Free Zealot by Donna Lettow Page B

briny waters had not yet begun to clog up the roads. He could
     never see the attraction, himself.
    He was only a couple of miles out of the oasis town of Ein Gedi, the last speck of green for miles in this wilderness, when
     he spotted it, up ahead in the distance—Masada. Its sheer rock facings towered more than a quarter mile above the sea far
     below and then stopped abruptly to form a vast plateau, as if God had begun to make a mountain, and then been called away
     halfway through. Avram was still some miles away, but the promontory on which King Herod had built his fortress dominated
     the landscape.
    Avram glanced at the dashboard clock. It had taken him less than two hours to make the drive from Jerusalem. The first time
     he had made the journey, it had taken over a week. He and his father had nearly died in the wilderness, and their first glimpse—like
     now, shimmering through the heat in the distance—of the impenetrable stronghold high atop the mesa had seemed like a beacon
     of hope sent by God.
    The rock loomed ever larger as Avram sped toward it. A trick of the light, a small cloud shadowing the sun—he was certain
     he saw, just for a moment, the magnificence of Herod’s palace perched precariously on the steep north face, resplendent in
     white and gold. But he knew it was illusion, nothing more. He’d been with the party that unearthed the secrets of Masada in
     the years after the liberation of Israel, slung a trowel and hauled rock with the other students and soldiers and housewives
     eager to find the truth. Avram had seen for himself that nothing remained now but patterns of rocks and the sands of time.
    He pulled his car into the parking lot by the youth hostel at the foot of Masada and got out. In a pair of faded jeans, hiking
     boots, and a T-shirt proclaiming a popular Tel Aviv coffeehouse, he could easily pass as one of the many Israeli teenagers
     who made the pilgrimage to Masada each day, looking for their cultural heritage, looking for their own identity. And in many
     ways, he was.
    A cable car whisked tourists from the base to the summit in a matter of minutes. Avram rolled his eyes disdainfully at the
     idea of such laziness and walked on. To truly know Masada, one should suffer, at least a bit. There were two other paths up
     the face of the rock for those who preferred to climb under their own power. Most chose the huge earthen ramp that sloped
     from the foot to the top, an easy ten-minute walk. Avram refused. The enormous ramp was all that remained of the giant siege
     engine the Romans had constructed to take Masada. He’d watched it built, day by day, bit by bit, on the blood and death of
     ten thousand Jewish slaves forced to toil in the desert heat. Each day it had crept closer to the summit, each day closer
     to the last remaining bastion of Jewish freedom. He’d sooner die than justify its existence now.
    He chose instead the torturous serpentine path that wove its way in and among the rocks on the craggy eastern face of the
     rock. It was by this path he had originally come to Masada, it was by this path that Herod had created his fortress a hundred
     years before that. During his work with the archaeologists excavating Masada in the 1960s, Avram had needed some fancy excuses
     to explain why he always preferred the fifty-minute he up the serpentine to the easy walk up the Roman ramp—Professor Yadin
     thought he was an exercise nut—but he’d sworn he’d never take his ease on the broken backs of ten thousand of his Jewish brothers.
    Once he finally reached the top, Avram wasted no time. Bypassing the bathhouse, the synagogue, the swimming pool, and the
     other remains where the excited tourists all gathered, he moved away from them to the far southern end of the site, to the
     thick stone wall that had surrounded the plateau, creating Herod’s fortress. Avram passed through an opening in the rocks.
     Just beyond him, another wall of stones. Together, the two was