Authors: Naomi Ragen
“As I told you. The desert is a good hiding place,” Judith whispered. “You’ll find many volunteers with that idea.”
“Including Daniel?” Kayla asked.
“Daniel… that’s sort of a different story.” She hesitated.
“What?”
“Not so much hiding as trying to find himself.”
“The houses of the first village were crowded together on terraces,” the professor continued. “They had two rooms and a courtyard. They had large clay vats for storing drinking water and beverages made from local plants. A while back we found a hoard of silver pieces!” His voice rose with excitement.
“We’ll talk later…” Judith whispered. Kayla was disappointed, anxious for the story to continue.
“Then there were the Persian and Herodian periods. The Jewish settlement thrived. A citadel was built to protect the village and its farms from marauding nomads. All that ended with the first Jewish rebellion against the Romans in 70 CE. But during the Byzantine and Roman periods, it was once again a
large, prosperous Jewish village. They credited their prosperity to the cultivation of a tropical plant from which a rare and wonderful perfume was made. They say it was Cleopatra’s favorite, the source of her seductive powers. We think the plant was called balsam, but we can’t be sure. Even then, it was a closely guarded secret. On the floor of the synagogue there is even a verse cursing anyone who reveals the secret formula.”
“And here we are, centuries later, trying to undo all that secrecy by digging up and revealing all.” Judith laughed.
Kayla shifted uncomfortably. Some things
were
best left buried, she thought, wondering if she would ever tell these people anything about herself.
The bus jolted to a halt just as the first light was breaking over the mountains.
The ground was broken into many neat craters, carefully excavated to preserve the delicate layers that separated one time period from the next.
“Here are your tools,” Judith said, handing her a small shovel, a trowel, and a brush.
“These are tiny!”
“Yes, well, it’s easy to replant a garden if you mess it up the first time. But if you destroy a tel, it’s destroyed forever, all the layers intermingling, all the artifacts impossible to date. Not to mention that if you dig in big clumps, you run the risk of smashing a priceless fourth-century vase. So, dig carefully. Load the dirt into these buckets, then dump the bucketfuls into this wheelbarrow. When the wheelbarrow is full, you take it over to there—” She indicated, pointing. “That’s where all the dirt from this particular part of the dig must go and nowhere else—otherwise, they lose track of where things were found. Then you come back and start again. Someone else has the job of sifting through this, even washing the mud through a sieve to see what remains.”
“It sounds like very good exercise,” Kayla groaned, eyeing the wheelbarrow with trepidation. Even empty, it looked too heavy to budge. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to lift it when it was brimming with heavy earth. Judith patted her shoulder sympathetically.
“If you need help, just ask.”
“What’s that?” Kayla asked, pointing to a spot in the distance.
“Oh, that’s the synagogue the professor was talking about. When you get a
chance, go down and look inside. It has the most magnificent mosaic tile floor and an inscription naming the zodiac symbols.”
“I didn’t know Jews believed in astrology!”
“Actually, they believed the zodiac was simply part of nature, not the voodoo stuff of the
National Enquirer
or psychic phone calls. It was believed that signs of the zodiac ruled the world. But they also believed that God transcended nature. The signs had the powers of midlevel bureaucrats, but God was the ultimate CEO. One word from Him, and everything changed.”
“It’s an interesting idea.”
“I agree. Well, I’ve got to get to work. See you at break time.”
“You aren’t working in this section too?”
“No, I’m over there, on the north hill with your roommate Bev. But don’t worry.” She gave Kayla a sly sidelong glance. “You have some very interesting people assigned to your section. I think you’ll be pleased. See you later!”
“Thanks for everything, Judith.”
“Not a problem. Hope you survive your first day. After that, it gets easier.”
Kayla watched her retreating back, then turned and looked down at the earth, the buckets, her trowel, and the wheelbarrow. She sighed, crouched, and began to dig, carefully filling bucket after bucket.
The desert air was still cold, yet she felt the sweat break out over her forehead and under her breasts and armpits. Shedding her jacket and hoodie, she filled the buckets, dumping them carefully into the wheelbarrow, so that in the slide of earth from container to container no unforgivable damage was done to priceless objects. It was really quite a responsibility, she thought, lifting the two handles of the wheelbarrow and pushing. But nothing happened. She took a deep breath. Slowly, she once again lifted it off the ground, struggling to inch it forward across the rocky terrain. She felt every bone in her body straining and near the breaking point.
Suddenly, the load grew lighter, as strong male hands slid over her own, replacing them.
“Wow, thanks!” She looked up, startled. It was him. He didn’t say anything, pushing the wheelbarrow swiftly down the small incline, emptying it out, and bringing it back to her.
“I… thanks… but… you don’t…”
But he was already gone.
She exhaled, trying to decide if he was rude and obnoxious or modest and gentlemanly. Either description fit equally well, she noted. Each time she filled the wheelbarrow and began to push, she found him by her side, taking over. There was a kind of rhythm to it, almost like one of those elaborate court dances in Elizabethan England: a forward and backward movement, an advance and a retreat. There was something about the way his body moved in unison with her own, some indefinable way all his movements fit in with hers, solicitous, caring, self-deprecating, always sensitive to her slightest movement, discerning without being told exactly where she needed him to be, what she needed him to do. He didn’t seem to want anything from her in the deepest sense; he left her free. But she felt some unseen force pulling her toward him anyway. She had never felt this way before, about anyone. Certainly not about Seth. This instantaneous burst of fire coming out of nowhere, when all around was damp and cool, was strange, magical, almost frightening. She wanted this wordless dance to go on and on.
But it wasn’t right. She was still engaged. And Daniel might be married, for all she knew. In any case, he had his own work to do and because of her must be lagging behind. Besides, she hated to think of herself as weak or needy. So, the next time it happened, she was determined to have it out.
“NO. No thank you,” she said, leaving her hands tightly gripped around the wheelbarrow handles, refusing to budge.
“I can’t see you struggling like this. Let me help.”
She was surprised at how good his English was. There wasn’t even an accent.
“I’m not struggling,” she lied. “I’m getting used to this.”
“Well, what do you say if while you are getting used to it, you hold one handle and I the other. When we divide the work, it will be easy for both of us.”
She thought about it. It sounded reasonable and left her pride intact. “Thank you, Daniel.”
“You’re welcome, Kayla.”
“You remembered my name.”
“And you remembered mine.”
She blushed, rubbing her throbbing arms, examining her hands. Gone were the soft, clean palms, the expensively manicured fingernails, the glowing
diamond ring. They were the hands of a stranger: reddened and dirty, the nails broken and rimmed with mud.
She took off her sunglasses to wipe off the dust. The lenses reflected back a face red with exertion, ribboned with streaks of dust and sweat. She had broken out in a million freckles.
“What I look like…” She shook her head.
“You look…” He stopped himself, as if uncertain, or unwilling, to finish the sentence. They put their hands to the handlebars, and for a moment, they touched as she chose the same side as he. He dropped his hands as if burnt.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, crossing swiftly over to the other side. They walked silently beside each other until they reached the dump site.
“I’ll take the wheelbarrow back for you?” he offered. It was not a command.
“Thank you, Daniel. I’d appreciate that,” she said, finally dropping all pretense, accepting him.
“Dan-y-yel,” he corrected her, a tiny secret smile, the first she’d seen on his serious face, playing around his lips. She could see his shoulders relax.
“Isn’t that what I said?”
He shook his head. “No. You said ‘Dan-yell.’ ”
“You know, I did go to a Hebrew Day School in Boston. I’m not completely ignorant.”
“Really? So why are we talking in English?” he teased her.
“My Hebrew is not in the same league as your English. You don’t even have an accent! Were your parents American?”
“No. But my father was a
shaliach
—a representative of the Jewish Agency—in San Francisco. His job was to talk people into moving to Israel. I was born there—in San Jose. I even have an American passport. I picked up the language, and it never left me. It was a great help in school. Especially medical school.”
She looked him over once more, aware of having unlocked one more closed chamber, glimpsing the world within. “You’re a doctor?”
“Don’t look so shocked.”
“You must look very different in your scrubs.” The green would match your eyes, she thought. And all the while, something was humming beneath the small, silly talk between them, something deep and resonant she couldn’t explain.
A small butterfly threw open its wings and fluttered through her stomach. Oh no! she told herself, recognizing having crossed some tightly guarded border, knowing there was no way back.
“I haven’t worn scrubs for years. And I don’t think I ever will, again. Excuse me. I have to wash up for breakfast.”
“Oh, sure. I guess… I… will too,” she stuttered, trapped in the flow of unexpected emotion, desperate to know more.
“Hi, ready to eat?” It was Judith.
“Oh, sure.”
“You look shocked. What happened?”
“Daniel… he’s a doctor?”
“Was. A surgeon.”
“What’s the story?”
“Did you get a chance to talk to him?”
She nodded shyly, anxious to hide this new thing that was unfolding inside her. “But he’s not very communicative.”
Judith nodded. “True. But he’s a special, wonderful man. It’s just so tragic.”
“You said before he was looking for himself. What did you mean?”
“I guess what I meant to say was that he was looking for a way to heal himself.”
“Is he… was he… ill?”
“Not physically.”
“Details?”
“All I can tell you is what I’ve heard here and there. He was married. He had a child—a daughter. Both his wife and child were killed by a suicide bomber.”
Kayla held her breath, feeling as if she had started to slip down a long flight of steps, not yet seeing the bottom. “Really?”
She nodded. “After that, he just up and left everything behind in Tel Aviv and came here. That was three years ago.”
Picnic tables were laid out with enormous bowls filled with salads, piles of warm pita bread, cheeses, yogurts, and urns filled with piping coffee. Large jugs of cold orange juice and icy lemonade with fresh mint were passed around, as were hot croissants and little Danish pastries.
Although she had been starving a moment before, Kayla somehow found she couldn’t eat a thing.
Hours later, when the midday sun was at its hottest and most relentless, the bus came back, mercifully rescuing them. Back on top of the mountain, a hearty lunch was served in the cafeteria. She joined the others, but was almost too tired to chew. She limped back to her caravan, took an icy shower, then crawled into her hard bed. It was heavenly. She slept soundly until four in the afternoon, woken only by her British roommate Bev singing, “
When I see you cry it makes me smi-i-ile.”
She sat up, suddenly discovering every bone in her body, because all of them were shouting out complaints. She could hardly move.
Bev looked at her with glee. “You’ll get used to it. You’ll get stronger.”
“Or not.”
“That’s a negative attitude. Have you ever read Norman Vincent Peale’s
The Power of Positive Thinking
?”
“No. Have you ever read
The Horrible Experience of Painful Blinking
?”
Bev was silent. “Oh. That’s a joke, right? I mean like a pun or rhyme or something?”
There is a special place in hell for humorless people who dissect and kill jokes, Kayla thought, particularly the ones who say…
“Very funny,” Bev said.
No court would convict me… “Now what?”
“Some days we have off, and some days we go back and mark all the pottery sherds…”
“What does that mean?”
“Every piece of broken clay has to have a code number which says where, exactly, it was found. Then we can date them, and even have a chance of pasting them back together.”
“It sounds very exciting.”
“It’s not worse than dumping dirt in a wheelbarrow. You might even enjoy it. And afterward, in the evening, if you want, you can join them.”
“Them?”
“The religious hippies.”
“What?”
“You mean Judith hasn’t tried to convert you yet?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“They call themselves ‘The Talmidim.’ They dress like flower children in a time warp. And they have this guru, except he’s a rabbi, who gives them lectures. They live in this commune up on the mountain, about a five-minute walk from us up the hill. A lot of the workers come from the commune. And a lot of the people from the dig wind up there. You mean to say she hasn’t dragged you to one of Rav Natan’s lectures yet?”
Kayla shrugged. The too-rapid ingestion of all this information gave her the mental equivalent of heartburn. She had actually been looking forward to meeting the mysterious, all-wise Natan, before she found out he was a
rebbe
. . . But remembering Judith’s reaction to her telling off the religious recruiter at the Kotel, she felt she must be missing something. “‘Commune’? Is that another word for cult?”