Delilah

Chapter 20

I never heard Naomi tell people that we were willing to take in the hopeless who were fleeing their past, but even as we were in the process of renovating, men began to find their way to our home. The first one, Jacob, came and offered his carpentry services in exchange for room and board. When asked why he did not simply set up shop somewhere or apprentice himself to a local carpenter, he reluctantly admitted he could not leave the gates of Hebron for fear of his life. One night on the way home from a distant job, he had given a young man a ride. He fell asleep at the reigns and his horse left the trail, pulling the cart through a hole. The axle broke and the passenger was thrown from the cart. His neck broke. His family swore blood vengeance on the carpenter. He fled to Hebron as a city of refuge, but he dared not venture outside the gates where he would no longer be protected. He needed a place to live while he established a reputation as a carpenter of some skill. He hoped eventually to open a shop where he could make furniture and fashion repairs. Naomi bargained with him and even commissioned him to make our furniture so that she could brag to her acquaintances about his workmanship.

When Jacob asked for housing, Alain moved into the new dwelling. Naomi and I continued to go back to her home at night while the renovations were completed. By the time we moved to our new home, there were already four men living there with Alian. They occupied beds in a room along the left side of the courtyard. The oblong common room contained six sleeping couches along the outside wall and six along the wall facing the courtyard. The sleeping couches were separated by a space that served as a sort of hall. When the house was bought, these were six individual rooms. Alian removed the walls separating the rooms, but left the six separate entrances. He explained to Naomi that he had done so purposely to discouraged boarders from becoming so comfortable that they did not seek to find themselves a more permanent home in the city. The men were afforded almost no privacy and few would desire to live for long under such conditions.

The central courtyard was now smaller, because the rooms on the right side had been transformed. A curving six-foot wall with an arched central opening now extended the length of the inner courtyard. The arch extended some distance into the area beyond, shading the entrance and masking what was inside. At the end of the arch, one walked into a shaded courtyard where newly planted trees surrounded several ornately carved wooden benches. To the left of the courtyard were two spacious rooms with sleeping couches. They were separated by stairs that led upward to two adjoined roofs. The roof space of the room nearest the courtyard was separated from the common space by a latticed wall that already was partially covered by vines growing out of a rectangular planting box that ran the length of the roof. Shrubs growing in ornate clay pots arranged along the front edge camouflaged the roofs of both rooms. Anyone on the roof of the inner room, Salome's room, could look out into the surrounding countryside, using the small openings that were carved into the city wall when it was built. These two roof spaces were separated from the roof of the back compound by a sturdy wall with no opening. Thus, Naomi and Salome were granted a semi-private roof space where they could sit in the evening without being exposed to the prying eyes of the boarders.

The inner courtyard extended more deeply on the right and curved graciously around a room that opened onto both courtyards. This room, too, had an outside stairway that led to its roof. This roof was protected on two sides by walls. One wall was simply the solid wall that separated the compound from the city proper. Anyone wanting into the dwelling had to knock on a sturdy door that opened inward to allow access to the compound. The other upper wall was a duplicate of the latticed, vined wall atop Naomi's room. This roof, too, had potted plants along the edge facing the rooms on the other side of the inner courtyard. This roof differed, though. Along the solid wall, shelves had been fashioned at one end, with a low sleeping couch built against the other end of the wall. A rolled canvas was attached to poles that when angled outward would allow a makeshift awning to cover part of the roof. This area was designed as Naomi's healing space, but was built atop Alian's room for protection.