A Sigh in Akeldama

Image by ChatGPT

Fiction

Nobody in Jerusalem went near Akeldama after sunset except dogs, madmen, and the little orphan girl who slept among the tombs. One day the girl woke up in the middle of the night hearing someone sobbing. Who would be crying in this place abandoned by God and men alike?

Frightened though she was, Hadassah’s curiosity got the better of her and she came out of the cave where she was sleeping. A couple of caves away, one man sat sobbing. Hadassah gathered courage and walked slowly towards the man. As she approached, the man seemed to melt away until he vanished altogether.

Hadassah ran back to her cave and lay down trembling on her makeshift bed. Sleep evaded her. She knew that the place had some eerie history. No living creature ever came near it after sunset. Even birds shunned the place. That’s the chief reason why she chose to sleep there. She was an orphan. She was safe in this desolate place.

She decided to find out more about the place the next day. That’s how she found herself standing before a monk in the Monastery of St Onuphrius.

“This is Akeldama,” the monk told Hadassah, “which means Field of Blood.” It was the place where Judas Iscariot hanged himself after betraying Jesus, the monk explained. Judas returned the money, 30 pieces of silver, to the chief priests and elders before killing himself out of remorse. The priests and elders bought this piece of land with that money and dedicated it for burying strangers, foreigners, pilgrims, and the poor who died in Jerusalem without family tombs. The caves you find here belonged to potters in the ancient days. Later they were used as tombs.

“Have you ever heard shrill cries of little children there? In the middle of night?” the monk asked Hadassah.

“No,” she said.

“You might,” the monk whispered. Once upon a time little children were sacrificed there to appease gods. The monk’s grey beard trembled in the dusty breeze that grazed the weathered walls of the monastery. Hadassah could see a narrow stairway through the open door behind the monk. She didn’t see, however, exhausted antiquity that was turning to dust on the crumbling stone terraces.

Church bells, traffic, and calls to prayer drifted faintly across the valley as the monk narrated the tale of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent despair. “Despair is a serious sin,” the monk said. “It gives you no hope of redemption.”

Peter also betrayed Jesus, the monk explained. But Peter was saved because he did not despair. He repented. Redemption begins with repentance.

Hadassah didn’t understand much of what the monk said. But she remembered Judas and Peter. Irredeemable remorse versus redeemable grief.

Hadassah spent the rest of the day begging for alms or food from pilgrims. When the twilight fell on Akeldama along with an air of eerie desolation, she returned to her cave. Did an infant’s shrill cry rise from somewhere beneath her feet? Hadassah quivered. But she didn’t have the luxury to yield to fear. This cave which was a tomb once is her only shelter, her home.  

The sob rose again in the middle of the night. Hadassah decided to confront that man. Judas, it must be, she decided.

The man sat on his posterior with his legs doubled in front of him and head resting between his knees.

“Hello,” Hadassah said, “can I help you?”

The man raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were hollow. Hadassah decided to be bold.

“Are you Judas Iscariot?”

“Hmm,” the man grunted.

“You know, you should repent, not despair. Redemption begins with repentance.”

The man let out a deep sigh and melted away like dewdrops in the sun.

Hadassah didn’t see the man anymore. Soon the villagers stopped seeing Hadassah. An old monk in the Monastery of St Onuphrius said he heard the sob of a man and the laughter of a little girl sometimes in the middle of nights, from nowhere.

PS. I attended a Family Gathering today, what they call kudumbayogam in Kerala. It began with the Holy Mass which was followed by the Office of the Dead. Somewhere in the middle of all those prayers Akeldama rose in my imagination with this story.