Haran

Haran set off running. She ran as though an arrow had been released from a bow. Where was she going, and which road would she take? How could she possibly know? Where was the time to think about any of that? With all her might, she was doing just one thing—running for her life.

What would become of Haran?

Would anything about her future really be so different? Tomorrow, perhaps, she would become someone’s beloved wife and a mother. Yet she would refuse to become the revered mother idealized in the saying, “A woman is a wife for a moment and a mother for eternity,” because she was a woman who was somewhat different. She was strong and resilient, a woman who could not be broken easily.

Within her was a thread of that enduring womanhood which, from the time of Genghis Khan to the present day, has survived the deeds of vile and aggressive men while preserving its own identity. In a broader sense, women have always possessed the extraordinary capacity to endure and overcome every kind of poison and emerge standing tall.

Though, in a moment of exasperation, she might have expressed a desire to descend into the netherworld, she would not go there. She possessed that timeless maturity and wisdom of womanhood: to face whatever came her way, to live without allowing herself to be crushed beneath its weight, to preserve her own identity, and to continue expressing the inevitable impulses of her existence.