Ilana’s Love
TWO WEEKS had passed—two weeks to the day—and still, no sign of her. No word, no trace.
Sitting cross-legged amid the tufts of grass on the slope near his family’s farm in Galilee, Asa rested his forearms, limp, on his knees. His eyes roved yet again over the flock of sheep his father had given into his care just this spring, when he’d turned thirteen. His three fine rams, twenty-one ewes and their lambs grazed peacefully and in apparent safety. Even his pet goat, Delilah, nibbled in contentment nearby, among the purple thistles. It was suppertime, but Asa’s provisions lay, still bundled, beneath his folded tunic coat. His stomach was a knot.
Hasn’t God heard me? he asked himself. Why hasn’t he answered?
Everything Asa had been, or had ever hoped, wove itself through the sturdy threads of his childhood friendship with Ilana of Nain—all she was to him, all he’d envisioned she would be. Now her father had betrothed her to another, to Baruch, the portly baker of Tzippori, a stranger and a man she did not love. To make matters worse—if they could be so—she had dropped out of sight fourteen days ago, just after she and Asa had secretly met over the stone wall that bordered his pasture on the farm. No one knew her whereabouts, not even her younger sister, Tiryah, to whom she had often confided the secrets of her heart. Was she dead—kidnapped, murdered? If alive, would she ever come back? She had left on a simple enough errand. Had she used the opportunity to run off because she loved Asa and dreaded her future with the bread merchant of Tzippori? Or had she been taken in by the miracle worker who had passed through their village, swayed perhaps by his strong and kindly personality, or by the claims of his noisy followers?
Whatever the case, Asa heaped as much blame on himself as on any of them, believing that Ilana never would have left if it had not been for the exchange they’d had over the wall that day. Surely they were all at fault: her father, the baker, the itinerant preacher, the crowd, but worst of all—he choked on the thought—he, himself.
He picked up the reed he’d pulled from the nearly dry wadi earlier in the day and rolled it between his hands. It was straight and strong, twice as long as his forearm, and showed hardly a blemish. With the mystery of Ilana’s disappearance still tormenting his mind, he pulled his shepherd’s knife from its sheath on his tunic belt, sliced the reed in two, and nicked its surface in each place where he planned to cut more deeply. The knife, designed for defending his sheep against ravaging wolves or worse, was too large for delicate work but, held by the blunt edge of the blade near the hilt, served well for whittling the holes he would finger to produce melody. The process divided his thoughts, so that it soothed him a little, but only for a while.
Memories came to him, one by one—Ilana’s deep-brown eyes, wide with wonder as he told her Scripture stories she had never heard before, that is, before he’d carried them back to her from the synagogue school for boys. Her long, dark hair with the sun’s gleam on it as she sat with him beside the road in those carefree days of childhood. The smile on her full, sweet lips when he’d said something kind. The lilt of surprise in her laugh when she was pleased. The softness of her hands as he held them in his, before they came of age and were forbidden to touch….
Tears came to his eyes to the point that he could no longer see to cut the reed, to sculpt it to his purpose. What good was the music of a flute to him, anyway? So full was he of love and hurt, remorse and worry and longing that his passions sought a different voice, the sound of bitter weeping. But he was too old for that now, even if only the sheep were to hear it. What kind of young man would he be to cry like an abandoned baby in fear and mourning over his loss? And what was this? He brushed the wetness from his eyes, thinking his shaggy black pet, Delilah, had got hold of his foot in her mischievous way and was shaking it, bound to make him play. But he was wrong; she was nowhere near. Was anguish destroying his body as it was decimating his soul?
A soft breeze along the slope wafted to him the same fragrance that had filled his senses that last day he’d seen her, and he was overcome. The words asked no permission but issued in a soulful cry toward the hills and the faraway road north. “Ilana…. Where…are…you?”
