A Gift of Papyrus

I was so tired by the time we came to the place of lakes, that I can scarcely recall being in pain or missing my father, who had died defending me from the thieves.

I must have been ten years old by then, but cannot be sure. Balthazar was as kind as always, making sure my wounds were tended carefully using father’s store of oils and herbs, or what remained of it, after the attack.

I knew I had lost the essential part of me to be a father myself. Even I knew that. The thieves had attacked me, knowing I had gold coins hidden in my belt, and had stabbed away at the cloth, departing with the same great noise they that come with, to distract and to make us afraid.

I had felt nothing while being stabbed, but felt great fear on seeing blood everywhere, my blood, and then my father’s, splashing over all the fine things we had carried with us from Jerusalem. Our friends and companions bustled around us but that is all I could recall.

Later, much later, I would think of the baby Moses in a papyrus cradle floating towards who knows what in the midst of crocodiles and reeds, without a care in his small mind. He probably thought it a great adventure, if he even had a thought in his baby brain.

I was well fed with the remains of father’s most precious poppy syrup. I only recall Balthazar and his kindness, as the pain became obvious to me after reaching the shores on the boat he had hired. That, too, was a soft moving papyrus boat, much larger than Moses’ little cradle had been.

No one would answer my questions though I spoke enough of their odd version of my language. I knew I was being hidden in some way, but did not know why or when I might see anyone I actually knew. Perhaps I would forever be with near silent strangers? But Balthazar came back one day, with a roll of brown papyrus, wrapped around some reed pens, and a packet of powder he promised would become ink for writing when I was better, and he left again.

I could not of course imagine what I might write on actual paper. I had only ever used clay or wax tablets to learn my words and write sums. I laughed for the first time I could recall since the terror we had lived through, feeling the rough brown paper and peering at the small leather sack of dark powder with some sense of wonder.

I knew this paper and the ink powder and writing reeds was not to be used without more practice on clay. I had asked about my clay tablet and Balthazar said sadly that the only things that he was able to salvage were my father’s medicines and some of my toys.

What about father’s scrolls, his calculations, his words and the words he carried every step of our journey? I felt ashamed at my angry words. Here I was alive only because of the kindness of my father’s friends. I lay back again, crying from the sharp pain of my healing wounds, knowing I had lost everything, but yet knowing I had a gift, which I could turn as father had always instructed, into a treasure.

”If all you have is a single flower, you must find a way to make it into a plant and then figure how to make the most of that plant, and that will be treasure.” He would laugh and make small seeds into flowers and indeed turn them into his salves and ointments and teas.

I decided to draw the flowers I knew were for healing, and to write about them, and to use the gift given to me in my worst moment, to heal myself and perhaps to heal others. My father’s gift of knowledge snd his love for me would not be destroyed by violence. We would live on in our words and ideas.