Confessional
Sheryl came to Israel to find God, but found that she had turned into a camel murderer instead.
“Oh Lord…” She scrambled to find out if the animal was really dead, but wasn’t sure where one might find a camel’s pulse. She checked behind a two-toed foot, where the camel’s wrists would be if he were human. Nothing. She tried pressing her palm flat against the animal’s hard, smooth neck. Still, nothing. “C’mon …” she whispered in desperation, laying her head against the camel’s torso, urging the heart to pump again. But Sheryl failed to hear life in the animal. The guilt that had grabbed her heart began to squeeze it tighter and tighter, like a snake suffocating its prey. She wept into the camel’s hair.
“Forgive me,” she sniffled, addressing God, the camel, and the Bedouin who owned the camel, in no particular order. Fearing the latter’s reaction, she hesitantly lifted her head and peered north, or what she thought was north, the direction in which her party had continued. Her vision was blurred, partially by heat waves but mostly by tears, but she felt certain that the other tourists were nowhere near. Wailing, she threw her arms around the camel’s neck, regretting her decision to come to the country.
Instead of choosing to buy a convertible and squeeze into too-tight designer jeans, Sheryl decided to assuage the pains of her midlife crisis with the purchase of a round-trip ticket to Jerusalem. “Quit worrying about everyone else,” the ladies kept telling her. “Do something for yourself, now that Trevor’s off at school and all.” After ignoring them for a while, Sheryl realized that she should listen to her friends and take her newfound time and freedom to develop her spiritual side, which, although she was raised without religion, she had always intended to do. And where better to search for Him than in the Holy City?
Sheryl planned her journey months in advance, creating the perfect agenda, planning on achieving complete multi-cultural enlightenment at the Temple Mount, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Resurrection, and Al-Aqsa Mosque, to name a few. She would talk to the natives, eat the exotic foods, sleep under the Mediterranean stars…well, actually, she’d be staying at a Marriott. She did, however, make a long-distance phone call to an agency that offered camel rides in the nearby desert; such an experience would increase her worldliness and provide her with photographs of herself riding a camel that she could show off to the ladies during their subsequent craft circle meeting. Being lost in the desert with a dead camel was, however, not on the agenda.
Resigned, Sheryl let go of the animal and stood up. She blamed herself entirely for the death of the camel, which, in her opinion, occurred because she fed it oranges and sesame candy earlier. I killed one of God’s creatures, she thought. Murder! He’ll never accept me now. She felt weak and sweaty under the hot sun of shame and collapsed to her knees once more. It’s not as though she had never felt like this before; Sheryl had a knack for blaming herself for events that had little to do with her, including her parents’ divorce, her husband’s lay-off, and her eldest’s fall to alcoholism, all of which occurred years ago, but constantly and consistently weighed Sheryl down. Her head swarming with thoughts of all the sins she felt she had committed, she stood once again, determined to beg God for forgiveness. Because she still felt unsure of His presence, she began looking for the Bedouin instead.
“Hello?” she tried, her mouth as dry as the desert below. She reached for the plastic water bottle in her ‘I love Israel!’ canvas tote and took a long sip. The water was neither cool nor refreshing, but it was better than nothing. “Hell-OO-oo!” she called out, a second attempt. The only response was silence, which spoke for itself.
Averting her gaze from the camel, but with the image of its big, motionless body echoing in her mind, she forced herself to walk. Her legs felt stiff and leaden. The desert reminded Sheryl of a Salvador Dalí painting: foreign and cruel. I should have just taken a vacation in Spain, she thought. I could be looking at Dalí’s art in an air-conditioned museum instead of living through it. She was almost certain that a sunburn was developing on her face and upper back to match her sweat-drenched pink tank top, even though she had slathered SPF 50 all over her body that morning in the hotel. Regardless, she continued moving forward, even though she wasn’t sure forward was the right direction. Sand had somehow managed to flood into her socks, even though they were pulled up calf-high, so each step became a prickly misfortune. Occasionally she stumbled, once falling on her face and collecting a mouthful of burning sand in the process. Her face scrunched up as she spat it out and rinsed her mouth with the last few ounces of warm water in her bottle.
Am I dead? she thought when she first heard vultures shrieking above her. Oh yeah, the camel. I’m going to Hell, and probably within the next few hours if I don’t get un-lost soon.
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After what seemed like days, but was probably only about forty-five minutes, Sheryl spotted a few figures on a distant dune. “Help!” she cried out. Her legs burst with a newfound energy as she stumbled desperately towards the shapes on the horizon. She was petrified that what thought she saw might simply be a mirage, but she continued anyway. When she heard a call in her direction, she grinned maniacally, running even faster towards her far-off companions. “It’s them! They’re real!” she panted. It had been more than a few years since she had been on her high school track team, and Sheryl’s knees ached from sprinting in the sand. How do the camels manage? She wondered, slowing to a walk, finally positive that there was hope for her future. The shapes morphed into people, people riding camels. The turbaned Bedouin led the pack, which included four other tourists.
“Mee-sees Sher-eel!” He yelled. Upon sight of his dark face, the memory of the dead camel behind her hit Sheryl like a table to a tuning fork. “Where ees camel?”
“He’s… he’s… dead!” Sheryl cried out. The party drew closer. Sheryl saw the mouths of the other tourists hanging open, their eyes jutting out from their heads. She wanted to cry again. He’s going to hate me, she thought, but I have to tell him. I don’t care how much I have to pay, nothing can be worse than this guilt! “I fed him sesame candies and oranges,” she blurted out. “He choked. It’s all my fault - I killed him!”
The Bedouin responded with warm laughter that boomed like thunder.
“What?” she asked, perturbed by his response.
“You no kill camel,” he said. “Camel has many years. You know, camel walk slow. All the times camel ees tired. Death, eet ees the choose of Allah. You know thees.”
Sheryl stared at the man. Slowly, she began to recognize something about him, as though he were a long lost relative, a father. It was here that, when she least expected it, she met, under the Bedouin’s wrinkled, sun-tired lids, the deep and infinite eyes of God. Finally, she understood. In that moment, she was forgiven of all that she blamed herself for; a calm spread over her body like a new skin.
