“Where was He when our parents were slaughtered by those evil men? Where is He now?”
“Cousin, don’t you see it? Do you not see how Yahweh placed you here so that he could position someone to prevent his people from falling into the same despair? You’re our only answer, Hadassah, as I have kept on saying over the years.”
“I’m just someone’s wife,” Hadassah replied, “how am I going to save our people, Mordecai?”
“With much prayer, there is much power. You must pray cousin – in fact, I will find a way to send word through all of the synagogues of Kediakin. We will all fast for three days and three nights while you seek favour with Yahweh and you will go before The Queen and you will tell her of Haman’s plans.
With Yahweh’s favour, you will find a way to save us, I am certain. For what if Yahweh knew from dawns before that our people would be endangered again and therefore brought you to the palace for such a time as this?”
Mordecai spoke with so much conviction that Hadassah had no choice to believe him.
“Okay, Mordecai, we will fast. I will start praying about it tonight,we will commence the day after tomorrow,” Hadassah said with more bravado than she felt.
Mordecai hugged her close one last time and released her into her chambers where she spent the rest of the night praying with an awkward tongue full of pleas she could not even verbalise beyond desperate cries.
Hadassah, Mordecai and every singe Jew in Kediakin fasted for the next three days and three nights without any food or water. The clouds darkened with grey and locked the sun behind their steely blankets. Kediakin looked as if it had been covered in a sheet of darkness.
The atmosphere felt ominous and eerie and although the day-to-day affairs continued in the palace, Hadassah could not shake off the feeling of something bigger looming in the horizon.
Hadassah had especially asked to be left alone by her servants during the day and the only time she was not on her knees pleading her case to her G-d was when she was with the twins.
She could not afford to tear off her robes and cover herself in ash because she would attract attention to herself and whichever of the servants who were dedicated to spying for Haman would alert him. Instead, she rose every morning, bathed and cover her body in sweet cosmetic oils, smiled and conversed and kept her head held high like a sweet young wife of the Queen should.
By the third night, she wasn’t sure if it was delirium from her hunger and thirst or the hand of G-d that enabled her to believe that she had reached a breakthrough and that their prayers had been heard.
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The next morning, Hadassah and Mordecai convened in the parlour where they ate bread made without yeast and drank wine to break the fast.
At the synagogues, a few livestock had been given as offerings that very morning. It seemed as if a collective breath was being held until Hadassah would approach the throne.
