“It is he who mates first with the lawful wife.
After he is done, the bridegroom follows.
This is the order that the gods have decreed.”
-Shamahat
1700 B.C., in the Land of Sumer, Between the Two Life-giving Rivers, the Tigress and the Euphrates, that pour down from the Sacred Mountains of The Creator—except when some asshole with an army builds a damn upriver—after a real rotten deal of a dry year
Jacob and Jililah and their sons Pain and Stable stood above the cracked earth of their farm plot, looking at the ground tremble beneath the oncoming hooves. The Priest King had fallen to the barbarian herdsmen whose snorting steeds raked the earth with hooves of thunder, and whose arrows darkened the sky, leaving death in their wake. The irrigation channels had been damned up by the invaders during the siege and not a weed sprouted from the desiccated earth.
Jacob asked his second born son, Pain, “Where is your little brother Ham. We should greet our new ruler as one, as a family. This will make the proper impression.”
His firstborn, Stable, answered in his defiant way, “He is late as usual. What do you expect? What were you thinking adopting an Ethiopian in any case?”
“Perhaps one day you shall understand sacrifice Son. Ham was the orphan of a fine man who died in this land foreign to him, a fair-trading merchant to whom I gave my word to raise Ham as my own. Besides, I figured he’d hold up better under the noon sun. Where has that boy gotten to?”
The approach of their new lord, however, dashed all familial concerns as the iron shod hooves of his horses crushed the tender barley shoots they had just nursed through the drought with water hauled by hand in the clay pots made by Jililah.
Pain exclaimed, “Pops, this sucks. What a raw deal. What do you want me to do?”
As Jacob tried to think of a spirit-lifting response, Stable cut him off, “Do? Are you stupid douche bag? We need to join the winners—later Pops. Look at these badasses—they’re the shit! Hey My Lord, I’ll hold that horse for you.”
As the chariots rolled up and the dark eyes of his Master’s scarred and bearded conqueror regarded him he cleared his throat to offer his allegiance, but was beaten to his submission by Jililah, “Oh My Lord, I make the best lentil soup in the valley, still have all my teeth, and have yearned to have the breath driven from me panting in your iron embrace!”
Their new Lord signaled for his men to escort Jililah to the seraglio wagon even as Stable took a knee. His new Master then declared, “Your woman and obedient son shall serve me as you and your runt toil upon the land growing grain to feed my horses.”
And so the line of Jacam have toiled under the rule of the wicked until this day.
