THE FRAGMENTS OF FLOWERS
by
Adam Watson
(2004)

Author's Note:  I composed this short story in Dr. Tamara Yohannes's Women and Literature class, as an alternative to a more straight-forward essay about early women writers we had discussed and read.  Throughout the story, a hodge-podge of different translations of the writers' words have been used, interspersed with fictionalized phrases and dialogue.  Some of these translations were given in class without being explicitly credited and sourced (or on websites without translator's credits).  Since this creates a grey area for the sake of paid publication, I mulled over the appropriateness of how to share the story with a larger audience.   However, since several people responded favorably to the story -- Dr. Yohannes in particular -- I decided to publish it on my site for non-profit, educational use.

Special thanks to Dr. Yohannes for her encouragement and inspiration.  She is a tremendous professor and a credit to the University of Louisville.

* * *

            When the last temple attendant had left, Enheduanna strode to the front altar and dropped her gown to her ankles.  She casually stepped out of it and mounted up to the burning pyre.

            It was the old way of addressing the Goddess Inanna, but only a high priestess such as herself was allowed to do so.  For Enheduanna, this was her first chance to truly address Her since the Purge.  Her Purge, she thought, then guiltily admonished herself.

            She did not feel the desert chill of the Ur evening air.  Indeed, she was close enough to the pyre for sweat to flash-flood her skin.  The fire blazed in a circular warrior shield, on a stand made of the huluppu tree.  It was waist-high, and Enheduanna’s outstretched arms barely beat its length.

            “Inanna!” she intoned.

            The flames flickered.

            “Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urac!  Mistress of heaven, with the great pectoral jewels, seizer of the seven divine powers, devastatrix of all known things!  To destroy, to build up, to tear out and to settle are yours, Inanna!  To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna!  Desirability and arousal, goods and property, are yours, Inanna!  To cause the heart to tremble, to cause an illness of the heart, are yours, Inanna!  To have a wife, to love, are yours, Inanna!  To create a woman’s chamber, to kiss a child’s lips are yours, Inanna!  You have defeated the unbelievers.  Your worship is again of the altar, and not of the hidden corners.  Your Enheduanna, once like a leper in exile, has returned.  Thanks to you, Inanna, and your pity, I have returned for You.  To be Your mouth, Your humble servant.  Yours!”

            Her torso crumpled in a sudden bow, tears hitting the ground only an instant before her lips kissed the floor.  She was sobbing.  She allowed herself the luxury.  All her time away, she did not weep once.

            The flames patiently waited.  Enheduanna felt the heat dry her face, and soon she was not crying.  But as she slowly rose to her knees, eye level with the shield, the look that crossed her face was not one of relief, but consternation.

            “Inanna,” she said.

            The flames were very close now.

            “I carried your ritual basket.  I intoned the acclaim.  I praised you, recited your me’s for you.  The songs I have created here on this earth no one has created before.  For you, Inanna, I have let no man or God cross my threshold.  Yet in my time of need, you abandoned me. Why?  Why did you leave your beloved?”

            Silence, as shadows played on the temple’s walls.  Enheduanna waited.

            Suddenly, an ember-speck spit out of the shield.  It curved up and lazily floated down, landing on her left breast.  A singe, a sudden pain that made her wince, then nothing.

Enheduanna kneeled there, naked, and could not think of a reply.

* * *

Morning. Praxinoa awoke slowly, stretching.  Her eyes closed, she reached for Sappho, but found empty bed sheets instead.

            She rose quickly, then stopped.  A few feet away, Sappho was standing in her nightdress, staring out the unglassed window.

            “Come back to bed, it’s early,” Praxinoa said.

            “No,” Sappho said to the dark outside.  “It’s late.”

Praxinoa groaned.  “What would you have me do?  Refuse my father’s ship when it comes?  Never leave Lesbos?”

            She finally turned, sighed.  Her short dark ringlets shook.  “No.”

            “Why ruin my last morning with you?”

            “Ruin was not my plan.  I couldn’t sleep.”  She turned back to the window.  “Tonight I’ve watched the moon rise, and the Pleiades go down.  The night is now half-gone.  As youth goes.”

            “You are not so old.”

            “Ah, but I am not so young either.”

Praxinoa smiled, slid off the bed, and took the sheet with her.  She clutched them in a bundle with her left fist just above her breasts, meeting the blonde cascade of her hair.  When Praxinoa marched next to her, wearing her improvised white dress, Sappho seemed not to notice.  They stood together, watching black fade to blue.

            “I want to be sad,” Praxinoa said, putting her head on Sappho’s shoulder.  “But seeing you at the window, even knowing it’s for the last time . . . I can’t.”

            “In a week you will be married.  A bride should never be sad.”

            “Then tell me something.  That I can remember in the days ahead to keep me happy.  One last bit of wisdom about love.”

            Now it was Sappho’s turn to smile, and she finally turned from the window to Praxinoa’s upturned face.  “Advice about love? From me?”

            “There is no one wiser.”

            “You flatter, which means you understand more about love than your young years would reveal. But very well. One last lesson.”

            She grasped Praxinoa’s shoulders with both hands and turned her attention to the column just outside the window.  A crescent of white cracked the horizon.

            “Do you see that vine?” Sappho asked.

Praxinoa nodded.

            “Your life is like that vine.  All the people you embrace and love are segments on that vine, winding from the past, into the present, into the future.  Some loves may only take a thumbs-width.  Others, the length of your arm. Your greatest loves, perhaps the height of a man.”

“Or a woman.”

“Perhaps.  Blame Aphrodite for either.  But the secret is this.  If you went and cut out even the smallest of your loves from that vine, you sever your own life.  The vine will no longer be whole.  Learn to embrace the vine entire, Praxinoa.  And may it never stop growing.”

            Sappho wiped a tear off Praxinoa’s cheek, and kissed her lightly.  The sun was now completely up.

            “Now,” Sappho said, “let’s not waste the dawn.”

            They went back to bed.

* * *

 “Does it bother you, that my husband-to-be has hired you for such lessons?”

            It had been said by many of the great tribes of Arabia that Adara, the intended, was as beautiful as she was virtuous.  She was also glad when she was told that Jibran was handsome as well.  Still, she did not know whether Jibran’s “present” on the night before their wedding was a compliment (implying she was ignorant of such intimate matters) or an insult (implying her feminine instincts were not education enough).  Such presents were rare, or rarely spoken of.  Yet here in the tent, Adara shared a pillow with her teacher.  For three hours now, her mentor had lectured well.  The lessons were winding down, and in a moment of impulse, Adara could not help but ask the question.

Her teacher’s name was Rabi’a.

            “It does not bother me,” she replied.  “In thirty-five years, I have seen and done many things.  Sometimes I sing, as I shall do at your wedding tomorrow.  Sometimes I speak, as I’m doing now.  Sometimes, no words are necessary.  Sing, speak, silence.  To a slave, it is only important to know which to do at the right time.”

            “But you are being paid by Jibran.”

Rabi’a smiled.  “True.  And it is also true that Jibran is not my master, merely friends with my master.  But the chains of slaves are made many ways, little one.”

Adara’s gaze fell to the floor.  Rabi’a lifted her chin.

            “Why so sad?  Drink more wine, we must celebrate!  Tomorrow you will be a wife.  You shall bring Jibran much pleasure, thanks to me.  The lessons are over.”

Rabi’a filled a goblet for Adara.  She shook her head at the wine, as she had all night.  Rabi’a gladly guzzled it herself.

            “But there is one thing you haven’t spoken about,” Adara asked as Rabi’a drank.

“Mmm?”

“Love.”

Rabi’a spit the wine out.  It took a few minutes for her choking to subside to chuckles.

            “You want a whore to teach you about love?”

            “Haven’t you ever felt love?”

            The chuckling stopped.  She put the goblet down.

            “Do you love Jibran?”

            “Yes,” Adara replied, but too slowly.

            “How do you know?”

            She shrugged her shoulders.  Rabi’a suddenly grabbed her and pulled her close. 

            “In love,” Rabi’a hissed and poked her own sternum, “nothing exists between here–”

With one hand she cupped Adara’s left breast savagely, making her gasp.

“—and here.  Speech is born out of longing.  True description from the real taste.  The one who tastes, knows.  The one who explains, lies.  You want me to teach you about love?  Love is a presence where you are blotted out, yet in whose being you still exist.”

            For a moment, there was only the sound of breathing, her hand still clenched on Adara, their faces close.  Then Rabi’a pushed and turned away.  When she spoke again, her back to Adara, her voice had the slightest shimmer.

            “Love is the sun.  If you are lucky, you become the moon in eclipse.  And that is the last lesson of the evening.”

            The silence stretched out without pity.  The desert chill of the tent was finally broken by fingers on the back of Rabi’a’s hand.  She turned to face the young bride.

            “Rabi’a.  You speak without fear in all things.  Let me grant you, on the night before my wedding, courage to face your hardest truth.  When you next meet love, may its light blind you so that you may see.”

            And Adara bowed to the slave.

            After that, it took a moment for Rabi’a to find her voice.

---written April 2004

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