“Hagar. Wake up.”
Hagar hears the voice and thinks of her mother, the mother she left back in Egypt. She sees the shallow creases in her mother’s face as she leans over and wakes Hagar each morning. She sees her mother’s dark eyes, looking so earnestly at her. They are the eyes of a servant, of one whose own needs go unmet. They are patient and tired eyes. They belong to a tired body with tired hands, always busy meeting the needs of those in Pharaoh’s palace.
Hagar’s mother was born a servant, and Hagar was born the same. Her mother believes her role to be a high calling of self-sacrifice, while Hagar does not.
When Hagar was younger, she watched from the shadows as her mother spent her days anticipating the needs of the noble, those that were closest to the god that was Pharaoh himself. Hagar watched her mother fill an empty glass, clear a plate and tsk a child in three swift movements with the confidence of the wind. Yet, it wasn’t those things that made Hagar watch in awe, it was her mother’s ability to go completely unnoticed that always stirred Hagar.
Once Hagar saw one of Pharaoh’s many wives ambling drunkenly down the narrow palace halls towards her mother. As soon as her mother noticed the woman, she flattened herself against the wall, as there was nowhere else to go. The woman stumbled and ran smack into Hagar’s mother causing the back of her head to hit the brick wall. The drunken wife adjusted her robe and continued walking without once acknowledging the accident. Hagar raced to her mother just as she was removing her hand from the back of her head, inspecting the blood.
“Stop.” Hagar had yelled down the hall after the woman. “Stop.”
“I’m ok.” Her mother said. “Shush now, Hagar.”
That was the moment Hagar realized no matter how much her mother taught her to be a good servant, she would never embrace the role like she did. No matter how she tried to sew up her lips or cast her eyes to the ground, she could not. It was like a flame burned in her chest, a fire that couldn’t be staunched.
“Hagar. Wake up.”
Hagar hears the words again, but she does not know who is saying them, she is so deep in sleep. She stirs and raises her eyelids ever so slightly, still stuck in her dreams of her mother and Egypt. Her eyelids feel like the heavy cedar doors of the Egyptian palace. “Open each door just a little,” her mother used to say whenever they were summoned to a room. “Peek inside and see if they are ready for you, if they are not, scurry away quickly but quietly.” Then her mother would demonstrate how to walk on the soft beds of her toes, her heels raised high above the ground like the bare-bellied dancers Hagar had seen in front of the Pharaoh.
“Hagar. Wake up.”
The voice is louder now, it is not her mother. The realization is jarring and carries Hagar halfway up the deep well that is her sleep. She rolls over and the hot sand grazes her bulging stomach. The searing pain causes her eyes to fly open, and the cool dark halls of Egypt to evaporate. The sun is beating on her body. She tries to sit up, struggling under the weight of the baby she carries.
Who was calling her? She wonders as the reality of her plight hits her like a windstorm. She surveys her surroundings. She is near a spring and a small shrub. Beyond that, there is only sand. The Desert of Beersheba had seemed like a haven at first. Now it seems like a death sentence. Why did she come out here alone? Then she remembers, it was the scuffle between her and her mistress, Sarai.
Hagar thinks of the arc of boiling water that sailed through the air toward her, landing mere centimeters from the tip of her big toe. Sarai was the one holding the empty pot, her face showing sudden remorse. She had woken from her fury once the water hit the sand. Hagar had stood staring at her but she wouldn’t meet Hagar’s gaze before she left the tent.
Hagar received five lashings on the back of her hands after that, a proper punishment for a disobedient servant. Sarai wasn’t the one to deliver them. That almost made it seem worse.
What would her mother say now? Hagar wonders. She gently touches the hard round belly. She’d probably say, “The foundation of servanthood is loyalty.” Hagar scoffs. Do both parties need to be loyal?
After the lashings, Hagar took her frustration and the unborn baby, and fled to the desert. She realizes now she had hoped her mistress would come after her. It was Sarai’s baby she was carrying after all, but it wasn’t Sarai’s voice who woke her from her sleep.
Hagar looks around, who had awoken her? The air is hazy, the heat rising from the sand. She doesn’t see anyone. She scoots her body toward the cool water in the spring, the sound of rejuvenation calling to her. She scoops the water with her hand and dribbles it over the baby. Her skin hungrily soaks up each drop. Hagar considers settling her entire body into the spring. The last time she had felt this hot was when she was much younger and had been sick with a fever. It was the week Sarai had arrived at the Egyptian palace. The first time Hagar had met her mistress.
There had been great fanfare that day. Hagar remembers the ache in her knees from polishing the floor. She was scrubbing the same tile over and over, daydreaming of something else, a ball game with other children perhaps. She felt melancholic. Only free children played ball, not servants. “Ahem” her mother had gently motioned for her to move to another spot.
Hagar was beginning to shift when she heard the gentle clink of the copper amulets on Pharaoh’s ankles. She scurried to stand near the wall in the shadow. Sarai entered behind Pharaoh with her head low, her long dark hair in a plait down her back. Bits of leather and feathers stuck out of the braid in a pattern Hagar was unfamiliar with. She was dressed in undyed fabric and her sandals were worn. Hagar first wondered if she had committed some crime and had the misfortune of having to face Pharaoh instead of one of his magistrates, but as Pharaoh spoke to Sarai and she lifted her head, Hagar saw the reason she was there. It was her face.
Sarai lifting her head was like the sun rising in the East. Beauty radiated from her so brightly, that one could hardly look directly at her. Hagar, from her place in the shadow, had the advantage of staring at Sarai’s profile, a softer beauty than the sharp beam of her face full on. Hagar noted the gentle swoop of Sarai’s chin that cut in an elegant line to meet the back of her cheekbone. The bone curled up and rose from her soft cheek like a milky wave in the sea. Her eye was like the bright beacon of that sea. Hagar was mesmerized, as was everyone else in the court.
There was a hush in the room as Pharaoh professed his immediate love for Sarai and desire to have her as his wife. She bowed her head low and said nothing. Pharaoh assumed this as an agreement as none often disagreed. He motioned for Hagar’s mother to show Sarai her room.
Hagar jumped from her shadow like she had been stabbed with a hot iron. “I’ll take her.” She bowed her head low, first to Pharaoh, and then to Sarai.
Pharaoh nodded in agreement. Hagar could feel Sarai’s gaze, but she dared not meet it, for fear of staring openly and being relieved of the duty she so eagerly desired. She led Sarai in silence down the hall. At the doorway to her room, Sarai placed her hand on Hagar’s shoulder. “What is your name?” she said.
Hagar startled. No one of any higher ranking spoke to Hagar or touched her.
“Hagar.” She said. She looked into Sarai’s eyes and there she really saw herself for the first time, a servant in stature and position, but tenacious in mind and heart. Sarai smiled, as if she had seen it too.
“Thank you, Hagar.” She said.
Sarai’s stay in the palace was short. Within days, it was clear that the gods were upset with Pharaoh. Everyone in the palace was ill with fever, even Hagar. The only one who wasn’t was Sarai. She was running around taking care of as many people as she could, something that none of the other brides of Pharaoh had ever done.
Hagar stumbled through the halls trying to hand out cool rags. She was so sick she could barely stand, but her ill mother was still on her feet serving and Hagar knew she must too.
Sarai stopped Hagar and put a hand on her forehead. “You are burning up, child.” She said. “Here, lay in my room, no one will suspect you there.” Sarai ushered Hagar into her quarters, one of the nicest rooms in the palace, only Hagar’s mother was allowed in to do the cleaning. Sarai motioned for Hagar to lay on the bed.
“You need to rest,” Sarai said, “Or I fear you may not outlive this. May the I Am be near to you.” She smoothed Hagar’s hair like her mother did.
Hagar closed her eyes. She had never heard of this god, the I Am. She liked the sound the name made on her tongue. I Am. She whispered it as she tried to sleep but behind her eyelids she was distracted by flashes of Sarai’s eyes, like sunspots, their beauty radiating and blinking in her mind.
Sarai was asked to leave the palace a few days later. It turned out she was the wife of a very important man who was visiting Egypt in hopes of finding food for his family. He had told Pharaoh’s officials that Sarai was his sister for fear that he would be killed because of her beauty. Hagar understood his fear, he probably would’ve been. Hagar had never seen a beauty like Sarai’s.
Once Sarai left the palace, Hagar felt like something had been taken from her, like she had been handed a gleaming treasure that was then ripped from her grasp. She wandered the hallways aimlessly, to the chagrin of her hardworking mother.
When Hagar was summoned to Pharaoh, she panicked, thinking he knew she had been in Sarai’s room, or worse, that they had spoken to each other.
“Sarai has requested that you go with her.” Pharoah said, as soon as Hagar entered the great hall. He continued, a deluge of words. “She said you are kind and strong and she would like you to work for her and her husband, Abram. She specified that you may decide if you would like to come or not. I support whatever Sarai would like.” Pharaoh’s recovery from the fever had been slow. Speaking seemed to exhaust him so he did so quickly. “It is your choice. You may go or stay.” He waved her away and placed his head on his chest.
Hagar immediately knew the answer. When her mother heard the offer, she knew as well. “You are meant for things outside these walls, Hagar.” She said. That day, Hagar learned that being a good servant was less about her nature and more about who she was serving. She wasn’t meant to serve Pharaoh. She was meant to serve Sarai.
Hagar presses lightly on her protruding belly. The baby inside kicks in return. She settles into the sand, cooled from the spring and the memory. She had loved Sarai. Maybe she still loves her. So much has happened since then, Hagar thinks. She thinks of the promise.
Hagar learned about the great promise to Abram and Sarai from the I Am as soon as she left Egypt. How strange it had seemed at first. This great god, who had the time to speak to Abram, had told him that he and Sarai would have many descendants. But they had yet to have even one child.
They had everything else, though. Hagar wishes they could see how the I Am took care of them. They had more than they needed—cattle, food, a huge household of servants. And they were free.
Hagar looks up from the spring and in the dusty haze she sees a man walking toward her. Oddly, she doesn’t feel afraid.
“Hagar, you’re awake.” It’s the man that woke her from her sleep. His voice sounds like bells and trumpets. He speaks again and the sound fills every part of Hagar’s body like a pleasant shiver from the touch of a hand. “Where have you come from, Hagar, and where are you going?” He says.
It’s him, it’s the I Am. Hagar knows it in her heart. She wants to tell him she was just thinking of him, but then she realizes he probably already knows. He found me in the desert, she thinks, and he came after me.
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El Roi: The God who sees me.
Oh, Hagar. I never knew you. Until this story, you were just a backdrop to the main characters. You had a history with Sarai, you had a life that led you to this moment in the desert and I never gave it a moment of consideration. This author continues to take us into the unknown layers of scripture. With each story, I go back to the Bible and look into the faces that I've not considered. Each time, God is faithful to show me something in the scriptures that ties my heart and my life into them. For today, it is this; El Roi: the God who sees me, too.