How can you call yourself a free man when your
weakness has brought you to this?
comments were disconcerting to me and I pondered much afterwards on what she said.
‘How can you call yourself a free man when your weakness has brought you to this? If a man has in himself the soul of a slave will he not become one no matter what his birth, even as water seeks its level? If a man has within him the soul of a free man, will he not become respected and honored in his own city in spite of his misfortune?’
For over a year I was a slave and lived with the slaves, but I could not become as one of them. One day Sira asked me, ‘In the eventime when the other slaves can mingle and enjoy the society of each other, why dost sit in thy tent alone?’
To which I responded, ‘I am pondering what you have said to me. I wonder if I have the soul of a slave. I cannot join them, so I must sit apart.’
‘I too must sit apart,’ she confided. ‘My dowry was large and my lord married me because of it. Yet he does not desire me. What every woman longs for is to be desired. Because of this and because I am—41—
