This Aaron House of Fontanini Figurine
stands about 4” tall. Aaron Figure hand-painted and sculpted in Italy. Made of a poly/resin blend. Story card included. Aaron wears a goldenrod colored short tunic over fire engine red pants. He has an antiqued light green scarf wrapped around his neck. His shoes and belt are brown. Aaron has a sunflower yellow satchel draped over his shoulder. He holds a white sheep in his hands.
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Aaron Story:
Boys and girls of every time and culture love to pretend. In the Holy Land, children were no different. Outgrown clothing, while scarce, became wonderful costumes for make believe kings and queens. Small boys made swords from sticks, pretending to be adventurers and warriors. And little girls played mother, sitting for hours by the family hearth where they were often given real grain to grind in preparation for future roles.
Aaron’s favorite fantasy came from an early experience. He had gone to Jerusalem’s Fish Gate with his mother as a very tiny boy. The Gate was her final stop, as by the time they arrived there, she had animal skin bags filled with onions, leeks, garlic and beets from the marketplace. At the Fish Gate, Aaron took a few steps away from his mother as she bargained for the day’s catch, to get a closer look at part of a huge caravan that had just pulled into town.
”What are those?” Aaron asked an old woman squatting on the ground next to the gate. She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked toward he huge beasts laden with decorated blankets and hung with saddle bags filled with provisions.
”Those are called camels, little one,” the wrinkled woman finally said, having determined that the dromedaries were the object of the boy’s question. “God’s nomads take the camels out into the vast desert.” She continued, “They can go for many, many days without water, and yet camels can give milk.”
”Someday, I will have a big camel,” Aaron said wisely, barely able to see the top of their saddles, for he was a tiny boy.
From that day forward Aaron’s dream was to have a camel. He often went out to the sheep’s pen, chose a small lamb, and pretended to ride into the desert on his sturdy mount, sitting atop a beautifully studded saddle. It was a dream that did not go away. For many years later, Aaron would grow to manhood and find employment with a caravan.
And although he traveled many routes and experienced all of the wonderful sights, sounds and smells of his journeys, Aaron’s warmest moments belonged to the past. At night, with soft breezes pushing the flaps of his tent against the night, Aaron’s first dream almost always began with colorful images of a small boy and his “wooly” camel.
