Upon waking up, she felt unusually refreshed. She could not remember the last time she had slept that peacefully. It was almost as if she'd had a bodyguard watching over her throughout the night and a soothing baritone had been singing in her ear. The sound hadn't been physically audible--that would've been scary--but had seemingly entered her head like a radio signal, audible only after it got past her ear canal and into her brain, which picked it up like an antenna. It reminded her of early childhood, when Lazarus used to sing her to sleep.
Was that his way of saying "thank you"? She couldn't be sure--it was just a vague impression she had--but she found herself thinking "you're welcome" anyway, just in case. Opening the book yet again, this time with mounting excitement of a happy kind, she saw "Genesis 10:6-12".
And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. ... And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Akkad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.
Well, that was random. Why was he quoting the lineage of Ham? Below, she read:
Ïn tûav fukan vadtusdegerenem. Nám dim nám vorab bid üvh isfeash an qa gareaza nák, gon nín kaisan irdu nám uttvaddab en.
***
She saw pageantry, dancing, feasting, armies, statues, temples, crowns, jewelry, grand buildings and artworks of every kind, a gigantic tower that promised to pierce the very sky when it was finished. Atop a hill, she saw a man of immense stature and strength, both awesome and frightening to behold, as majestic and imposing as any mortal could be--more, if that was possible. He was darker than coal, with eyes like marble and a gaze that could melt iron. He was Nimrod, might personified. Nimrod, son of Cush and grandson of Ham. Nimrod, patriarch of Babel, Erech, Akkad, Calneh, Calah, Resen, Rehoboth, and Nineveh. Great and terrible Nineveh. Hands outstretched, he stared into a lurid red glow on the plain before him, emanating from an intricate pattern on the ground. His eyes flashed, the pattern flared, and her ears were assaulted with a chorus of screams.
She sank through the ground and now saw a firelit dungeon strewn with blood and gore. The place positively stank of agony and death. She saw severed body parts, gouged eyes, flayed skin. Still-living bodies writhed on long stakes outside and horrifically ingenious instruments of torture hung from pegs on the wall.
She shot back up into the air, getting a bird's eye view of the land. Seeing smoke in the far distance, she flew in for a closer look. A battle had just taken place. The city had been put to the torch and its remaining inhabitants were being led away in chains to serve their new masters in the heart of the empire. Some were allowed to make the journey in relative comfort, riding beasts of burden as they normally would. Others were literally led by the nose with hooks. These broken souls were of middling luck.
This was the line into which she had married, both magnificent and brutal. The line of Nimrod, son of Cush. One could never find a prouder line than that of Nimrod, and that was precisely what ailed it. Pride had brought them low and now pride was keeping them low. Beautiful but vain, heroic but haughty, strong but reckless.
Like Nimrod himself, his children raged, flexed, and boasted. Where everyone else said, "Rest in Peace," they said, "Rest in Power". They argued that they were the rulers of the ancient world and on this she agreed with them, but she very much doubted that they grasped the full implications of what they were saying because if they did, they would not be so quick to say it.
They had enjoyed immeasurable power...and they had used it to sin, just like everybody else. On top of all that, their exalted position as the very first people to wield such power after the Flood made it that much harder to disguise the foul flavor of their sin by arguing that they were provoked into sinning by systemic discrimination. The inevitable question would be, What systemic discrimination? After all, the higher up the chain of cause and effect one was, the more special blame one invited for any given sin. Therefore, to be the very first was to act unprovoked and thereby to invite a special rebuke.
***
Her eyebrows shot up. This was the history that she and her fellow black Americans had been looking for? This was the history that she had been denied? If so, it was both better and worse than she had ever imagined. More credit and accolades than she could have asked for, but at the cost of all of her excuses. No longer could she point the finger, demanding restitution for the dead. If the dead required restitution, then hers would be the first and all too probably highest price to pay. The grievance mentality was yet another candy house, full of hidden dangers that would turn her into dinner if she tarried inside.
How had this possibility never occurred to her before, that others could accuse her just as easily as she could them? What happened when you threw away mercy? Where did justice end and mercy begin, and what gave her the right to draw that boundary? On what authority other than mercy could it be argued that old school white supremacy was evil--which it clearly was--or even that it wasn't social justice several millennia overdue?
The implications shook her to the core, particularly as she remembered that her own instinct upon reading the Book of Jonah had been to side with Jonah. If this lineage that she had just read was saying what it seemed to be, both she and the Assyrians were of Nimrod's line and therefore they could have been some of her direct ancestors. If Jonah had gotten his wish and Nineveh had been destroyed, would she be alive today? She didn't know.