Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Gossip/Rumors (either or both) (10/28/10)
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TITLE: "The Secrets of My Heart" | Previous Challenge Entry
By Avigail David
11/04/10 -
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The woman anxiously waited for this.
Her face lined with cares and the burdens of alienation from friends-- if there were any that came close to befriending her. Peering out the door she sighed, “O Hamor, I can’t stand those women. Their wagging tongues are so sickening!”
“Gon’k mind ghem,” munching, the man at the table mumbled. Then after another
mouthful, “zhhush fetch da wazher,” he finally swallowed, “get on with it.” He
cut a big piece of the flat bread and dipped it into the bowl of zaartar again.
Facing him behind the closed heavy door she pleaded, “I wish I have daughters
to help me fetch water at the well.” She pined away at the depressing thought
of barrenness.
“Well, you don’t. Haven’t you learned to live with it up to now?” Agitated,
Hamor raised his voice.
Holding the door ajar, and heaving a deep sigh, she craned her neck to survey
the alley to check if those grapevines” scuttle butting about her were still
at the corner and the little arcade toward the direction of the well. “It’s
just the time of the day, if it were possible, when the town folks and children are off the streets.”
Hamor pulled up the sleeves of his robe and rested his arm on the table,
"Look, Sychar is only a small town, big with ears on every wall.” Wise as he tried to be, he muttered, “Foolish, woman! Let those stupid babbler-mouths flag their tongues gossiping about you til they turn blue on the face.”
She grimaced at the scolding. She was the talk of these Samaritan folks.
Alienation from the townspeople goaded her with mock and shame. Friendships
offered no fondness to her -- except men, and now, Hamor living with her.
So, she waited for this hour to draw water-- in the heat of the day.
Anxious at drawing water from the well by herself, as usual, she bravely
hoisted the earthen pitchers on her already care-worn shoulders. Better get the most of it. Tomorrow is going to be another long wait until noon. If only I could have a third arm, I'd make room for one more clay pot on my hips.
This had been her usual order of each day. The absence of young daughters to
help her, as do most daughters to their mothers in the land, which the void in
her heart pursed her lips in pain whenever she thought about it. Loneliness and
always wanting crept up on her.
She headed down to the alley. She looked left and right at the empty narrow streets. Each step to the well was hurried but cautious, avoiding anyone to see her. But she felt eyes behind the curtained windows trailing her. Oh, how it
hurts.
At this well, the narrow valley of Sychar ended, opening itself into a wide
field.
Oh, no! A Jew by the well. How these people despise us! What now?
“Give me a drink.” The Man asked.
“Why is it that you are a Jew asks me for water? I’m a Samaritan woman.”<
His kind gaze turned to her and spoke to her of good things to come , “If you
knew about the gift of God, and He who asks you for a drink, you would ask Him
to give you Living Water.”
“Sir, the well is deep. You have nothing to draw the water with. And how do you have the living water?
“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But the water I give will
become as a spring of water into everlasting life.”
Silence pervaded. The woman drew from the well and gave to Him water and said
to Him, "Sir, give me this water you speak of, so that I don't get
thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw."
“Go call your husband and come back.”
She decided that the Man’s request wasn’t a taunt at her state of affairs.
Her head drooped in deep pain of the pangs of endless gossips about her
loveless affairs.
“I’m not married.”
“You have been truthful to say that you are not married to the man you have
now. You have had five before.”<
This Man knows my secrets!
“I’ve heard about the Messiah. And He will reveal Himself to us.”
“I am He.”
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