women? And how could any Chaldean nomad, even if he be wealthy as Abram, cause such a spiritual disturbance in the delta? When Abram tarried long yet threw no marriage feast, Pharaoh became impatient and threw a feast of his own. Sarai was in dread of what might follow. One day she would insist that El would not let any man touch her, the next day she was weeping again at the reality of her situation and the marriage which must soon take place. Yet Pharaoh suffered a dream that brought the feast to a sudden halt. I am told that in his dream, as he lay on his bed at night, Heqet approached him to seduce him. Yet when he rose from his bed, waking or dreaming he did not know, she struck him so that he fell and was unable to rise. In consulting with the magicians, Omari and Jabari, it was revealed to him for a certainty that Sarai was Abram’s wife, and that his sin in taking her for himself was the reason why our wombs had been closed. No woman, no matter how beautiful, is worth trading the fertility of our mother Egypt, and so Senusret wasted no time in expelling Abram and his household, Sarai and her lavish dowry included, from the land.
