The Masada Complex

who was at least as old as Silver, yet tanned and alert. Ezekiel explained that the professor, an Oleh Hadash from America, was trying to find a relative who was involved in rescuing survivors from the 1982 accident on Mount Masada.

The kibbutznik let them in through the gate, handed them a map of the kibbutz, and pointed to an electric golf cart parked under a tree.

They drove by several squat buildings, including a library, a school, and a communal dining hall. Farther up, steel wagons, loaded with gray towels and off-white sheets, lined up along another structure. The electric cart hopped over ridges and cracks in the aging asphalt path. Higher on the hillside they passed modest cottages and a children’s playground. The view to the south was dominated by the sheer cliffs of Mount Masada, which stunned Silver with the improbability of their height.

Ezekiel slowed down, his hand waving grandly at the scene. “Beauty and history combined!”

Silver looked all the way up the cliffs. He remembered his son rolling through the air, over and over, screaming. A sob edged up his throat. He turned away, hiding his contorted face.

A helicopter appeared over Mount Masada, above the crumbling ruins at the edge, where the ancient fort clung to the rocks over the abyss.

“This guy’s too close,” Ezekiel commented. “He’ll clip the mountain.”

Choked up, Silver could not respond.

“Here we are.” Ezekiel stopped the cart. “Goodness, this is a big cemetery.”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure about the name. She considered The Palestinian Women’s Freedom League. But Freedom implied that Palestinian women were not free yet, which could insult some. Women of Palestine-Unite! She chuckled. Too old-fashioned. She liked her original idea: The Palestinian Women’s League. But with the abundance of groups, movements, and parties, an organization’s success depended on clarity of message.

The Palestinian Women’s Civil Rights League? The clerics would resent the Americanized phrase. She needed something more positive, hopeful, yet non-confrontational.

She glanced at the phone, willing it to ring. Once contact was established, she would no longer worry about the arrangements for her award ceremony.

Advancement! She tried it out loud. “I’m honored to announce the formation of The Palestinian Women’s Advancement League, dedicated to creating opportunities for the women of Palestine.”

Satisfied, she decided to brave the hotel lobby again. It occurred to her that a message might have been left at the front desk. With their strange Sabbath rules, the Jews might not ring her room.

The lobby was filled with talk of the explosion. A heavy odor of overcooked food hung in the air. The front desk was vacant, and a sign said: No registration or checkout until sunset.

“Can I help you?” A young woman in hotel uniform approached Elizabeth.

“Could you check if I received a message? My name is Elizabeth McPherson.”

The woman disappeared through a door marked Staff Only.

Rabbi Josh shook Masada’s laundry bag again, but nothing else fell from it. He poked the few clothing items. What was he hoping to find?

Voices in the hallway made him pause. Had the front desk clerk realized Masada’s key was missing?

The voices moved on.

In the closet he found a single blouse and Masada’s remarkably long pants. He went through the pockets, which were empty. Her clothes emitted her unique scent, and he thought of their last kiss.

He dropped her pants on the floor and slammed the closet door. The loud bang reminded him of Al’s gunshot, and he thought of the final flicker of life departing Raul’s eyes. Pain overwhelmed him, and he leaned against the wall, trying to fight back the tide of sorrow. But it was too much. He started crying, unable to hold back, the way Raul had cried over a broken toy or a scraped knee.

A few minutes later he calmed down. There was no point in fighting these abrupt bursts of crying. Having grieved for Linda, he had learned that peaks of sorrow, alternating with valleys of emptiness and eruptions of rage, were part of the mourning process that would continue until he accepted God’s judgment and the permanence of an abominable reality.

He looked around Masada’s room. The bed was not made, the indentation left by her body still visible. He removed the bedspread and felt around the sheets. Peeking under the mattress, he found nothing. The drawers in both nightstands were empty, as were the armoire and the vanity.

Three knocks sounded from the door.

He froze, uncertain what to do.

Another three knocks.

The clerk must have noticed!

Approaching the door, the rabbi understood. This was God’s response to his thievery. A divine thumb-down. Defeated, he reached for the door knob.

“King Herod’s private villa.” Colonel Ness controlled the hovering helicopter over the three-level palace. A narrow set of crumbling stairs led down to a circular balcony suspended on fabricated walls off the northern tip of Mount Masada. “He built it as a floating garden, watered regularly from the deep cistern carved into the rocks. It was a thing of beauty in this desert, and remained green even a hundred years later, when the Zealots came to hide here.”

The craft moved higher, over the casement wall of connecting rooms that surrounded the mountaintop at the edge of the cliff. Looking down through the transparent plastic floor, Masada recognized the place, She shut her eyes.

Ness held the craft above the room, right at the edge. “Right here, our lives changed forever.” Dust swirled in all directions, hiding everything but the roofless hostage room under their feet. “Masada lost her brother. I lost my legs. And we lost each other.”

Masada bit her lips.

He reached over and patted her thigh. “It’s good for you. Face your demons. It’s about time you-”

She slapped his hand away, and the chopper swayed in the air, banking sharply to the right, barely missing the cliff. The ruined citadel got away from them in a hurry as the chopper dropped into the gorge, then pulled up roughly and looped around between the rocky cliffs.

Tara hollered.

They ascended higher along the steep rocks opposite Mount Masada. Ness cleared a protrusion of boulders and eased down on a patch of flat dirt. He pressed a series of switches, and the rotors began to slow down.

Across the gulch, Herod’s citadel was in full view against the background of the Dead Sea. When the rotors stopped and the cloud of dust settled, Masada removed the harness and got out. She proceeded along the crest, out of view, and found a narrow crevice, where she bent over and convulsed, before sobbing burst out of her. She cried openly, with loud wails that didn’t sound like her. She cried like she had never cried before, and in the back of her mind, on a different level of consciousness, she was awed at being able to cry like this.

Finally the sobs subsided to sniffles. She wiped her face and stole a glance at the ruined fort across the deep gorge. She focused on the casement wall at the edge. Despite the distance, she could see the room, the low line of blocks that remained of the fallen outer wall. She remembered pulling the skinny Arab over it, into the void, and the other Arab yelling behind his mask, “Faddah! Faddah!”

She stood and looked at the distant bottom, where the young Arab had landed next to Srulie. Bending down, she touched the brace, feeling the outline of the bone in its sheath. “I miss you, Srulie.” She wiped her face. “Oh, God, how I miss you.” And as she said it, Masada realized that she missed even more the young woman who had landed on the mountaintop that night, filled with optimism and love, eager for an exciting future that never materialized.