A.D. 30(103)

I could not see Sarah’s face clearly but wondered if she was more familiar than I with these dark clouds.

“Do you know the sea?” I asked.

“No.” By her voice I knew that she was terrified. So rather than find comfort, I sought to offer it.

“My sea is the desert,” I said, “but I’ve been across this water with Elias twice. I’m sure it is safe.”

“The wind is growing stronger. How will this boat not fall over?”

“It is made for seas, even when the wind blows strong.”

“I can’t swim.”

“Swim?” The thought sent a chill down my back, for I knew that I too would sink straight to the bottom. “That’s why we are in the boat, so that we don’t need to swim,” I said, offering a stilted laugh. But my concern grew with hers as gusts began to rip at our clothing.

“There is nothing to worry about,” I assured her.

A rather large swell lifted the boat, and she took hold of my knee. The bow splashed down into the wave’s trough, sending a spray of water over our heads.

Sarah cried out, and I would have as well had I not persuaded myself to be her strength.

From the back, Elias laughed defiantly. “It is nothing! The water will cleanse you and make you strong! There is nothing to fear! This sea is no match for Elias!”

“You are frightening them!” Saba chided. “Keep the boat straight.”

“Straight? But we are straight! Straight into waves, as the camel goes over the sands.”

I knew that Saba, too, was challenged by these waters. Sarah’s hand was shaking, and I gripped it with one hand, using my other to hold the side of the boat, swells now slapping against it as wind howled overhead.

“It’s all right, Sarah,” I said. “Think of the sea as your own shame and it will be all right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you not lived with this illness for many years?”

“Yes. Yes, but—”

“And yet you are alive.”

She hesitated, so I finished the thought for her.

“So then, you will still be alive when this storm has passed. This is only the same storm we have faced all of our lives.”

The wind moaned and the boat rocked and Sarah remained silent.

“Is it not so?” I demanded, seeking my own reassurance.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well then,” I said. “This is the same.”

But it was not the same. No sooner had I offered my courage than a towering swell rushed us. I saw it in my blindness as a rolling fog, a ghoul from a nightmare.

Thunder crashed over our heads, and the sky stuttered with bright light. Then the wave threw us high and sideways, and I was certain that we would be crushed under that wall of water.

Sarah screamed and threw herself from the seat. The water swept over the bow, nearly tearing me overboard.

“Hold on!” Elias laughed. “It’s only the sea, toying with us! Nothing to worry—”

But his voice was drowned out by a roar and more peals of thunder, for we had entered nature’s full fury. I was sure the boat would be smashed to splinters.

I was already in the hull, clinging to Sarah and the beam beneath us. Saba had thrown himself over us both, to protect us.

“God save us!” Elias cried, now in terror. “He unleashes his wrath!”

Like a cork we bounced from wave to wave, sure to capsize at any moment.

“Have mercy!” Elias was now alone in his plea, for the rest of us were hugging the hull, too terrified to pray. “Forgive our great and terrible sins!”

But Elias’s god wasn’t listening.

The wind was the greatest enemy, for it howled like a jinn, mocking us in its rage. Water rushed into the hull, soaking us all to our skin. Rain fell now in sheets.

Above it all I heard Elias’s cries, begging for his god to save him, confessing all matter of uncleanliness. And yet the sea raged, throwing us forward and to the side and swamping us with its fury.

The storm had come up so suddenly that I was tempted to believe the Jewish god had indeed determined to cleanse us of life itself.

Still the storm raged. Still we clung to life in that hull. Yet now even Elias had been silenced. In his stead, I heard Stephen crying out.

Not crying out so much as howling, I thought. Laughing.

I lifted my head and saw the blurred image of an upright man clinging to the mast, with one hand thrust into the air.

“Be not afraid!” he was screaming. “Have faith! This too shall pass!”

He had lost his mind!

But then the boat was thrown high in the air and he quickly found his sanity, collapsing to the mast’s base, hugging it tight, terrified once more.

The boat landed with a crushing blow and I was sure we would perish in that sea.