Early Draft: The Book of Vashti

The Book of Vashti

This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasuerus who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. In those days when King Ahaseurus sat on his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers... Blah blah blah.

The Book of Vashti

This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasuerus who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. In those days when King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers... Blah blah blah.

You might think you know my story, if you've read the so called Book of Esther - only a chapter really - in the larger volume known as the Tenakh, the Hebrew Bible , or the Old Testament, depending on whom you talk to. If you haven't read it, don't bother. It's full of half truths, wishful thinking, omissions, revisions, and out and out lies.

According to Esther - the book, that is, not the girl - I am merely an excuse to get the Jewess into the palace to save her people. I am described rather cursorily in the first passage, and after that, I disappear!! To suffer such an indignity in one's lifetime is bad enough, but to be represented through the ages as a mere plot device is an effrontery I shall no longer endure. This is my story. I am Vashti; I am here to set the record straight.

Some will tell you that I, along with the other figures in my story, are merely a work of fiction. Some will tell you that we are based on the accounts of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and her consort Marduk, with Esther playing Ishtar and her cousin Mordechai playing Marduk. Don't make me laugh. Astra, as we knew Esther, was no more Ishtar than I was a temple magus. If anyone was Ishtar it was me, but not entirely by choice, as I will explain later.

Others will tell you that the personages in our little tale correspond to known figures in recorded history, but they can't agree on which ones. Some will tell you that the King Ahasuerus was Xerxes I, who marched into Athens after crossing the Hellespont on a bridge of warships. But these people can't agree on which of Xerxes four wives was me or Esther. Others will tell you that Ahasuerus was Ataterxes I, whose Babylonian concubine, Kosmartydene, was mother of Darius II. They will have you believe that Kosmartydene is just another of Esther's names. If you believe that, I have a bridge over the Tigris River to sell you.

In the end, it doesn't really matter who we were or weren't in history. If I told you it would only cause you to scurry around like obedient eunuchs, half of you trying to prove I was right, and the other half that I was wrong. And yes, this story is all about me, so I will proceed without commenting further about history. We'll just leave Ahasuerus as Ahasuerus, and you will have to be satisfied with that.

Oh, my editors tell me that my readers won't understand my story without some history. All right - this much I'll tell you: Babylonia was one of the 127 provinces, conquered by the Persian King, Cyrus the Great. A great Empire in its own time, the Babylonians had earlier conquered the Kingdom of Judah while on their way to Egypt. They took a large number of Judeans (some say 10,000; others say 40,000) back home with them, as an example to others. However, the captives lived well in Babylon. Having come from a backwater country, many of them chose to remain with the bright lights of Babylon when Cyrus marched in and freed them. Some of them even moved on to Persia, where the lights were even brighter.

While in Babylon, the Jews, as they called themselves outside of Judea, learned about the Babylonian forms of worship. Ishtar was protector of motherhood, sexuality, and prostitution (how's that for running the gamut) and also the hunt. She also appeared as the morning star and the evening star, and was sometimes mother, other times lover of the god, Marduk. She descended into the underworld, sometimes to save another lover, Tamuz, from being held there or to seize power from her sister. In the latter version, she did not succeed, and would be forever condemned as a rotting green slab of meat hanging by her sister's bedside, were her followers not able to bargain for a substitute. That substitute, as it turned out, was the aforementioned Tamuz, who was already sitting on her still-warm throne.

So, as you see, the compliant, virginal Astra was no Ishtar.

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Some people think I deserved what I got. They claim I was cruel to the Jews, making them work on their day of rest, naked, no less. Nothing could be further from the truth. We Persians have always been very tolerant of people with different gods, and as Queen of Persia, I was no exception. I let my Jewish servants have their required day of rest once every seven days, just as I let the Babylonians celebrate their holy days. What I didn't do is let them celebrate our monthly and seasonal festivals as well. Really, you can't expect them to have it both ways.

Other people claim that there was nothing virtuous about my rebellion against my husband, the King. They claim that I was immodest, a harlot even. Now, I won't claim I was as pure as the mountain snow, but what virtue is there in inexperience? If I had the odd grope with a kissin' cousin or two, it was nothing more than normal youthful exploration. And the one time things did go a little farther, what of it? Love is never anything to be ashamed of.

These pretenders to moral superiority also say I was arrogant and rude. Well, I don't think I was. Who that knew me ever said so? At least I didn't go spreading stories about people I didn't even know. My critics have no evidence for their claims. If they knew my real story, history would have judged me more kindly.

My story begins in the reign of the Old King. I may have had no existence after Esther 1:22, but damn it, I'm still entitled to a back story. However, first I must give you some details about the world into which I was born. (My editors, again.)

Like Ahasuerus in the incomplete and sketchy Good Book, the Old King ruled from India to Ethiopia and all of Asia Minor as well. Ashaviruz (as he was named) had barely separated from his wet nurse when I was born, but we didn't meet until much later. He was his father's third son, born to the first concubine, Berenice. He had two older brothers: First Son, born to Second Queen, and Second Son, born to the First Queen. With both royal ladies having conceived by the King on virtually the same night, it was a race to the finish as to who was going to give birth first.

When First Queen went into labor, Second Queen, worried that she had not felt the slightest twinge, began running up and down the long palace stairs. When that didn't work, she finally demanded herbs and water from her midwife which are normally used to bring on the menses. By these means she beat out First Queen in giving birth to a lusty son. First Queen cried foul, and she too demanded herbs and water to speed up her labor. Within hours a second healthy boy was born. Because the two boys were born on the same day, the Old King declared a festival in honor of them both. Second Queen cried unfair: the festival should be for First Son, alone. The two Queens continued to bicker with each other for the remainder of their reigns, and Old King's life wasn't made any easier by it.

This was all common knowledge in the Old King's court. My parents were there on many occasions during this period and they told me. You see, unlike others, I cite my sources.

Next came a spate of daughters born to Queens and concubines alike and a stillborn son to First Queen. Next came a healthy son born to the concubine Berenice. That was Ashaviruz.

Ashaviruz was never expected to become King - not with First and Second Sons in line ahead of him. Not with his being born to a concubine and an Egyptian to boot. Not with the likelihood of future sons born to First and Second Queens. So Ashaviruz had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune of being allowed to grow up without any special pressures or expectations. He was allowed to follow his own interests, which in his youth, were hunting, music, and horticulture.

Now back to me. Remember me? This is my story after all. I was the fourth child and first girl born to a mother from a great land owning family and a Babylonian/Persian father, who was a General in the Old King's army. This is probably where some people got the idea that I was the Babylonian granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzar. This is falsehood. The truth of my lineage is this:

My great grandfather was a second cousin to Nebuchanezzar and a general in his army. He died when the Persian's conquered his country. My grandfather, who had been training for the Babylonian army, was among a number of Babylonian youths who were selected to join the Persian army, as a good will gesture. We Persians were rather benign conquerors, and for the most part, our foreign subjects became quite loyal. He became a Persian, in all but blood, even abandoning the old Babylonian gods and adopting our beliefs and practices. He married my Persian grandmother. Consequently my father was only half Babylonian and my brothers and I, only a quarter.

My father had great land holdings too, which he acquired in battle, but they were in the hinterlands. We lived with aunts and uncles and cousins in a large family estate outside of the city of Susa: one that not only supported us in grand style, but over 100 peasants, craftspeople, and servants, in a rather paltry style , if you want to know the truth. The climate in Susa was warm year round, and thus served as the site for the King's winter palace. My family retreated to a mountain villa during the hot summer months.

I spent a carefree childhood. When I wasn't making mischief behind my tutor's back, I rode and hunted with my brothers and cousins, tagged along to watch the boys at their war games, and gossiped and quarreled with the girls. I was quite beautiful, even then, and I could dance and sing. I was quite a little show off and a bit spoiled.

As I became older, I began spending less time in play and more time with the women and older girls, a group which included the young wives of my oldest brothers. From them I learned how to apply scents, oils, powders, and paints to enhance my natural looks. I also had the pleasure of hearing the unexpurgated versions of stories from the older women.

But just because we women liked to keep our own company at times, don't think we were secluded or excluded, like women of other times and places. With the men so often away at war, we women pretty much ran the roost. We could come and go as we pleased and if we wore veils in public, it was only a symbol of our status as ladies, not a way to hide anything shameful. It was no more than a fashion statement.

I also began to attend the grown-up banquets, where we would sit on fine rugs and drink wine, eat many courses, and be entertained by dancers, singers, poets, and other artists. These were cultured affairs, where we were expected to consume in moderation; nothing like the extravagant dissipations that I was to come to know later.

As I began to leave my girlhood behind I began noticing the attractions of those of the manly persuasion. No longer interested in anything my cousins had to offer, I found myself smiling; sometimes shyly, other times brazenly, at male guests at the house. Usually they smiled back.

It was around this time that I found myself in our stable, checking on my horse that had sustained a slight injury during the morning hunt, when I found my attention drawn from my darling filly to the stable hand, Khorshed. I looked at him with new-found interest. He had probably worked on the estate all my life but I had never really noticed him before. He didn't dare look at me directly, but I saw him glancing at me with exotic green eyes that suggested ancestry from some far flung province. He ran his fingers through his unkempt curly hair as he answered my questions about the horse. He struck me as so much more virile than the neatly coiffed men of my own class.

I stood on one side stroking the horse. He stood on the other side doing the same. It wasn't during that first visit that Khorshed and I started having our trysts in the hayloft, but on one of the subsequent visits, all ostensibly to see about the horse. I don't think he was even as experienced as I was, but we found our way together. He was a sweet boy and quite clever in his own way. He made me feel like a princess.

This was going on for several months, I thought in complete secret, when my mother took me aside and asked when I had my last bleeding. I couldn't remember. It was some time ago. "Just as I thought," she said. “You realize you are with child and we must take action. You shall marry your brother... if he will have you.

“No,” I stamped my foot. “I don’t care what happens. I shall not marry him.” We had talked about this before. If I married my brother (the youngest older brother was the one she had in mind; the other two were married already), there would be more inheritance for the two of us, combined. It was a fairly common practice among my class. But if I didn’t want to marry this boy before, someone I had known since birth and can remember as we sat side by side on our chamber pots, I certainly didn’t want to now that I had tasted real love.

I was wild in my protestation of her plan. She soon realized that there was no use in pursuing the matter. Persia was a civilized country and girls were never forced into marriage. “Very well. I will call for the midwife,” she said.

The midwife came and administered her medicines. It brought on my menses and made me terribly sick. My bleeding became very heavy, foul smelling and black. I was in great pain and developed a fever. I became delirious.

The midwife infused me with strong preparations, applied poultices and gave me bitter, healing teas. My mother sat with me through my illness and comforted me like she did when I was a little girl. After a few days, I was out of danger, but it seems a miracle I didn't die. It was some days before I was able to regain my strength and leave my bed.

When I was ready to take my first foray outside, my mother suggested we take a walk in the garden. She took me by the hand and said, "We don't want you going through that again. I think it's time we started looking for a husband for you, my dear."

This is not what I expected, although I don't know why. I was already older than some of my sisters in law when they married. Khorshed! I must see Khorshed. I ran to the stables the first chance I had, but as I feared, he wasn't there. An old man I vaguely recognized had taken his place. “Where is he?” I gasped.

“Gone,” the old man said, smacking his toothless gums. “Your mother’s men put him in a cart and drove away,” he explained upon further questioning.

"What have you done to Khorshed?" I demanded of my mother. "I sent him far away," she said. “You must realize you could not go on seeing him. It is better for you not to have him here.”

I understood, but I didn’t want to. Like any self respecting girl in such a situation I ran to my room, threw myself down on my bed, and sobbed hysterically for the remainder of the day. I refused to eat and shooed away anyone who tried to comfort me. My old nursemaid came in anyway and sat by my side. I ignored her.

My mother came in later in the evening when I was too exhausted to shriek at her and sat down on the bed. I turned away and stared at the wall. "Vashti, you are a woman now and you have begun to know the joys and pain that come with womanhood. You will get over your Khorshed and you will come to know joy again. I know," she added. "I too have experienced disappointment in love."

That got my attention. I rolled over and looked at her. "What," I asked.

"Never mind," she smiled as she brushed back my matted hair. "Maybe I will tell you another time... after you have returned to the world of the living. Now you must eat or you will become ill again."

She presented me with the bowl of broth I refused earlier. I thought about making another scene, but I knew she was right. I never could have made a life with Khorshed. I never even considered it. I sipped from the bowl my mother held and she kissed me on the forehead. I sunk back into my pillow and drifted off into sleep.

So that was that. Khorshed disappeared from my life. He had made a woman of me, and I suppose I had made a man of him. I assumed my mother had sent him to one of our provincial estates and that he would be working with the horses there. I could not have made a life with him, but even now, the earthy smell of horse manure fills me with sweet regret at the memory of the innocent pleasures we took in each other.

... to be continued.