(continued from previous scroll)
The second morning dawned beneath a veil of white haze, and already Babylon was stirring. I left the House of Tablets while the temple slaves were still washing the paving stones outside the Esagila. Their sandals brushed quietly across the damp brick, and a thin stream of water ran down into the drains, carrying with it the dust of yesterday’s footsteps. Smoke from the incense vendors curled into the morning air—frankincense, tamarisk, sandalwood—all the gods had their favorites. The smell of fresh bread mingled with the soft bleating of a goat being led to market.
As I crossed the courtyard, the massive ziggurat rose behind me, catching the light like a mountain built from fire-hardened clay. Pigeons clung to the upper ledges, muttering as they nested in crevices between the ancient bricks. Ahead of me, the palace gates loomed—stone and shadow wrapped in symbols of a kingdom still drunk on its own power.
When I reached the eastern garden, Daniel was already seated under the fig tree. The servant bowed and left. A single cicada buzzed from the shadows. The elder looked up as I approached but said nothing. He waited for me to speak.
I bowed slightly and took my seat beside him on the stone bench. “May I ask you about your name?”
Daniel turned to face me fully. “Do you mean the name they gave me, or the name I carried here in chains?”
“Both,” I said.
He nodded once, as if expecting this question. “Daniel,” he said. “In Hebrew, it means ‘God is my judge.’ My mother whispered it when she tucked me into bed. My father said it proudly when I recited my first verse from the scroll. It was carved into the lintel of our home in Jerusalem.”
“And Belteshazzar?”
“That was their invention. The court scribes bestowed it in the presence of Ashpenaz, chief of the eunuchs. ‘Bel, protect his life,’ they said. A good name for a loyal subject of Babylon.”
He paused.
“But I never bowed to Bel.”
I looked at him carefully. “And yet you answered when they called you.”
“In court, yes. But never in prayer.”
I recorded his words carefully, though I felt a tension rising in me—something unresolved between courtesy and resistance.
“Did it trouble you?” I asked. “To carry a name that honored a god you did not serve?”
“It troubled me more,” he said, “to forget who gave me mine.”
He looked up at the birds flitting between the palms. “They changed our names to claim us. They changed our food to seduce us. They changed our language to reshape us. But a man is not clay unless he lets himself be molded.”
I paused. “But you studied our wisdom. You learned our laws.”
“I did. Because I needed to know the shape of the walls if I was to walk them without becoming part of them.”
I let that image settle.
He continued. “They taught us astrology, mathematics, omens from sheep livers, dreams, statecraft, and the epics of Gilgamesh. I learned every line. But I never bowed my knee.”
“And your companions?”
“They remained true,” he said. “Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. You know them by other names. But we remembered who we were.”