Four hundred and thirty, technically.
There. We haven’t even left Egypt and already somebody has corrected me.
The biblical book of Exodus says four hundred and thirty years. Everybody remembers four hundred because after four centuries the extra thirty starts to feel petty.
Except us.
We would.
That may be where it started.
Not the slavery. The correction.
We knew we were slaves. The brick quotas were a clue. The overseers helped. It wasn’t a subtle employment arrangement.
The problem was deciding what to do about it.
Every other people gets a founding battle. Somebody on a horse, somebody with a sword, flags moving beautifully in the wind.
We got a discussion.
A very long discussion.
History gives us Moses and Pharaoh. History does not give us the ordinary bastard twenty rows back wondering whether anybody packed water.
So I am going to give him a name.
Natan.
Natan is not in Exodus. Neither are his wife Tamar or their son Micah. They’re here because somebody in that crowd had to ask the questions the story doesn’t answer, and I refuse to believe two and a half million people crossed a desert without one Jewish mother asking what everybody was going to eat.
Natan makes bricks.
Not pyramids.
I know. I liked pyramids too.
Every movie gave us pyramids.
Exodus gives us Pithom and Raamses, store cities.
Warehouses.
Four centuries of slavery and we didn’t even get the good buildings.
We were in storage.
This may be the first historical example of a Jew discovering that the glamorous version of his suffering has been overstated.
Natan does not care.
His hands are split. His back hurts. He has worked the same mud since before Micah was born, under men whose principal management technique is hitting people.
One evening Micah says:
“We should leave.”
Natan keeps eating.
Tamar looks at her son.
“Go where?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Out of Egypt.”
“That isn’t a place.”
“Anywhere.”
“Also not a place.”
Micah looks at his father.
Natan tears off some bread.
“Your mother has a point.”
“We’re slaves.”
“We know.”
“So let’s go.”
“Fine.”
Micah waits.
Natan eats.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“You said fine.”
“I agree we should go.”
“So let’s go.”
“Where?”
Micah looks at his mother.
Tamar doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t have to.
This argument has apparently been going on for four hundred years.
That is the first lesson.
Do not confuse wanting out with knowing where the fuck you are going.
We did.
Spectacularly.