Sarah Read Online Free PDF Page B

really was. “I’ll be back for you in a little while.”
    He turned his back and left the room, like a great lord who liked to let his words hang in the air.

    THE little room where Sarai’s father was working was quite cluttered. Two of the walls were completely covered with shelves piled high with clay tablets. Letters, contracts, and accounts by the hundreds. All the important things that made Ichbi Sum-Usur a feared and respected man.
    On a long ebony table, a servant was pressing a ball of clay into a wooden mold with the help of a pestle. Beside him were small boxes of fresh clay covered with damp linen, bronze knives, pots filled with large and small styli: everything required for writing. Sitting at the other end, a scribe was meticulously sculpting words in the paste.
    Sarai heard her father dictating: “. . . the bridegroom will be able to come into my house and stay there like a welcome son . . .”
    She let the curtain over the door fall behind her.
    â€œMy daughter!” her father cried, and beneath his long, black, perfectly waved beard, his double chin swelled with pleasure. With a gesture, he dismissed his servants. The scribe and his assistant quickly covered their unfinished work with a cloth and withdrew, bowing several times to Sarai.
    Ichbi Sum-Usur opened his arms wide. “My daughter,” he repeated, as if the words were like honey in his mouth. “The first to marry!”
    â€œI’m so happy to see you, Father.”
    And it was true. She was always happy to see him. He was not much taller than she was, and his corpulence bore witness to his lack of exercise as well as the extravagant meals he was constantly organizing. But she loved his imposing bearing, the distinction only power could bestow and only the noblest citizens of Ur possessed. His eyes, underlined thickly with kohl, had the self-confidence of those who knew themselves to be above the common herd. And today he was draped in a magnificent tunic, with colorful embroidered hems and little silver tassels, the finery of a high-ranking official. Sarai’s dress, although of very fine material, seemed quite plain in comparison.
    She was proud of her father, proud to be his daughter, and although Kiddin, her elder brother, was of course Ichbi Sum-Usur’s firstborn, she had no doubt she was the first in his heart. And she loved nothing better than to make sure of it.
    She bowed respectfully, perhaps a little excessively, but it brought a satisfied grunt from her father. He approached, put a finger under her chin, and lifted her head.
    â€œYou’re looking beautiful, my child. Egime tells me you were a good girl in the chamber of blood. I’m pleased with you. I hope you’re pleased with me.”
    Inhaling the scent of myrrh, with which he had liberally sprinkled himself, Sarai merely batted her eyelids in reply.
    â€œIs that all? I build you the most beautiful bedchamber in the house and that’s all the thanks I get?”
    â€œI’m very pleased with the bedchamber, Father. The bed in particular is very beautiful. Everything is very beautiful. The chest and the dresses. Everything. And you are still my beloved father.”
    â€œBut?” Ichbi Sum-Usur sighed: He could read her as well as if she were a tablet from the royal scribes.
    â€œBut, my beloved father, I know nothing of the husband who will join me there. Depending on who he is, I may find my bed less beautiful and my bedchamber worse than a hovel in the lower city.”
    Ichbi Sum-Usur raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Sarai!” he said, with a sigh that was half a laugh. “Sarai, my daughter! Will you never change?”
    â€œMy father, all I want to know is who you’ve chosen as my husband and why. Don’t I have the right to know that?”
    Sarai’s voice was neither tearful nor submissive. On the contrary, Ichbi Sum-Usur could sense a familiar resonance in it: the resonance his own