This is also posted on Street Prophets.
For the past few summers, some members of my congregation have met for a writing group. We focus on the prayers and readings of the High Holiday services. Our work is then printed in a booklet, and we read it as part of the services.
The story of the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael is read on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Ishmael is Abraham's son by the slave Hagar, conceived when Sarah believed she would never give birth to a child. Then she has Isaac when she is 90 years old; Ishmael is 13 or 14 when Isaac is born. After Isaac's weaning, Sarah tells Abraham to send the slave-woman and her son away, and after some argument he does so, giving them only a piece of bread and a water skin. Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arabs, as Isaac is of the Jews.
In Genesis, Hagar has a strong voice, and God speaks to her. Ishmael, however, is voiceless. In this Midrash, I give him a voice.
In The Wilderness: A Midrash
Ishmael couldn't open his eyes. He tried to think where he was but thinking hurt his head, which was throbbing with pain. He felt hot, and he felt under him the hard sand, not the straw bed of home. As consciousness slowly rose in him, he began to remember things. The party for his little brother's weaning. He had been playing with Isaac, a hiding game, and they were both laughing and teasing each other. His father had been smiling, watching them. Sarah had not.
His father...something about his father was just out of memory.
Now that he was old enough, his father had given him responsibility for the flocks, and he was learning to anticipate their needs. His father was teaching him how to recognize the best ewes to breed this year. He enjoyed his days out in the pasture with the sheep. Was that where he was now? He couldn't remember, but he didn't think so. It was hard to hear through the throbbing in his head, but he didn't think he was hearing the sheep around him, and his father wouldn't have sent him out if he were ill.
He was becoming more and more aware of how ill he was. It was not only his head that ached, his stomach felt like a hot stone inside him, and when he tried to move, he could barely lift his hand. It felt so heavy. He could feel how hot he was, but strangely he was not sweating. Where was his father? Where was his mother? He drifted out of consciousness again, he did not know for how long.
He saw his father and mother. His mother was crying and his father was giving her something. What was it, water? Was he dreaming, or was he awake again? He didn't know. He wanted that picture to go away, but it wouldn't. He cried out. Or he thought he cried out, he couldn't tell. That picture...
He began to feel a great weariness in all his limbs. And the sun feeling like a weight on his head. He remembered walking, trying to help his mother.
Suddenly he was aware of movement. Cool water was poured over his brow. His mother - he recognized her touch - lifted his head and put the water skin to his lips. He almost choked then he drank greedily. She poured some water over his eyes. He opened his eyes and saw her, then he drank some more and so did she.
Now he could hear the sound of a spring nearby. After a while she helped him stand up. Holding hands, they walked together to the spring. "Your father's god did this," she said. "I thought we would die, but he saved us. This is the place where his god saw us."