Chapter Text
Age 13
Baz
My father takes me to a work site. The Hebrew slaves are making mud bricks — treading straw into the mud, hauling the mixture, filling molds and laying them to dry, removing dried bricks from molds and stacking them. There's a boy about my age fetching and carrying, tossing straw into the treading pit and gathering up the bits that escape. He's working hard and sweating in the sun, but he's grinning, making jokes with the treaders. They are plodding, exhausted, but sometimes he can make them smile for a moment, and that lights his face up even more. I think I have never seen someone as alive as this boy.
He has paler skin than me; all the Hebrews do. The backs of my hands are the shade of the half-dried bricks, and they shine a little bit like copper; his skin is closer to desert sand, and his shine is like the afternoon sun. He's speckled with darker spots and brown bumps like pebbles, spread out over his chest and back like stars in the night sky. I assume there are even more hidden by his loincloth. I'm slender and soft from time indoors studying and practicing my writing and drawing; he has cords of muscle from lifting and carrying, pushing and pulling.
I want his attention, but I don’t know his name. I don’t know any of their names — why would I — but for once I want to. I make something up instead. “You! Boy! Sandy-skin!”
He looks up, fire in his eyes. “Are you talking to me?”
“I am! Come here and explain this to me.” I want him near me for some reason. Now I need to come up with an excuse. He comes over, and I ask, “How long does it take the bricks to dry?”
I continue to find questions I don't really need the answers to. After several more, he says, “Are you done? Because they need more straw, and if they have to stop to get it that will slow everyone down.”
“Fine, Sand. Take care of it, then come back here.” He shoots me a look and then grabs a bundle of straw, his muscles straining to drag it over to the mud pit. As he is fluffing the straw and scattering it over the pit, my father comes and tells me that we need to leave. I'm disappointed — I had wanted to talk to the boy some more — but I obey in silence.
Simon
Today I’m working making bricks. Other days it might be building, farming, digging a canal. We do anything that needs to be done, especially the very worst jobs, worse than the ones that even poor or enslaved Egyptians do.
Once, when I was little, I asked Eb petulantly, “When will I get to go build things and grow things like the big boys and the men?”
She said, “Soon enough, and don’t be in any hurry for it.” She was right, which she usually is. Now I never have a day when I don’t have to work — we work even during the five-day festival of the new year, which every single Egyptian has off.
It’s not just us Hebrews at the work sites. There are always people watching over us — a Hebrew overseer, sometimes an Egyptian overseer as well, and maybe a government official or architect. Sometimes there’s also a scribe recording the amount of work we do, the supplies that are needed, and so on. The scribe here today is Malkom, and he’s brought his son Baz with him. The boy is about my age, and I guess he’s training to be a scribe too.
I hate him.
He calls me “Sand” or “Sand-boy”. I have to call him “sir”.
He always makes me come answer stupid questions about how bricks are made, or why we hoe the crops, or something. (And I can't just answer “because the overseer says we have to,” even though that’s always the actual reason.)
Yesterday he dropped his stylus and made me pick it up. Twice.
The first time may have been an accident. The second time definitely wasn't. He just liked that he could make me do it. What I actually wanted to do was punch the smug look off of his face. But I could be beaten for that, and even worse, so could the people around me, so I did what he told me to, gritting my teeth the whole time.
Like any Egyptian boy, his head is shaved except for one thick lock of hair over his left ear; it’s fastened with a gold clasp. He has black and green paint around his eyes like the rich Egyptians do. Plenty of the scribes wear that, but not usually kids our age unless they're actually royalty. He’s just showing off, making sure everyone sees how perfect his eyes are. It’s one thing to be gorgeous; it’s another thing to make sure no one could possibly miss noticing it. He is so full of himself it makes me feel sick.
When I was handing him the stylus (twice!) I could smell some kind of fancy perfume on him. He's never worked a day in his life — you can see it in how soft and smooth his skin is. He seems pretty and useless, but I have to do what he tells me or risk a whipping.
Baz
As I go to bed one evening, I’m thinking about Sand (as I’ve decided to call him). I’m drawn to him like a moth to the flame of an oil lamp. He's so lively and happy even though you would think his life is one of hardship. He's very playful with the other slaves — he's always got a joke or a little trick (never a mean one) — but never with me. I ask him questions, and he answers with a grimace, but also with an outward politeness so that he can't be disciplined. He always calls me “sir” — I could have him beaten if he did anything else. But today I saw him playing with one of the other slaves, just seeing who could make a louder noise blowing through a piece of straw, and they looked so happy. He wouldn't ever want to do that with me.
I wake up from a nightmare of being trapped in the dark in a sarcophagus. I’ve had these dreams ever since Mother was entombed. When I was younger, they made me cry out in fear. Our servant Wera would come and try to comfort me. If Father heard, he let me know how disappointed he was — and how disappointed he thought Mother would be, which was even worse. I learned to stay quiet, at least once I woke up, and I learned to be my own comfort as best I could, usually by distracting myself with other thoughts — a game I could play with my cousin Dev, perhaps, or a sweet treat I might be able to wheedle out of Wera. Tonight I think of Sand. He’s the one thing I’m sure of.
Warm eyes.
Glossy curls.
The fact that he is the most alive boy I have ever seen. That nothing can break his spirit, not even me.
That I would do anything to be near him.
Simon
It doesn’t make sense for Eb to cook for just the two of us, so we always eat with other people — usually Peniah’s family. One night I’m sitting with Peniah and telling her how irritating I find it when Baz comes to the work site. How I feel him watching me, how he bothers me with his stupid questions, how irritatingly smug he is about his perfect looks and his soft job and his power.
“Why does it bother you so much, Simon?”
“Because he’s insufferable! He has things I’ll never have, even though he’s never had to work hard. And the way he looks at me, like he thinks he’s better than I am. He’s so soft and fancy, it makes me sick.”
“Yes, but isn’t that true of pretty much any Egyptian who shows up when you’re working? Why does this one bother you so much? Is it just that he’s our age?”
“Peniah, trust me, if you saw him for yourself, you’d agree that he’s just impossible.”
“Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. But the fact is, I’m tired of hearing about him. You need to tell me about something else, anything else, and less about Baz. I’d think you’d be tired of thinking about him, anyway.”
Peniah just doesn’t get it. I love her for always, but she just doesn’t get it.