The majesty of Sheba is deep-rooted in the popular imagination. “In the figure of the Queen of Sheba, the beckoning and voluptuous Orient becomes embodied, its imaginative territory in classical sources encompassed meridian and outlandish exoticism, sensuality, wonder and luxuries,” argues one historian.
In detailing the Queen’s caravan of riches and lavish gifts to King Solomon, scriptural descriptions of the queen’s life stir the “antique Myth of the Orient.” She ruled her Arabian kingdom with the power and presence of her successor to queenly rule, Cleopatra, and she had the intelligence, political savvy, and chutzpah to influence the mighty ruler of the Jewish kingdom.
However, there is an apocryphal legend that appeared in Jewish history. Aware of Sheba's (Bilquis) arrival at court bearing gifts and concerned that her charms might seduce King Solomon and trick him into marriage, the king's jinn whispered to him that she had hairy legs and the hooves of an ass. Solomon, being curious about such a peculiar phenomenon, had a glass floor built before his throne so that Bilqīs, tricked into thinking it was water, raised her skirts to cross it and revealed that her legs were truly hairy. Solomon then ordered the jinn to create a depilatory for the queen.
Even so, Solomon remained true to himself, thanked Sheba for her generosity, appreciated her overtures to open trade between the kingdoms of Arabia and his own, and prospered.
'I am Sheba', Kamala Harris said to her retinue with an ironic smile, and I will convince the republic of my worth, my intelligence, and my right to rule. Now, Kamala knew little about the Queen of Sheba except that she was a woman of color born in Ethiopia or southern Arabia, that she was a mighty queen who ruled the roost in wide swaths of the peninsula, that she had the chutzpah and insight to challenge Solomon, the mighty ruler of Jerusalem, and she wooed him and seduced him into sharing the vast wealth of his Jewish kingdom.
What Kamala didn't know was that so impressed with Solomon's wisdom, having answered all the challenging riddles with which she presented him, she converted to Judaism. She had met her match, not only deferring to a man of far greater wisdom and intellectual merit than she, but willing to take her chances on his celestial promise.
It was a Biblical come-uppance. A woman reaching far above her station put in her place by a man of real power, leadership, and intelligence; a man unmoved by her caravans of spices and gold, and seeing only a woman of unalloyed ambition and pretense.
Kamala, engaged but limited to first lines and simple stories, stuck with the imperial colored woman legend of Sheba, and embraced it as her own. The potency - 'agency' was the current term for a woman's transformative abilities - of Sheba, her audacity in trekking through the desert with her train of camels and carts full of frankincense, myrrh, and the herbal medicines cultivated in the oases of her kingdom, her challenge of the great Solomon was enough. It was an easy channel.
Now, Kamala had always been an ambitious woman, one who would stop at nothing to reign whether in a courtroom or the chambers of Congress, and who was successful. She had been known as the Genghis Khan of federal court, a savage, brutal prosecutor without restraint, compassion, or mercy; and as Senatorial member of the Judicial Committee vetting Supreme Court nominees did her best to humiliate and eviscerate Brett Kavanagh, a simple man of principle.
As such, and treated with respect if not idolatry because of her racial, ethnic, and gender identity - a trifecta of blackness, cultural diversity, and proud womanhood - she felt herself anointed. Her sense of destiny went far beyond self-confidence or general rectitude. It had something to do with - there really was no other word for it - divine entitlement. There were simply some people on whose shoulder Destiny's hand had rested.
Sheba, the Queen of a vast empire and a just, wise ruler wasn't just given good genes and family history, she was gifted by a higher power, maybe not God, but....here Kamala's thoughts got jumbled as history, mythology, and popular idioms made thinking difficult, so she left it at that. She and Sheba had been anointed.
She felt queenly, and as she looked at herself in the mirror - a beautiful woman as beautiful as Sheba would have been with burnished mahogany skin, dark eyes, full lips, straight nose and a head of luxuriant hair. She and Sheba were not just women but woman the embodiment of femininity, feminine power and authority, female beauty, and the seductive intelligence of sex.
More than that the two women shared something equally important - imperial destiny. They were both rulers - powerful women of color, yes, but regents (or in Kamala's case regents to be) in ability, intelligence, and ambition; and as such Kamala began to take on a more regal bearing.
She curtailed her energy, her tedious ebullience and laughter, and looked more queenly. She affected a bearing that was straighter, more defined, and less impromptu. She spoke differently, with more of a pronounced cadence, and began to dress differently. She began to wear her Indian mother's gold jewelry - at least some of the more tasteful and evocative - and dress with what she felt was a greater dignity.
She carried herself differently as well - a bit of a tilt to her head, a slower gait, a more firm and deliberate posture. Smiles were reserved for reward not pleasantries. All in all she was a changed woman. Not on the inside necessarily, for she was still the take-no-prisoners Mongol marauder prosecutor of days gone by, but certainly on the outside.
She now had to square her new, evolved persona with the campaign trail, not a very sophisticated, regal place; but she looked at Trump like some Eritrean tribal chieftain or some Nubian insurrectionist to be dealt with, defeated, and sentenced to death.
Her handlers were not sure what to do with the new Kamala whom they expected to duke it out with the Trumpster in a UFC-style gloves off affair; but Kamala was indifferent. The people would sense her innate power and its destiny, the right of imperial rule.
Perhaps it was a good thing, an aide said privately, this regal bearing and all. Calm the bitch down, get rid of the hysterics, give her a more presidential tone, shed the pit bull and channel the Labrador, give the people what they want, etc. etc.; but the lady wanted no part of it, cashiered her handlers and strode, not walked, onto the stage and welcomed the cheers, the applause, and the love of her subjects.
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