“You came up the steps?”
Miri nodded.
“And you sit here looking like you’ve been in a beauty shop all morning. That’s disgusting.”
She grimaced, as though she were clenching her teeth in pain. “It’s all show. Actually you will have to call for a stretcher to get me off the mountain. I left my legs behind somewhere on the way up.”
Brad put his arms around her and hugged her to him. “You are something else, do you know that?”
“No, tell me,” she murmured, putting her head against his shoulder.
Brad started to chuckle, and she looked up in surprise. “What?” she asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking. In Salt Lake City the kids drive up above the state capitol building or into the mountains so they can have a beautiful and private place to neck. But this is ridiculous.”
“Neck?” Miri asked, puzzled for a moment. “Oh yes, that peculiar American expression. I never could understand how it got its name.” Then she smiled. “If those are your intentions, Mr. Kennison, then maybe I’d better leave.”
“Hey, remember, I had no idea you’d be here.”
“I know. I’ve worried about that all the way up.”
“Well, stop worrying. We haven’t had a moment alone since we left Jerusalem. This is a delightful surprise.” Suddenly he groaned. “Except Nathan will be furious. He’ll think we planned this together.”
“No, I told Sarah the situation last night. She’ll tell him. Don’t worry about Nathan,” she added. “He likes to think he is much more intense than he really is.”
“Sounds like someone else I once knew—no names mentioned, of course.”
Miri dug him in the ribs with her elbow, then leaned against him again and sighed, a sound that Brad couldn’t decipher. Was it a sigh of happiness and contentment or of frustration and longing? He touched her gleaming black hair softly, aware that he was unable to untangle his own emotions, let alone hers.
“Brad?” They had been quiet for several minutes, both absorbed in their own thoughts.
“What?”
“Why did you come up here?” He had come to recognize that particular husky throatiness in her voice as a sign that she was struggling with her emotions.
“Oh,” he said, wondering how much to admit, “mostly to see this sight again.” His sweeping arm included the panorama before them. “It is really quite incredible.”
“Mostly?”
“And to think,” he added.
“About me? About us?”
Brad nodded.
“And so?”
“And so I found you here,” he said, touching her nose with his fingertip. “You know I can’t think when I’m around you.”
“Brad, please!” Her brown eyes were full of pleading. “Tell me.”
“How can I? We have an agreement.”
“I know,” she whispered, her eyes filling up. “And I know how hard it has been for you to keep it. You’ve been wonderful about it.”
Now it was Brad’s turn to sigh. “My part is no harder than yours,” he apologized.
“So I’m lifting the restrictions for a moment. I may impose them again, but please tell me what you’ve been thinking these past few weeks.”
He stared out across the granite peaks parading away before them. “I just wonder how it is coming for you. I wonder, and question, and yearn, and pray.”
“And fast?”
Brad looked at her in surprise.
“I’ve been checking up on you,” Miri admitted. “I ask the cook in the hotel dining room if you’ve eaten there.”
He winced slightly. “Sometimes I eat at Ali’s or somewhere else.”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “I asked Ali too. He finally told me that you both were fasting and praying for me.” The tears brimmed over, and she wiped at them angrily. “I love you, Brad,” she whispered fiercely. “You are so good. Too good. How can I ever deserve you?”
He touched the wet streaks on her cheeks. “Too good for me? Only when it comes to hiking up mountains. If we get married, you will definitely have to restrain yourself.”
“If we get married. And what if I don’t find my answer?”
“I don’t know,” Brad said, his voice as full of sorrow now as her own. He began to trace a pattern with his finger on the dark tan of her forearm. “I think about not having you and I get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know, Miri. I don’t know.”
She nodded, sniffing back the tears. “I understand.”
“Isn’t there any hope, Miri? Are you getting any answers?”
Her dark hair rippled in the sunlight as she shook her head. “Sometimes I feel very encouraged. I’m nearly through the Book of Mormon now. It seems true. I want it to be true. But the other, it is like trying to pierce solid rock with a sword made of tin. I cannot seem to penetrate.”
“Jesus?”
“And God, and the Atonement! Why can’t I get an answer?”
“Have you tried fasting?”
Miri ducked her head and nodded almost imperceptibly. “I’m fasting now.”
Brad suddenly remembered that at dinner last night she had pleaded that she wasn’t feeling too well and hadn’t joined them. “And you’re climbing Sinai? Miri, that’s not wise.”
“I’ve missed only one meal so far. If you care that much, then how can I not fast too?”
“The answers will come then,” he said, holding her close, fiercely proud of her, and yet unable to shake the nagging fear that she might not be able to accept the answers when they came. Maybe they were coming now and she refused to soften. Was the Jewishness so deep that it could not be rooted out? “They have got to come!” he said ardently.
She shook her head sadly and touched his cheek. “I so much envy you that deep faith, that burning knowledge.”
“It will come, Miri,” he promised, taking her hands. “Keep trying. Please keep trying.”
“I have not given up. And yet, it seems hopeless. President Marks said you believe that Jesus in his premortal life was the God of the Old Testament.”
“Yes, he was and is Jehovah.”
“The same God who delivered Israel from Egypt?”
“Yes.”
“Then if he was powerful enough as God to save Israel from bondage, why did he have to become a man to save other men from the bondage of sin?” Her eyes were liquid and close to overflowing again. “I know you don’t have any trouble with that, but can’t you at least see how illogical it sounds—that a god has to become a man in order to save others?”
“I can understand,” Brad said, trying to mask the discouragement in his eyes. “But there had to be someone who was like us, and yet free from our condition. If he had not been mortal and faced temptation, how could he say that he had triumphed over sin? And yet, if he had not been a god, he would have sinned too and then been in the same state as we are. How can a man locked in chains deliver others from captivity?”
Miri stood up, pulled Brad up to face her, and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her, pouring all the frustration and impatience and all the longing for resolution of their conflict into the embrace. She returned it, giving herself to him fully and without reservation. But when they parted, the barrier between them dropped back into place.
“I want to believe, Brad,” she whispered. “Why won’t God answer me?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe he is testing you.”
“And how long must I wait? Two thousand years, like my people? Why doesn’t your God listen to the cries of a Jew?”
Before he could answer, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Brad had an unexpected idea. He took both of her hands and brought them up, clasping them tightly. “Miri,” he said, “will you pray with me?”
She looked startled. “Here?”
He smiled gently, his face full of love for her. “If it was good enough for Moses…We could go a short distance back
down and find a place where we won’t be seen if someone does come.”
She hesitated. “I don’t pray very well. Will you do it for us?”
“If you like.”
They found a small hollow in the granite, well off the path, about fifty yards below the crest. As Brad smoothed away some of the rocks and pebbles and folded his windbreaker to offer some protection to their knees, he cried out in his heart for help. Oh Lord, give me the words that I can say. Help me now. Please!
They knelt side by side, Miri suddenly shy and reserved. Brad took her hand, interlocked their fingers, and bowed his head. There had been three times in his life when he had raised prayer from a level of communication to a level of communion: at sixteen when his father was diagnosed as having cancer of the stomach; in the mission field when he and his companion had converted a Christian minister after a terrific struggle; and during that first night on the perimeter of the outpost of the Mekong Delta when he had sought for the courage to stay in his place throughout the night, though he had nearly bitten his lower lip clear through as he fought to control the terror.
On the top of Mount Sinai, Brad achieved it for the fourth time. The yearning reached the very core of his being, an intense burning fire of desire that started as an unspoken plea for himself that the Lord would make it possible for him to have this woman as his wife. But as he began to pray, to his surprise he found his heart changing its focus. Suddenly he felt the inner anguish of Miri’s soul, her doubts, her tortured questions about God’s love and indeed His very existence, and Brad’s yearning became hers. His words were not particularly profound; there were no forced dramatics, no straining to sound sincere. The words simply poured out of him as he pled with the God who was his Father and hers, to the God who so loved that He gave the world His most prized possession. He pled for light, for understanding, for courage.
When he finished, there was silence for a long moment. Then he started to rise, but Miri held him, pulled him gently back down beside her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“For the first time, I feel Him, Brad. I feel as if He’s here. I want to pray now too.”
Brad nodded. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“O God—” She stopped, then began again. “O Father, I thank you for this day, for this man you have brought into my life. Please help me. I want to know what he knows, to feel what he feels.”
Again there was a long pause as Miri struggled with her emotions. “I want to know if your Son was really the Messiah. And most of all, help me to understand Him—what He did, and why. I want to understand.” Her voice caught and she went on slowly. “But I can’t yet. Please help me, Father. Help me to understand you. I want to know you and to love you. Help me to know. Amen.”
Brad got slowly to his feet and pulled Miri up to him, holding her close. She put her face against his chest and hugged him fiercely. He buried his face in her hair. “I love you, Miri Shadmi,” he whispered.
“And I love you,” she responded, raising her face to him. “Don’t give up on me yet.”
“Give up?” Brad nearly shouted, his joy spilling over. “Are you kidding! We’re going to make it, Miri! It’s going to work. I just feel it.” He kissed her, long and hard and joyously.
When they parted, both a little breathless, she was smiling through the remains of her tears. “Do you really think so?”
He picked her up and swung her around and around. “Yes, Mrs. Kennison, I really think so!”
Twenty-three
Miri and Brad arrived back at Saint Catherine’s just before eight that morning. To describe Nathan’s reaction as cool would be to do great disservice to the art of under-exaggeration. He had the Volkswagen bus packed, and he, Ali, and Sarah were sitting inside, Nathan’s fingers beating a steady tatoo on the steering wheel.
“Well, well,” he said in parody of cordial welcome. “I hope we didn’t rush you two.”
“No, not at all,” Miri smiled, giving Sarah an excited squeeze on the arm as she climbed in the back seat.
“It’s my fault,” Brad apologized as he climbed in beside her.
Nathan started the engine, slammed it into gear, and left a spray of gravel, which is no mean trick with a Volkswagen bus.
“It was so incredibly beautiful up there, I wanted to go back,” Brad said.
Ali and Sarah both nodded, sensing a happiness in their two friends that deeply pleased them. Nathan just grunted. He mumbled and continued complaining about the delay until finally Miri quietly reminded him that it was Brad who was paying for the bulk of the trip, and if he wanted to climb Mount Sinai again, that was his right.
Thereafter the comments stopped, but it was evident from the way Nathan pounded the bus across the washboard roads that he was going to make it miserable for all of them, one way or another.
Nor did the blowout on the left rear tire cause him to ease up much. Miri again was the only one who had the courage to suggest that it was the direct result of his driving habits.
“Listen, little sister,” he snapped as he undid the lug bolts on the wheel, “we have got the rest of today and then tomorrow until sundown to get home. Or had you forgotten that tomorrow night begins Yom Kippur, and that our family will be waiting for us to go to Tel Aviv with them to spend the holiday with Aunt Esther? Sarah also has a family waiting for her.”
“No, I hadn’t forgotten,” Miri answered calmly. “We left only two hours later than you had planned. I find that hard to accept as quite the crisis you seem to make of it.”
“We’ve got approximately a hundred and twenty miles to El Arish, a good portion of that on gravel roads worse than these, and another hundred to Jerusalem—long, slow miles. Now we’ve got to go over to Abu Rodeis, at least thirty miles out of our way, to get this tire fixed. We don’t dare drive out here without a spare.”
“Not the way you’re driving,” Miri retorted. “That’s for sure.”
Look,” Brad interjected, “I really feel bad that I’ve caused all this. I shouldn’t have gone up there this morning. But we can make it up. All of us can drive. Let’s go as far as you planned to get by tonight, no matter how long it takes us.”
That seemed to mollify Nathan somewhat, but the sourness of his mood dampened the spirits of the rest of them. And things really got gloomy when they arrived in Abu Rodeis after dark to find all of the repair shops closed. It was Thursday night, and Friday was the Moslem Sabbath. Abu Rodeis was a small port city on the Red Sea, the center of the Sinai’s oil industry that the Israelis had captured from Egypt in the Six Day War. Nathan finally located a captain he knew in the armed forces stationed there, and was able to get the tire fixed. But by then it was midnight and they were all exhausted. Nathan reluctantly agreed to a four-hour rest, but got them up at dawn to push on.
Shortly after seven he pulled the bus over to the side of the road and consulted his map. “Our only hope is to take a shortcut,” he announced. His finger traced a faint line on the map for the others. “This road cuts straight from here over to the Mitla Pass. That will save us almost sixty or seventy miles. It should be about four or five miles ahead of us now.”
“That’s a road?” Sarah asked dubiously.
“Not much of one,” Nathan admitted. “But we used it in ‘67. It’s rarely traveled, but it’s passable.”
“Are you sure, Nathan?” Miri asked. “It’s been six years since the war, and you were in Jeeps and halftracks then.”
“Miri,” he said, not too patiently, “we aren’t going to make it otherwise.”
“We could go right to Tel Aviv,” she countered. But it was obvious she was not convinced of that herself.
“Good. That will save us half an hour.”
Brad shrugged. “Let’s do whatever it takes to get you home in time.”
“Good,” Nathan said, not waiting for any additional comments. “Miri, you drive. I need to watch the map.”
“Let me drive,” Ali
volunteered. “I’m the only one who hasn’t taken a turn.”
“Okay,” Nathan agreed. “Let’s get going.”
It was slightly more than three hours later when the Volkswagen came to a lurching halt, throwing Brad sharply against the back of the front seat. He looked up wildly, unable to get his bearings for a moment after being asleep.
“What is going on?” Nathan demanded, half disoriented himself as he came out of a fitful doze.
Ali turned to face them, his face stricken. “I think we’re stuck.”
Brad glanced quickly around. They were in a low depression, which hid for the moment the interminable vastness of the Sinai wilderness. It was thirty or forty yards across, and the narrow dirt road was visible where it came out of the depression and disappeared again over the small rise. But between there and where they now sat, there was no road, only a smooth expanse of sand, which even now Brad could see was drifting in the substantial breeze that was blowing outside.
“Of all the stupid—!” Nathan exploded.
“Nathan!” Both Miri and Sarah spoke almost as one.
“I’m sorry,” Ali said in despair. “The road was really quite good, and I was making good time. I didn’t see the sand until it was too late. I came over the rise and was into it.”
“I told you to watch for that!” Nathan shouted as he opened the door and jumped out.
Brad heard Nathan groan, and as he got out to join him, he instantly saw why. All four wheels were up to their hubcaps in the soft drifts of sand. Ali had had enough momentum to propel the bus ten or twelve feet into the stuff before it bogged down.
“Of all the stupid fools!” Nathan said in disgust.
Again both Miri and Sarah started to protest, but Brad beat them both. “That’s enough, Nathan!” he said, his voice full of anger of its own. “It could have happened to any one of us, and you know it. So lay off Ali.”
Nathan bristled. “Lay off? I warned him about this very thing. You heard me do it.”
“Look,” Ali said, his face flaming red beneath his olive complexion. “I really am terribly sorry, I—”
“No!” Brad exclaimed. “Don’t you apologize. It’s not your fault.”