Wings of Refuge (35 page)

“No, Hannah, you listen.” He leaned toward her, his words controlled and deliberate. “You have to start carrying your share of the work load. We’ve all tried to be sympathetic to your circumstances these past three years and not lay too much on your shoulders, but we’re all overworked. You don’t dig, you don’t publish—the least you can do is advise a few students.”

“I’m sorry.” She was too close to tears to say anything more.

“I’m sorry, too, Hannah. Honestly I am. I thought the world of Jake.” Jonas leaned back again, his expression softening. “I’ve met this new student. He’s a bright kid. I told him he has an appointment with you today at two o’clock.”

The frayed puppet strings strained as Hannah summoned the energy to perform another weary dance. “Of course, Jonas.”

Shortly before her new student was due to arrive, Hannah set aside her lecture notes to read through his file. He was twenty-one, a
sabra
, or native-born Israeli from a town in northern Israel. He was quite intelligent, according to his transcript and all of his teachers, a thorough and diligent scholar. And he was also extremely popular with the opposite sex, according to a humorous postscript on one of his letters of reference.

“Shalom, Dr. Rahov.” Hannah looked up from the file to find a very handsome young man standing in front of her with his hand extended. “Sorry I’m a little early. I’m Ari Bazak.”

“Nice to meet you, Ari. I was just reading through your file. Please sit down.”

Although he didn’t resemble Jake at all, he reminded Hannah of him with his striking classic features in a perfectly proportioned face. Ari’s hair and beard were darker than Jake’s, his eyes a deep chocolate brown, instead of green, but his height and build were nearly the same, and he carried himself with the same confident self-assurance. She had misjudged Jake about being a woman chaser, but she didn’t think she was misjudging Ari. It was easy to imagine swarms of girls fluttering around him.

His broad smile drew a genuine one from her, and they began to talk. Young Ari was very personable and articulate. Hannah sensed a sharp if somewhat unformed intellect, waiting to be shaped and molded. But he seemed so young to her—a few years younger than Jake had been when they first met.

Why was she comparing him to Jake? It unnerved her that she lacked the strength—or the will—to stop. As the interview lengthened, she found herself testing him, challenging Ari the way Jake’s fellow scientists had challenged him that long-ago summer in the Negev. She wanted to see if Ari displayed the same strength of character and integrity under fire that Jake had. She silently cheered when, like Jake, he held his ground without rancor or retreat. Against her will, she felt a bond of simple friendship begin to form between herself and her new student.

“What made you decide to study archaeology?” she asked at last.

“A lot of factors, but visiting the dig at Masada clinched it for me. They took our commando unit there to be sworn in.”

“Yes, Masada is a very impressive place.”

He leaned toward her, his eyes intense. “But it wasn’t just the historical importance of that place—the fact that it was the last Jewish stronghold before the exile, and all of that. I was intrigued with the overall design, the finely tuned details of the place.”

“For example . . .” she prompted.

“The Roman mosaics,” he said fervently. “Such artistry! All those delicate shadings of color! I was amazed how each tiny, individual piece of the design had been carefully shaped and fitted together to form the bigger picture—” Ari halted when he saw Hannah’s face. “Dr. Rahov? What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Excuse me—”

Hannah barely made it to the ladies’ room down the hall before the last of the puppet strings finally snapped. She collapsed onto the floor, weeping, knowing she had danced her final performance. The good-looking young man who reminded her so much of Jake, who spoke like Jake but who was not Jake, had severed the cords neatly with his devastating words. She lay on the imitation mosaic floor—small white hexagons that were cold and featureless, not part of any pattern—and finally cried out to God.

“How could you take him from me? How could you let Jake die? What kind of a God are you?”

Jake was dead. God had cruelly snatched him from her. She had covered the gaping wound he’d left behind as if placing a rug over a ruined floor, cleverly dancing around it, ignoring it for three years. God alone was strong enough to heal her wound, but she had turned from Him in anger, instead of turning to Him for refuge. Now the act was over, the festering wound exposed by a handsome young student named Ari Bazak and his ghostlike echo of Jake’s last words.

“I can’t go on, God,” she cried, knowing she should have done so three years earlier. “Please . . . please . . . help me!”

Hannah phoned Devorah that night. “I know you’ve been begging me for ages to come up and visit,” she said. “I was wondering if this weekend would be all right?”

“Yes, of course! Please come!” Devorah’s voice revealed both surprise and pleasure. With Ben traveling so often in his work, Devorah and the children had moved back to the kibbutz in Galilee to be close to her family. “It just so happens that Ben will be home all weekend. He’ll be thrilled. And Rachel can play with her cousins . . . it will be wonderful!”

From the first moment she arrived, Hannah was swallowed up in the warmth of family and memories, the relief of laughter and tears. She dropped her facade of unquestioning faith and strength and poured out her anger and hurt so that true healing could finally begin. Ben had no answers to her questions as they sat outside that evening beneath the sodden winter sky, but voicing them helped her. She slept better than she had for a long time.

“Come for a ride with me,” Ben said after breakfast the next day. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

He borrowed a pickup truck from the kibbutz and they drove around the lake, the pale winter sun trying to peek through clouds that were as soft as dove’s wings. The wind had the breath of spring in it, the scent of new lambs and green grass. Galilee was beautiful this time of year, with the almond trees in full bloom and the hillsides speckled with scarlet anemones. Hannah was glad she had decided to leave the bleak, chilly city behind.

But when she suddenly realized where Ben was taking her, Hannah’s heart went cold inside her. They had driven to the opposite shore of Galilee—to the Golan Heights.

“I can’t do this, Ben,” she said. “I’m not ready.”

He looked at her, his eyes tender, then back at the road. “Trust me.”

She fell silent as they climbed up into the hills. But instead of taking the main road, which led up through the heights to Mount Hermon, Ben turned south, then east again onto a narrow rutted road that wound into barren territory. After several bumpy minutes, she saw a jeep parked along the road up ahead, a man waiting beside it. Ben stopped the truck and got out to greet him.

“Hannah, I’d like you to meet Shmarya Gutmann . . . this is my cousin, Dr. Hannah Rahov.”

“The archaeologist, yes,” Gutmann said, shaking her hand. “I have read your work.” He was a compact, muscular man in his midsixties with a cloudlike puff of white hair encircling his bald head. His knotted arm muscles and weathered face attested to years of physical labor, but his restless energy betrayed curiosity and a sharp mind. “I am what you might call a self-styled archaeologist,” he said, “although in real life I am only a simple farmer from Kibbutz Na’an.”

“A simple farmer?” Ben repeated, laughing. “Before statehood, Shmarya worked in military intelligence. He headed a top-secret unit of the Haganah.”

Hannah knew that the Haganah was a forerunner of Ben’s Agency. “Is that how you two met?” she asked.

The older man’s eyes twinkled. “I met your cousin, the world-renowned agricultural consultant, when he came to my kibbutz to show us how to farm properly.”

Ben laughed again. “Shmarya is the reason you and I are here instead of stuck in Iraq. He had a hand in the diplomatic negotiations that brought all of us Iraqi Jews to Israel twenty-five years ago. Although,” he added to Gutmann, “Hannah certainly wouldn’t have thanked you for it at the time!”

She smiled, remembering how she had wept with homesickness. “That’s true, I wouldn’t have. But I am grateful now. You said you were interested in archaeology, Mr. Gutmann? Have you been on any digs?”

“A few,” he said, with a modest shrug. “I was very fortunate to have been part of Yigael Yadin’s team at Masada. . . .”

“Yes! I knew your name was familiar,” Hannah said. “You’re the one who found the famous inscribed pottery shards—the ones that were thought to be the lots drawn for the suicide pact. You are hardly an amateur archaeologist, Mr. Gutmann! You’ve worked with more famous people than I have—Sukenik, Avigad, Mazar . . .”

“Tell her about your latest project,” Ben said.

Hannah saw the excitement in Gutmann’s eyes.

“After we won possession of the Golan Heights in 1967, I set out to find Gamla, the ‘Masada of the North.’”

“Yes, of course, from Josephus’ accounts. And have you?”

He grinned in triumph. “There!” he said, pointing to a place behind her. “Gamla—the camel!”

Hannah turned around to gaze at a narrow-humped ridge of land that rose among the surrounding hills like the back of a resting camel.

“See? Inaccessible ravines on three sides, just as Josephus described it,” Gutmann said proudly. “Take a walk down there and have a look for yourself. You’ll be able to find Roman arrowheads and catapult stones without searching too hard.”

“That’s amazing! It certainly looks like the place Josephus described.”

“I want to raise it from its ruins,” he said. “It has taken six years to come up with the funding, but I finally have enough financial support to start excavating this summer. I would love it if you would join us, Dr. Rahov.”

Hannah didn’t reply. She continued to gaze in silence at the camel-backed hill and at the distant Sea of Galilee, barely visible beneath the lowering clouds.

“Can you take us down and show us around?” Ben asked.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could,” Gutmann replied, checking his wristwatch, “but I don’t have time today. Just follow that footpath. You can’t get lost. This narrow neck of land is the only way to get there—as the Romans themselves soon learned.”

They talked for a few more minutes before Gutmann apologized again for having to leave. “Hope to see you this summer,” he said as he climbed into his jeep. Hannah felt the first few sprinkles of rain as he drove away. She turned toward Ben’s truck.

“Wait,” Ben said, stopping her. “Let’s take a walk down there.”

“But it’s starting to rain.”

“We’ll get wet. So what? Please, Hannah.”

She buttoned her raincoat and cinched the belt before following him down the narrow path. Gutmann was right—she could easily spot dozens of rounded catapult stones among the disordered ruins of tumbled foundations and fallen columns. Against her will, she felt a familiar prickle of excitement as she recalled Josephus’ account of the battle that had raged here. The desolate scene started springing to life in her mind’s eye. Ben led her all the way up the camel’s spine until the trail ended at the edge of a steep ravine.

“Many of them fell to their deaths from here,” Hannah said, recalling the story. “Just like Masada, they preferred death to being captured by the Romans.” She shivered. The sprinkle had turned to a gentle rain, and drops of it sparkled in Ben’s hair and beard. “You didn’t make me walk all the way down here just to see the ruins, did you?” she said. He shook his head, then wrapped one arm tightly around her, pulling her close to his side.

“That’s where Jake died,” he said softly, pointing. “On that ridge of land right over there. You can’t see the hollow where the ambush was waiting. And neither could he . . . until it was too late.”

Tears welled in Hannah’s eyes and washed down her face along with the rain as they stared in silence. She licked her lips and tasted salt.

“You know, Hannah, our government is being pressured by the international community to give the Golan Heights back to Syria.” He scrubbed his own eyes with his fist. “Jake died to defend this land, and they want to take it away from us. This dig at Gamla could prove that the Golan is ours, that it always has been ours. Your other digs proved that Jews once owned Jerusalem and the Negev, now do the same for the Golan Heights.”

He gripped her shoulders and turned her toward him, forcing her to face him. “Find the proof, Hannah For Jacob’s sake.”

Hannah signed on for the excavation at Gamla, which began on June 27, 1976. She returned for a second season in 1977, and a third in 1978. Her student assistant, Ari Bazak, joined her, attracting hordes of smitten female volunteers to the remote site.

“Hey, I want him for my assistant next year,” one of Hannah’s colleagues joked. “All you have to do is send Ari out to recruit volunteers and you’re overstocked.”

“Please, take him,” Hannah said with a groan. “That boy is so busy chasing girls, I’m sure he’ll be too exhausted to work. My daughter, Rachel, has a terrible crush on him, too.”

“Oh, Mama, he’s sooo gorgeous!” Rachel squealed after meeting Ari for the first time. “He’s like a movie star! And did you see how he kissed my hand when you introduced us—like I was royalty or something? He’s such a gentleman!”

“Yes, Mr. Bazak certainly does know how to be charming, but I should warn you—”

“He said I was beautiful!”

“I heard him. That’s because you are.” At thirteen, Rachel was emerging from childhood with willowy grace and poise, a carbon copy of her handsome father in female form. Yet she was gentle and sweet-tempered, as completely unaffected by her own natural beauty as Jake had been.

Rachel twirled in a happy circle before collapsing dramatically onto their sofa. “I’m in love, Mama!”

“Get in line, sweetie,” Hannah mumbled.

“What did you say, Mama?”

“He’s much too old for you. You’re only thirteen, and Ari is a grown man.”

“I’m not a little kid!” Rachel said indignantly. “And Abba was older than you were.”

“Not ten years older. Only four.”