The healing of the Deaf Man – part 2

Into this world of mine walked a man who would change my life. I was walking back to my uncles house after visiting my parents. I was concentrating, because in the past I had a bad experience, where I had failed to register that a Roman on horseback was coming up behind me. I assume that he expected me to move out of the way, and that he shouted at me, but my head was in the clouds, and the first I knew was when this horse shaped shadow reared up over me. I crouched down into a ball, and then stood up when the horse came down onto all four feet, just to one side of me. However, it came down without its rider, who was lying dazed on the road. I ran to help him up, but once on his feet he started shouting at me. When he got no reaction, I suppose he thought I was being defiant, so he took his whip to me and beat me round the head and shoulders until I was covered in blood and weals, then he mounted his horse and rode off. Since then I have had to be very consciously aware of what is going on around me on the road.

So it was with some surprise that I noticed a large crowd coming towards me, laughing and jostling each other. In front of the crowd was a man walking briskly, talking to a number of the people around him. The crowd sort of surged around me, like a wave parting for a rock. I would love to have known what was going on. It all looked really interesting. Suddenly as I was standing there watching them disappear up the road, a woman from my village left the group, and came running towards me. She grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me towards the group. I had no idea what was going on, and was feeling rather scared, but everyone seemed to be happy and pleased rather than angry or dangerous, so I allowed myself to be led to the man at the front of the group. My friend from the village was obviously saying something about me, as she kept pointing at me. I just stood and waited.

The man at the front of the group came and stood facing me. He held me by both shoulders, searching my face for something. Whatever he was looking for he obviously found, because he smiled, released me and gestured to me to stand still. He then started to poke his fingers in my ears. I put my hands up to take them out as what he has doing was quite painful. He poked his tongue out, and gestured to me to do the same, then he spat on his finger and touched it to my tongue, he looked up to heaven and spoke, saying the word ‘Ephphatha’ meaning ‘Be opened’ It took a few seconds before I realised just what had happened. I had heard this man speak. I had heard. It was a very faint word, but it was definitely a word. The man stood back and smiling, watched recognition come into my eyes, then he stepped forward and hugged me and whispered in my ear. What he said I will never tell anyone, but they were the most wonderful sounds I will ever hear in my life. Then he let me go, turned, and with the crowd once again surging around me, they carried on up the road.

I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to go after him and find out more, but the bigger part of me wanted to go back to my village and just listen to my family, and hear what they sound like, after all these years. So I ran back to my mother and father, I flung my arms around her, and shouted. I shouted, yes, I. Shouted. I. Spoke. I could not only hear, but I could speak as well.

There was a great feast in our village that night. Someone had run to fetch my uncle and he was there as well. I listened and I practised mimicking the sounds being made by everyone around me. By the end of the evening I was making good progress, catching up on a lifetime of noise and speech. I don’t know how I slept that night, I was so on fire with noise, but I was utterly exhausted.

These last few weeks have been wonderful and challenging and tiring as I catch up on a lifetime of sound. Any free time I have I walk out and about listening to the birds and the insects. I have always experienced life with an intensity that others probably have not, and now living in a world of sound as well, life is very full. More than anything else I wanted to know who the man was that gave me back my hearing. When the woman from the village returned I went to see her, and ask her. It turns out that I was healed by Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, a teacher and healer that I gather has been talked about for some months for his powers of healing and his message about the Kingdom of God that is so different to that of the Rabbi’s. In a few weeks time I will be going up to Jerusalem for the Passover, and I am told that he will be there. I am practising my speech, and I am trying to find the right words, so that I can thank him for giving me a future that is so much brighter. I am so looking forward to meeting with him again and hearing his message.

The healing of the Deaf Man – part 1

I live in a world that is bright. When the sun is at its zenith, and the sky is blue without any clouds scudding across it, the colour is so intense that I almost feel as if I could reach up and touch it. The white stones by the roadside and piled at the boundaries of the fields, in the bright light of day can almost burn a hole in my eyes and the bright green leaves of the trees cast a shade that is so dark that at times I can hardly see beneath them.

I live in a world of touch, where the soft down of the grapes on the vine gently strokes my hands as I pick them and lay them out in the hot sun to dry. I live in a world of touch where if I lie really still lizards will come and walk over my outstretched hands. I live in a world of touch where the clothes on my back remind me that I am alive, and I am part of this world.

I live in a world of smells, where I am drawn to cooking not because I am hungry, but because the smell gives me such intense pleasure. I like visiting the carpenter’s workshop and just sitting there watching him shave wood into the shape he wants creating the most wonderful aromas of wood and sap. And I love eating as much for the intensity of the flavours of the food as needing to fuel my body.

For I also live in a world without sound. I have never known anything else. My mother was distraught, so I am told, when I was a baby and it became obvious that I could not hear. She blamed herself, her sin, that made her ill, when I was in the womb. She has always been able to make me understand what she wants, as has my father and my siblings. As long as I watch their faces I can read them well enough to be able to understand, and I have gestures I use to communicate my basic needs with them, but I can never talk about what is deep in my heart. When I was young my mother would take me to every healer that came anywhere near our village. Our Rabbi prayed over me I don’t know how many times, and nothing had the slightest affect on me.

When I was old enough to work, my father sent me to live and work with his brother, my uncle, who is a potter in a nearby village. He is a kind, gentle and sensitive man who seems to know how to communicate with me. So we sit side by side in the shade of a big tree and make pots and bowls, and lamps. He guides my hands when they are clumsy, and I quickly learnt how to make a good pot, how to decorate it and fire it so that liquids can be kept safely in it. My Uncle started by showing me how he decorates pots, and what shapes he makes, but he has come to trust me, and now I experiment with different decorations of my own design. Sometimes I borrow from nature, from the shapes of leaves and flowers or fruit. I am beginning to have a reputation of my own. When the merchants come by, asking what we have for sale, my uncle negotiates a price for my work, and it is always a good price. But I am worried, for I know that he will not always be around to help me, and I am all to aware of the difficulties of not being able to hear.

Growing up in the village, some of the lads would take advantage of me, they would creep up on me and pull my hair or buffet me to the ground. Sometimes they would pick on me for days at a time until I was beside myself with fear and anger, and would not leave the house. Once some others took me to play hide and seek. They found a hole in a rock and gestured me to hide there until someone came to find me. I sat there in the dark for what seemed like forever. It certainly seemed like ever for my mother, for I did not come home for the evening meal. The lads never told anyone what they had done to me, and had not told me when the game should be finished. By the time I had given up waiting, it was dark, and I was afraid of wild animals, so I went back in the hole to wait for morning. The whole village had gone out in the late evening to shout for me and to search, but I could not hear them, so everyone thought something must have happened to me. My mother wept all over me when I returned the next morning, cold and very hungry. I was furious with myself and even at that young age determined never to be taken in by people again.

After that incident my mother kept me close, teaching me household tasks. I am sure the other boys laughed, but I became stronger from all the lifting, and the grinding of the daily flour, from the kneading of the dough and the pressing of the olives and the grapes. Soon it became apparent that if they tried to knock me down again, I would be more than able to knock one or two of them down in retaliation. Then they started standing in front of me miming being a complete mental idiot. There is nothing wrong with my brain, it is just my ears that don’t work.