“This is my son,” I said. “We wish to meet Hananiah and seek his counsel.”
“The Master will see you,” said the one-eyed man. “And remember, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” We stared at him, and he began to laugh. “Come on,” he said. “Follow me.”
The one-eyed man took us to a tattered tent that had been pitched beneath a tree next to a mound of rocks. The crowd of men stood behind us now, whispering, and some of them came up to me asking for gifts and offerings. The one-eyed man batted them away with a stick.
“Keep yourselves pure,” he shouted. “Remember the words of our Master and allow our kind guests to meet him before you speak to them.”
“Wait here,” he said, disappearing into the tent. He came straight back out again and signaled us to remain standing, before he turned back to the tent and knelt down. The chatter behind us turned to whispering, and then to silence when their prophet stepped out through the tent door.
He was covered with dark hair, even his beard appearing to grow up to his eyes, and his clothes were wrapped around him as if he were freezing and had no wish to be standing outside there with us.
“May God’s peace be with you,” he said, before coughing and spitting. He motioned to the one-eyed man. “Tell them to come to me, and then leave us in peace.”
“Yes, Master,” said the one-eyed man, waving us forward.
I’d heard Hananiah’s name spoken by some of the workers of one of my tenant farmers. They said he could heal the sick and release us all, and they told me where I could find him. I thanked the workers and asked my tenant to turn a blind eye to what they’d told me. From what I understood, it was safe to seek out Hananiah’s followers as long as they hadn’t crossed the Jordan to approach Jerusalem. If the rulers saw him as a madman, they would have him flogged in public and let him go, but if he really was what he claimed to be, they would crucify him and his followers.
“You have come to meet me,” Hananiah said once we were standing in front of him. I told him that was right and began to introduce myself, but he interrupted me.
“I don’t want to know what you call yourself or who you are in this world,” he said. He looked across at Jacob. “Is that your son?”
I nodded and introduced Jacob.
“What do you want?” Hananiah asked.
“I have been told that you are a prophet, and that God speaks and works through you,” I said. “My son has something evil within him that prevents him from speaking. I want to do whatever I can to heal him so that he can speak freely.”
Hananiah stood there looking at me, before turning to Jacob. “Why do people like you come to me?” he said. Before answering, he waved his hand again to quiet me. “Let me hear you speak, boy.” Jacob looked at me, but Hananiah spoke to him. “Don’t listen to him, you’ve come here to me, to my kingdom. Listen to what I’ve got to say. Speak to me, let me hear what’s bothering you and your wealthy family.”
Jacob introduced himself, saying his name and where we came from. He told him about our journey there and that it was the first time he’d crossed the Jordan. When he fell silent, I was filled with hope, as here was a man who had listened to my son, who let him speak, stuttering and faltering. Only when Jacob had finished did Hananiah turn toward me.
“Have you seen my people?” Hananiah asked.
“Yes, they greeted us,” I said.
“My people,” said Hananiah, “are those and many others, and you’ve seen what they look like, but you haven’t heard them speak yet, or where they come from and the tales they have to tell. Don’t come to me with your wealth and your son, asking if God can save him. You have already been saved here on earth; you are living in salvation. You don’t know what suffering is. God doesn’t care about how you speak or how you look. When God’s kingdom comes, you will know suffering. He will turn everything upside down.”
And on he went. He snarled and spat, and then turned his back on us, went into his tent, came back out and told us to go, before disappearing back inside. Jacob was scared and moved closer to me.
“It’s all right,” I said. “This was a waste of time, it’s my fault. Let’s go home.”
I almost gave up after this. Word got about as to what I’d done, and all sorts of people came to me with advice, but I’d lost all faith. I’d heard about prophets before and seen what the Romans did with them, but it was no new Isaiah who’d stood there with us. God did not work through these preachers from the wilderness. They were new kinds of insurgents, imitations of dreams of old legends. Hananiah couldn’t heal my son any more than he could save himself and his followers from the fate that awaited them.
I promised myself never to subject Jacob to anything like that again. I just wanted to carry on living, but I wished that Sarah were with us to give me an answer. If Sarah were by my side, I could have threaded my fingers through her hair, and maybe I would have found the answer there.
But then Jacob fell ill with a cough and a fever. I had some women look after him and gave them all they needed to make him fit and well again. One evening, a few nights before he would reawaken from his fever, pale but healthy, I went to see him. He was talking in his sleep, mumbling, sometimes audibly, and his head was moving from side to side, but there, in the land of dreams, his words were flowing like water down the Jordan. There was nothing chopping or grating the words as they came out, and even if they were only fragments that he wouldn’t even remember or understand when he woke, they were complete. They were whole words. The evil power had no effect on Jacob as he slept.
I was filled with a strange new hope. If my son was able to speak fluently in his sleep, then he was also capable of speaking when awake. There was good and evil within him, and the evil had to be wrenched out into the daylight.
I asked the women who sat there by Jacob if any of them had heard him talking in his sleep. They said he’d been doing it every night while the illness was at its worst.
“He talks like people talk in their sleep,” one of them said. I told them about Jacob and about what he was suffering with, and I asked their advice.
“I’ve heard about you,” said one of the women. “You crossed the Jordan to help him.”
“You’ve heard him yourself,” I said. “He speaks like a healthy man at night.”
“Why haven’t you sought out Jesus?” said another of the women.
“Jesus?” I asked, and she told me about an unclean man, a leper who had been cleansed after being delivered by a man called Jesus of Nazareth. I asked her to take me to the man who had been saved as soon as morning came.
In spite of what the woman had told me, the newly saved man was still unclean. There were open sores and boils on his face, down his arms, and on his feet. I kept my distance and put up a scarf in front of my face. I took hold of the woman and asked her what was going on: Was she trying to make a fool of me?
“He’s clean,” she said. “He can’t pass anything on to you. Jesus touched him with his hand.”
“He’s unclean,” I said. “Can’t you see?” The woman just smiled.
“You won’t catch anything,” she said. “What does it matter if he’s unclean?”
“Can you speak to him?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “You can speak to him too. He’s right in front of you; he can hear what you’re saying.”
I raised my eyes to the man. He looked at me.
“What can I do for the master?” he asked. I took hold of the woman again and asked her to speak to him.
“Ask him where I can find Jesus,” I said. “If he really thinks he’s been healed, he must be spreading some powerful words. Ask him how I can find Jesus.”