Lot

Abraham's nephew, Lot, meets Orpheus. Each is mourning his wife, who was lost when the husband or wife looked back while fleeing places of death.

Context

• Reference: Genesis 19:23

• Terah's nephew, Lot, came to live in the city of Sodom.

• God destroyed Sodom and surrounding cities, despite Abraham's bargaining for them to survive.

• Lot fled with his wife and daughter, but his wife was turned to salt when she looked back at the city.

Aftermath

• Lot did meet his daughters at their camp.

Notes

I'd been trying to write the story of Lot and Orpheus for decades, first as a story, then as a poem, then as a sketch for an opera. I then forgot about it for a while. While working on the later sections (not chance-derived) of The Book of Voices, I realized that it would fit here, and gave it one more try. (A quick web search shows that others have also noticed this similarity.)

Reading this now, I notice that both the previous story and this one include women rescued from houses on fire (Iscah in the story of Terah, and Lot's wife here). This is echoed in the story of Aspaklarya, though she was rescued by fire rather than from it.

And as in the story of Japheth, there is the sense of recovery through community, of coming to a sort of relief and resolution through finding just one other person who has had the same experience and who can understand your history and emotions.