To Whom it May Concern, I hope this letter comes to Haran, may he be blessed with bulls potent and cows fecund, and if not Haran then Bethuel, may he be blessed with dirt and not sand, and if not Bethuel then Lavan, whom I remember only as a little pischer but I’m sure has grown into a righteous and honest man - may he too be blessed with cows and dirt and slaves cooperative.
As Avraham’s healer, chamberlain, taskmaster, and scribe, tidings of the evil eye fall to me. I’m sorry to say that the cursed fate Abba Terakh predicted for Brider Avraham rose to the breath of life. You always knew his inclination to see invisible things, and perhaps wisely, you exiled Brider Avraham away to carry on his meshuggas in a far off land. I’ve done everything I can to lead him back to the better yetzers of our nature, but his vision of an invisible, silent god is long since more vivid to him than dwellers of his house. Year by year, the god gets less silent, and he’s conversed with it all day for fifty years.
We told ourselves it seemed benign, and as his faithful bondsmen pretended to believe everything he saw. We sacrificed three times a year to Avraham’s god whom we don’t believe in, we prayed to this god we can’t see every Saturday morning, we give money for some place Avraham screams about called the State of Israel, and send our children to Hebrew school every Sunday - where all they do is play sports.
It’s all well and good until last week when the invisible god commanded Avraham to kill little Yitzhak, burn him, and eat him. Such a shandeh! Everybody loved little “Tzakhi”, though he was 37 and almost four cubits tall so really he wasn’t so little anymore. And look, I know that this isn’t actually weird. Everybody sacrifices their children, but for Avraham, this is really weird because, as I’m sure you remember, he was the bokher who made enemies by screaming that nobody should sacrifice their children. And it’s one thing when you get rid of them when they’re two or three, but by the time they’re 37 they should probably be left alone. Anyway, everybody liked “Tzachi”, and even Avraham must have known we would stop him if we’d ever heard about what the voice commanded, but everybody saw that Avraham was peculiarly verklempt that week, even for our beloved meshuggener may he be blessed with a hole in the head that balances against the one which is already there.
I trust Haran and Bethuel you are as alright with my saying all this about Avraham as you were when we left, since Brider Nahor promised that it was imperative I speak my mind to Avraham to make him remember which world is the real world. For sixty-two years, I’ve been Avraham’s most faithful bondsman, exactly as I swore in blood to you both and Nahor Z’’L. I’ve taken every eruption from the god of anger, every attack from the god of fear, every fistblow and whiplash from that amoretz with smiles. Every time he heard the voice I pretended the voice was real as though he were still the 13 year old who broke Abba Terakh’s idol.
The problem though is that Tzachi’s mother really loved him. After we left Ur: An & Enlil and Enki be praised, she spent the next twenty-five years trying to have a child and had to watch as all those concubines Avraham geshtupped got pregnant - and in all fairness, most of them were the maidlakh you introduced him to before we left and his children are all still alive and have kinder and grandchildren of their own by now that Sarah watched every day. So Sarah knew that the problem was her rather than Avraham and understandably loved her only son. Well, when Sarah heard that Avraham killed their son, she died on the spot. Who can blame her? That son was a lot of work and not just for her!
It’s probably about thirty-eight years ago that you got that letter from Avraham, saying that three angels came to him to announce Sarah would have a child. Let me tell you, they were no angels. They were Canaanite healers that I sent for to examine Sarah. Sure enough, it was exactly what I thought it was. The problem was that special diet Avraham was always such a fanatic about where nobody eats shellfish or pork or most parts of the animal. The healers came for six weeks, I explained to them that Avraham was a little fertummelt and just go along with it. So Avraham almost immediately asked if they were angels. They looked at me and I just shrugged so they said yes, so they were angels! And when they wanted a little butter to go with their meat, would Avraham really say no?
Two of them would distract Avraham during the day and every day they made sure Avraham ate plenty of oranges and pomegranates, and they served him some tea from the East they called ‘ginseng.’ while the other one would cook Sarah a special meal. They didn’t know which meal would work but they promised me that one of them would. They fed her boiled octopus and fish eggs, they fed her pig liver and testicles, and at first, when Sarah got disgusted with the idea of eating testicles, they ground it into a powder and served it to her in a potion. And while Avraham ate the good cuts of the veal and lamb, they gave her the heart and the kidney. They sawed the bones of the animals to get the blood inside and and put that special blood into a stew, they even made a broth out of shellfish. Every night they told Sarah to go to Avraham so he could schtup her while wearing damp wool boiled in ass’s milk. I’m sure you remember, Sarah was always very pretty but for years and years she barely ate a thing. She told me she hadn’t eaten for years because she hated Avraham’s diet, but this was the best food she’d eaten in forty years! Suddenly she looked much healthier and wouldn’t you know it, she was pregnant.
Anyway, that was all almost forty years ago, and it’s been more than sixty years since Avraham was banished from Ur, An & Enlil and Enki be praised, and we his servants laid eyes upon our beloved mudbricks and tombs and cuneiform documents. We all long to return and eagerly await the day Brider Avraham comes back to his senses. ‘Next year in Ur’ we all chant in secret, and now more than ever await the second coming of Brider Avraham’s sanity, An & Enlil and Enki be praised.
But Brider Avraham’s good senses seem farther away than ever. After Sarah dropped dead, he too dropped to the ground, and we thought he was also dead. I’m slightly ashamed to say we secretly rejoiced as we believed the time of our deliverance was at hand, but Avraham came back to us, yet when he returned, he was even less Avraham. Divine Nergal seems to have taken from him use of an entire side of his body. He can’t walk or ride anymore, and he can only speak out of the side of his mouth. Avraham now barely speaks, believing that he misheard the invisible god and was justly punished by him for killing and eating his son.
Anyway, I’m sorry this letter is so long but the reason this letter is necessary is that I have an idea and an urgent plea to secure things for everybody. In addition to the physical maladies Nergal inflicted upon him, Nergal took from Avraham his short-term memory, and it is only a matter of time before all memory of the sacrifice is no more. In a few months, even were we to tell him that he killed Yitzhak, he would forget after ten minutes and ask ‘Where’s Tzachi?’
So it is only a matter of time before the Canaanites were to discover that Avraham is demented and Yitzhak is dead, and we’re now leaderless. We long to return to Ur, but we know that so long as Avraham is alive, we are banished; and therefore whether we stay or go, we are dead men, sitting and squabbling in the Judean Desert, unable to elect a leader for war or even organize for proper battle training.
It’s been roughly twenty-five years since Sarah entreated Brider Avraham to banish Yishmael and Hagar and we sent him to Ur to live as a servant in the House of Terah. But at the time Yishmael was near his thirteenth birthday, and a spitting image of his father, just as Yitzhak was until our divinely inspired nudnik put him to death. The seed of Avraham is obviously strong even if the brain is feeble, and if the physical resemblance continues, then Yishmael must still look exactly the image of both Avraham and Yitzhak.
Please. I ask, I beg, the House of Terah to send Yishmael and Hagar back to Hevron, where I believe Avraham will immediately recognize Yishmael not as Yishmael, whom he has not seen in a generation, but as Yitzhak. We then may marry Hagar to Avraham as perhaps she always should have been, and while everyone here will recognize Yishmael and Hagar, they will become known to people all around Canaan as Yitzhak and Brider Avraham’s second wife. She can even live under an assumed name and continue to take care of her son who will pass as Yitzhak, and our enemies shall be none the wiser.
Your most devoted servant who prays every day to the East for his return,
Eliezer
PS: The two servants with Avraham at the sacrifice, Paebel and Keret, ran away from the site the moment they bound “Tzachi” and told me everything. They are the ones coming to you with this letter, and they’re both as illiterate as a pillar of salt. They do not know its contents, but it is vitally important you kill them both as soon as you finish this letter. They’ll understand.
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Laban son of Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor
House of Terah Global Partnerships
10 Gilgamesh Dr.
Ur, Sumeria, 324
9th of Eleventh Month, Iddin-Dagan Year 8
Eliezer Master Slave Representative
Cc. Avram son of Terah
House of Avraham
18 Noah Way
Hebron, Canaan, 613
Dear Eliezer,
It has been a long time since we have received any news about the House of Avraham, and while we regret the nature of the tidings we thank you for the update. We here at House Terah are a bit confused by your insistence on having Hagar and Yishmael back considering that you once were so eager for us to take them, but seeing the urgent necessity of the matter, we here at House Terah agree to this proposition and hereby grant you use of Yishmael and Hagar immediately. Nevertheless, for any further business ventures with House Avraham we require remuneration of ten camels, and a basket each’s worth of silver, gold, and raiment. Included here is an outstanding bill of payment, which we will send via Paebel and Keret. We regret that we cannot comply with your request to kill them, because were we to kill bondsmen of House Avraham, it would prove in Hammurabian court that we have knowledge of Avram’s whereabouts. You may of course do with your own bondsmen as you like, but we demand upon pain of further exile that you burn this message immediately upon receipt.
Though as it happens, we here at House Terah regret that due to the nature of Avram’s malady and recent actions, the matter of his bondsmen’s return to Ur and Sumer must be delayed for a further generation, because House Terah feels it imperative that we all establish plausibility that Yishmael is in face Yitzhak, birthrighted son of House Avraham and that the return of Avram’s bondsmen do not portend the return of Avram himself.
Regards,
Laban son of Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor
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Dear Lavan,
Many thanks for the return of Yishmael and Hagar, they have been received by Avraham just as we’d hoped. Since Avraham’s god prohibits Saturday weddings, the wedding of Avraham to Hagar, whom we’ve renamed Keturah, began last Sunday and will, as usual, continue until the end of the month. It’s a Hittite neighborhood and half the guests will be our neighbors, all of whom RSVP’d yes. The Amorites on the other hand still haven’t responded and the Amalekites sent a very blunt response which I thought was rather rude. On the other hand the Jevusites sent a very nice note explaining why they couldn’t come and even included a present from Melkizedek their king. And if that weren’t enough, the Egyptian Pharaoh Nekho said he’d like make a trip to Avraham on his wedding, but I thought showing Avraham to a great king in his current state is a terrible idea. The Hittites know entirely of Avraham’s condition. There’s no way to hide it, but since we're currently allies with them, their leaders and bondsmen have all pledged on blood oath to keep our secret. No doubt some Hittite will eventually break it, but by then I trust Avraham will have passed on.
I should, however, mention that since you’ve simultaneously informed us that our return to Ur: An & Enlil and Enki be praised, is as we feared, postponed yet another generation, and that you not only mandated payment of ten camels for Yishmael and Hagar but also full baskets of gold, silver, and raiment, which I must regretfully journey with Paebel and Keret to deliver personally after the wedding. I’m sure you understand that no other bondsman can be trusted to supervise so large a payment, and this is surely sufficient reason to grant brief clemency to violation of the terms of exile.
Nevertheless, you must please forgive me for such chutzpah, but in spite of the righteous favor you’ve done, that is really too expensive. Our positions would never be reversed, but I’m sure you’d agree that in the impossible occurrence they were, you’d find that price an unacceptably high rate for a bondmistress and bastard; particularly if the mamser is about to be raised to legitimacy whom you can be assured will be an extremely solicitous and remunerative business partner for his former guardians.
We the House of Avraham realize that you have truly done us a mitzvah to which our very lives are in debt. However, I have another idea which may be to your liking and justify this purchase to our finances.
Your grandfather recalls, no doubt, that horrific moment in Avraham’s adolescence when he cut the foreskin from his own person. He has, in fact, long since performed this barbaric ‘ritual’ upon all his bondsmen which he claims to be a sign of commitment to god, and has even performed this ritual upon all our baby boys when they reach eight days of age. I suppose we would rather our children have this horror performed on them while they’re too young to remember, but the one person in the entirety of Avraham’s house who did not undergo the ritual is myself, who had deemed himself so essential and loyal to Avraham that Avraham did not feel the need to bond me through the ritual he calls a ‘covenant.’ Nevertheless, I prefer the more scientific, latinate term that implies the brutality of the procedure: ‘circumcision.’
Unfortunately, one of his last ‘visions’ before the sacrifice of Isaac was that I too must be ‘covenanted’ because he otherwise did not trust me when it came time to finally pick a wife for Yitzhak. Avraham made me swear on the pain of his bizarre and painful procedure that I would not procure a Canaanite bride for Yitzhak and only allow him a bride from Avraham’s own family. This matter was expedited by the fact that like his father, Yitzhak had a taste for concubines, many of whom, like Hagar, had ambitions to marry up.
By the second marriage of Avraham, this matter attains further significance, as there has already been much talk among the Hittites about how Yitzhak suddenly looks a bit aged prematurely from his 'former' appearance. My fellow bondsmen have heard it suspected that Yitzhak may be ill and yet has not been married nor produced an heir.
I told Avraham many times to forestall procurement of a wife for Yitzhak in the hope that either I could eventually convince Avraham to allow Yitzhak a Canaanite wife or that our financial portfolio would make Yitzhak a more attractive prospect to you. But now that Avraham is eber buttal, it doesn’t matter that much to whom he is married.
Nevertheless, if we are already sending you ten camels along with baskets of gold, silver, and raiment, I have an idea that may be to everyone's benefit. Yishmael told me that you have a daughter, Rivka, who is a rough contemporary of "Yitzhak Sr.", or was, may his memory be a blessing, and though she is forty still isn’t married. Now is not my business to know why she never married, but Yishmael, whom we privately call “Yitzhak Jr.”, is very eager to do whatever I tell him to prove himself a worthy heir to the House of Avraham, but it strikes me that after ten years living in House Terah together, she and Yishmael must know each other reasonably well. Since we are already paying well over the equivalent of a marriage dowry between financial houses, surely it would not be too much to ask that we include a marriage between our houses. As Rivka would come live with us, it would in no way violate the terms of the stipulated exile.
Please just think the matter over before I arrive in six months’ time and no matter what your decision I hope you will forgive me to mention the matter at our meeting for further discussion.
Looking forward to our visit to sacred Ur with the greatest possible anticipation: An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Eliezer
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Dear Lavan,
So many thanks, all due gratitude, and no praise high enough unto you and the House of Terah for the most wonderful visit to Ur: An & Enlil and Enki be praised. There is no higher happiness than to lay eyes once again upon our beloved hieroglyphics, wheels, calendars, and soap, and I can only wish my fellow bondsmen in the House of Avraham can derive the same naches.
We are so grateful to you for every service rendered, and in sending this letter, we want to repay the debt by doing you a small favor. When meeting Rivka for the first time at your well, we knew her character was sterling when Rivka generously gave her daily water allotment for us and also for our camels, but Paebel and Keret could not help but notice that there were a number of holes in your well that allow the water to leak out into the sand. I hope you forgive us for meddling but all it took was a little bit of mud, grass, and reeds to apply some caulk to the holes and they finished the job in less than an hour. They did such a good job on it that you should find your water retention rate much higher in the future and it is therefore all the more regretful that I had to put them to death at the end of our trip to Ur: An & Enlil and Enki be praised.
Your most devoted servant who will give thanks every day to the East for his return to Ur: An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Eliezer
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