POOR ISAAC!

                           

He runs outside the camp using his stick to chase the elusive reptile. He stops to fix his turban which was threatening to free itself in the dusty wind. It took only a few seconds but the confounded reptile slipped away to a place unknown. Isaac stood still, right hand on turban and crouching low, watching the ground carefully to see where it would emerge. The suspense built as he waited knowing for certain it would have to rush past his feet if it wanted to be free. His stick was ready.

Suddenly there was an abrupt movement, an opening of a tent flap and the lizard scurried past in a frenzied hurry. He jumped straight at it to hit it with the stick but collided into the fully robed figure of his father. He looked up sheepishly, expecting his father to nuzzle his head like he always does. But the look on his father’s face made him freeze in alarm. His father looked like death. His eyes were staring so intently into his, Isaac looked away to breathe again.

“Let us go and make an offering to the Lord,” his father spoke in a voice devoid of everything. Isaac had the vague impression of a black, yawning hole when he heard his father speak. They had done this several times before. But father seemed different today, why?

He joined his father and the two servants. He was carried onto his father’s donkey and they set off. He would have liked to ask many questions like, why do lizards crawl on their bellies? Why were they so jumpy all the time? Why…? But father was different. They were sitting on the same donkey but it felt as though he were sitting alone. The journey took three days, in between rest periods of water and food, and protecting against the furious glare of the sun when it became too hot to walk in. Finally the destination was reached.

Father asked the two servants to stay with the donkey while he went with Isaac to go and worship the Lord. Father placed the wood on Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac was happy. It made him feel like a grown man. Father himself carried the fire and the knife and they set off. Isaac was baffled. They had the wood, fire and the knife but there was no lamb or ram or any animal for the sacrifice to the Lord. He remained silent though, for Father was not in the mood. But after a few more steps, the flame of curiosity so burned in him he blurted out his bafflement.

“God Himself would provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” his father answered gravely.

His curiosity thus satisfied, Isaac continued on, once again relishing the manly burden on his shoulders. Father had always let the servants carry it. Now, he was a man.

Father then stopped. They had come to the place of sacrifice. His father began to build an altar as Isaac put his load down. It was heavier than he cared to admit. He then rushed to help his father finish the altar and arrange the wood on it. Isaac began to look around for the lamb that God was going to provide.

Then he felt his father grab his hands gently but firmly behind his back. He looked around, smiling at the first playfulness his father had shown since they had set off. But the lifeless look in his father’s eyes made him want to let his bladder flow. Father’s eyes had become a deep non-ending abyss of black. It went on and on, Isaac almost got lost in its depths. The black was blacker than anything black, especially against his father’s now colorless skin. Father looked like one of those walking corpses he had been told horror stories about.

A jerk and sharp pain shook him from his trance to see that his father had tied his hands behind his back. Isaac was now bewildered. He wriggled his hands and found the binds as secure as a rock. He looked in his father’s face again, a questioning look in his eyes. Fear was creeping into his childish heart. It clutched at his chest and shoved hard against till he was out of breath and in pain. His father lifted him up and placed him on the altar. Isaac was in such an agonizing shock that the cry choked in his throat and came out as an infertile gust of air. He looked frantically at his father trying to stare the questions his voice had failed to do for him. But his eyes were put in darkness with a piece of cloth and tied securely behind his head. Isaac was frozen from limb to limb in fear, anguish, and confusion. The world had gone wrong. The laws of nature… Father! Father?

He could see nothing, and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of this man who had loved him as a father. He lay there wondering how it would feel when the knife cut through his soft flesh. Would he squirm in bleating agony like the many lambs he had seen his father sacrifice? He wanted to call for help. He would call for Father to save him. Yes, that is what he would do. He filled his lungs and prepared to scream with all his strength but it pushed out in an infertile gust of hot air. Scream for Father..?!?! Fiery hot, blinding salty tears soaked the cloth on his eyes. He felt a darkness creeping slowly into his being. Something died. Something was lost and gone forever as he began to slip away to that black darkness. That darkness that would forever be warmer than what he had seen in his life’s light…

Then he felt hands frantically tearing the cloth on his eyes apart and he looked into the face of his father once more, now delirious in joy. The smiling face swam for a moment between his eyes before he fell in a faint.

When he recovered, he was in his father’s arms, held gently and protected against the sun. He felt his father’s lips on his face as he kissed him over and over again. He closed his eyes once more and held them tight to prevent the tears from falling. He was afraid.

Something had died inside him. The world is no longer what it had been. Perhaps it never was what he had thought it was. Love is an illusion. Father is evil. God does not exist.