Setting: Genesis 13:13
I have spoken before about my husband’s high view of hospitality. When we were sojourners, this often resulted in late nights under the stars, and the drinking of no small quantities of wine and beer.
When Lot’s drinking was contained within the joviality of feast days and the comradery of friendship, it was a pleasant thing and seemed harmless if not wholesome. But in Sodom, the celebrations ceased and the houses of all were shut at night, and Lot drank alone.
After Paltith was killed it got much worse. He began to praise wine as that which connects us to one another and to nature and to the gods, and in memory of his daughter, he drank into the night. It was as though he must exalt hospitality, and with it wine, as a virtue so great that to lose one’s child in its name became a worthy sacrifice, and drunkenness a worthy memorial. His love for the world and its people turned inward, till it seemed he had love only for the wine.
So it was that one evening Maleb, Qetanah, and myself returned from the market and found Lot lying naked on his couch. Such things should not be done, even in Sodom, as lying naked before one’s daughters. I ran to my room and wept, leaving him there in his shame, and Maleb and Qetanah, it seems, took a blanket and walked backwards, their eyes facing away from him, and laid it across him till he came to his senses and remembered how to blush.
Both were of an age that is fitting for marriage, and Lot was keen to marry them off to successful young men of the city. The decision of who they should wed was largely up to me, so long as they were indeed successful, with reasonably impressive income.
Maleb was wed to Warad, a tanner who seemed to enjoy wine almost as much as Lot; Qetanah was wed to Niqmaddu, a smith of some reputation in the town, whose blades were known for their use in a certain unspeakable ritual that I will not repeat at this time. Niqmaddu would hardly touch wine or beer unless no water were available, but he did have a fondness for some plant that originated in Egypt, the chewing of which produced the same effects as alcohol as far as I could tell.
The two young men married our daughters, but it was to Lot that they were primarily joined, for it was the bond between these three men that grew stronger as the seasons passed by. They spent their nights doing all kinds of things that should not be done. But at least Lot seemed jovial again, in a social sort of way, rather than in the private religion of his drinking closet, and for this I was grateful; I have found that a man and his god alone can develop quite a toxic love affair. Better to keep one’s religion communal rather than private.