It seems too optimistic to speak of good luck while imprisoned, but it can at least be said that I have the best of bad luck. In prison as in Potiphar's household, I am at least at the top of the bottom--the head slave, the trusted prisoner...and yet, in both cases I somehow manage to avoid the resentment of those placed in my care. Shenti, the keeper of the men who make their home in this honey-combed dungeon of mudbrick, is not the sort of man to garner much respect or obedience from such as our criminal selves anyway--short, hairy and incredibly dull, he occupies his post only because it is utterly imaginable that he could do anything requiring the powers of creativity, persuasion, or even some sort of useful brute labor, for his belly is slack and his arms short and hanging like the jowls of a hog while his mind is full of the crude simplicities usually found only among the lowliest beggars and most useless young nobles. He could neither awe nor beat any prisoner into submission; not even among the innocently accused (of which I truly believe there are more than guilty).

Upon my arrival here, I admit, I resorted to both words and woundings--for upon seeing the sharp nose and dark curls which mark my foreign birth as obviously as my Hebrew accent, not a few men set upon me as they would a dog. A time of more troubles from which again, somehow--(no, not somehow, for though my heart is sunk deep beneath the weight of this bondage, I feel yet the insistent bouyancy of a purpose I do not choose for myself, of a Purpose which transcends any superstituous notions of luck)--I emerged, a few teeth less, but with the respect, if not the love, of all men around me. I do not know from what dark corner of my soul that violence emerged. I do not know where Joseph has gone; Yuya has likewise followed him into an abyss of shadowy memories; I am Nizam, the embodiment of discipline and no more. My heart has become hardened to other men and I cannot with faith call myself anything that reminds me of the One who I now ignore as studiously as I secure my place in this new life. I have become deadened somehow; a callous grown thick and grossly over a place joining my heart and soul. Throughout the days I am able to do this; to turn from Him as I now turn from every rippled reflection of myself in a basin of water. I do not blame Him from this state; nay, worse, I deny Him any place at all, either good or bad.

But I cannot stop Him from touching my dreams. Nor from making everything under my hand prosper. And it is, truly, through my hands that He works, for the skills of writing which I learned long ago through my father's tutelage have served me well here. Before my arrival Shenti was long in need of a scribe to help keep the prison records; as would be expected his own writing skills are crude, and his aptitude for numbers far from proficient. And so now I keep record of those who are kept here, their crime, their time served, their ultimate punishment as meted out by the kenbets, as well as the meat, beer, bread and cloth alloted to each prisoner--and at the beginning and end of each day, I am the one who metes out these items; resolving any disputes I encounter among the men who, not suprisingly, dispute with one another very often. Good behavior is not an expectation of criminals, but my standing among them seems to tame them as much as is possible. The murderers, at least, spend little time here--except in cases where there is some loss of mind justifying lifelong detainment rather than death. The thieves are not universally prone to violence; those accused of rape such as myself receive sentences of varying severity. Mine has been commuted to an unspecified--though undeniably very long--time, rather than death, which surprised me not a little. It seems Potiphar, who has some influence on the kenbets himself, is somehow responsible for this--more suprising still, or it wuld have been, had I not been assured in a dream that this would indeed be the case. I dared not believe at the time, and even now I for some reason thank the mercy of Potiphar more than the Mercy by which this seeming fortune was truly derived. It is easier to assign a human face to these matters. These are the three most common crimes for which men are put in this place.

Tonight, however, as I tirelessly inscribe the papyrus with the now-familiar symbols of my trade, I come upon a rather rare sort of prisoner--two of them. "Shenti, both the butler and the baker of the Great House? This has the makings of a strange story."

Shenti grunts. I am bent over a low table covered with ink, rough sheets of papyrus and the wax tablets upon which less permanent records and notes are jotted down. The single lamp in this, Shenti's chamber, is ten paces away, sputtering most of its dim light over his nearby bed where he devotes himself to a bowl of dates. "Conspiracy--food taster died. No one's sure if it was in the food from the kitchens, or put there on the way." He picks at the flaky outer layer of the fruits thoughtfully; I try to ignore the fact that it's been a full season now since I've tasted anything besides bread and bear--since the morning of the day I was arrested. "Likely they'll both be hung."

I take in the story impassively; treachery is nothing new to me. But neither are false accusations. "I see. Issa the butler and Ako the baker." This is the first time I've dealt with suspected assassins; it'd probably be best not to speak with either, aside from the necessary.

But they end up staying at the prison for a surprising number of months. It is strange to me that it should take so long to determine their guilt, but the workings of the kenbets--particularly the High Kenbet, headed by the Great House and his Vizier themselves, are innately mysterious to me. Issa and Ako intrigue me themselves, and though I try to avoid them, I cannot help but watch them.

Oddly enough, they were placed in the same cell by the guards that brought them, and Shenti saw no reason why this wasn't a fine arrangment. Stranger still, they were not tortured--I expected some sort of investigation to be held against so great a crime, but they lingered, with only each other and the impending, horribly indefinite nature of their punishment. Perhaps that was it--left, igorant of everything, lulled into a false sense of ease, of innocence, right before they were to be dragged off to the noose. It was no great surprise to me, then, to find them suddenly distraught and somber one day after months of seeing them in relatively good, if not exuberant spirits. Nevertheless, I thoughtlessly inquired as to their change in mood--even though I had not yet addressed them at all, for fear. I could not help it as I saw them there--it must be said, they were both young, perhaps not much less than I, but not as hardened by betrayal and misfortune--it was yet an abberation to them. I could not believe that either was guilty, but so long as they kept quiet any protestations of innocence (which, remarkably, they had) I could safely ignore them. Or so I felt, but their thin, still-boyish limbs and large brown eyes reminded me so--and especially now, in their tragedy--of me, first-stolen from my father and--from Benjamin. Benjamin himself I saw in their youth, and I finally felt guilt for being of no comfort to anyone when I had such blessings as to place them in my care.

"Come now, why so sad today? Have you been given a sentence?" The window in their doorway was a mere handsbreadth in height, but I could see them both clearly as I pushed through their leather bag of beer, their dark crusts of bread. Thin, paling rapidly with each passing day though their skin was the simple brown of dirt and mud, they sat in their dirty linen, wild-eyed and with hair badly in need of cutting.

One of them laughed, high and cynical like a hyena. "We've gone mad--dreaming dreams, or are they--waking visions. Does it matter? There is no interpreter for them here."

The other chimes in. "Dead--there's no other meaning. Dreams have never got anything good to say, and especially not for such as ourselves."

Dreams. And the long-supressed Voice within me cries out for the recognition I have not given it since I was a boy--since I was called proud and foolish (but mostly enviable) by those traitors I called brothers.

My tongue loosens suddenly with words I do not plan; do not think. "Do not interpretations belong to God? Please, tell me. He gives me some gift of this."

"As if we'd tell you--foreigner, and the warden's eyes and ears, too!" The first one spits angrily. "And what God do you claim?"

Sudden insight grips me. "You--Ako the baker--you know it wasn't you, no, that is true. But it is true that you know how the pharoah was poisoned--not through any malice of yours, but of carelessness. The mushrooms the kitchen girl prepared for the pasties--you knew they were suspect, a poison one got in with the rest, but they'd all been prepared already. It was just a suspicion anyway; not worth of remaking them all. You were wrong, you have that taster's blood on your hands, but you didn't mean it at all, except in that one lazy moment."

Ako's eyes widen and his decaying frame is enervated with sudden emotion--I cannot tell which. "You lie--you are not a prophet at all, but an interrogater! They have sent you now, after we have been accustomed to you. But you'll never get anything from me--I am innocent!"

Issa, however, crouches, eyeing me with new belief; nothing to do with my person, but with the Truth which has just made itself known through my tongue. "It is true--he has bemoaned that fact to me in secret, almost every night we've been here! But how could I accuse him--there is no proof of anything; if I tell them anything which is true about the matter they'll think I'm merely a coward, and a conspirator after all." His features contorted in distress and relief both, Issa gets up and steps towards the window; hestitant but believing. "I'll tell you my dream--I don't know how, but you'll know--I believe it, you will. Just don't mock me--it sounds like nothing to be afraid of. But it's not what happened in it--it was the sense--hard to explain. There was a vine with three branches. And from these branches, grapes grew--and I pressed them into a cup, which I put into pharoah's hand. Nothing more--but there was something so strange--so real about it, it drove me mad."

Breathless, Issa falls back upon his linens, awaiting that which is put so readily on my tongue.

"Three vines--three days--within three, you shall, however improbably, be put back into his service. Just as before." This surprising announcement leaves me before I can comprehend it. Breathless myself, I add hastily, knowing this for the impossible opportunity for which I have been waiting--"Please--Issa! Do not forget me there." Swiftly, I turn as pleading as he was, mere moments before. The Voice in my heart urges me; through this butler will He work. "I am as innocent as you--I have done nothing worthy of this dungeon, and even before that I was sold away from my homeland by my own brothers. There was nothing to justify either sin against me, I swear it." I drop everything now, all pretense of the power I carry in this place. It is not before Issa that I plead. No Lord, forgive me for living each day as if I am dead to You; as if my spurning you is just repayment for what You have given me. I hover now, on the edge of more than I could imagine. I know it in my heart.

Issa draws back uncertainly but checks himself, wonderingly. "There is something in this--I believe what you say. And have no fear, there is no possible way I could forget you if I make it out of here alive!"

Warily, Ako approaches the window. " Issa--free? Then perhaps there's something to my dream, too--three baskets this time, full of bread, stacked on my head. Bakemeats, pasties--some the like of which started all this matter. Then a flock of birds came and devoured them. Will pharoah again eat of my hand, too?" Ako's face, though still contorted with the shame and fear of his secret made known, has a faint trace of hope about it, and it saddens my heart to tell him what I know, as soon as he has spoken the last of his recounting.

"Three days, but they will end in death for you--the birds are those--they--they will eat your flesh from the gallows." Ako turns ashen and suddenly, I can no longer stay here, lingering at the window into their dank cell. He knows the truth in these words and there is no comfort I can give him to counter it. Gathering up the baskets of bread and beer in my hands, I move on to distribute the rest of the prisoners' meals, feeling a foreign hope beneath the shadow of despair; both Ako's and my own. Like Joseph, entombed as surely as any pharoah of past times, within walls of both mudbrick and anger, stone and deliberate unbelief.