Twice Loved at Armageddon

Twice Loved at Armageddon, Part XXI

Farah's workaholic week comes to a close.  She takes a break with Yigal in the universty cafeteria.  He tells her that he learned of a DNA test on a live person where the results were consistent with someone born in ancient times.  Understanding he's implying that it was her DNA, she asks if she looks two tousand years old.  On the way to her weekend refuge at her home on property where Flavius's villa once stood, she drives into an ambush killzone, where terrorists unleash deadly claymore mines. 

Chapter Thirty-One

   So that’s how things went for Doctor Abed for the next few months.  This weekend should have gone as usual—nearly a hundred hours of work.  She had always been there for her students.  She would be taking the road home over the Mount of Olives down to Jericho and hence to Bet Shean.  However tonight she was running later than usual before she could get away.  There had been two day’s digging near Biblical Emmaus.  She had spot checked students’ notebooks, and most failed to measure up to her standards.  She had them return to the university where they would enter the required data and drawings and resubmit their work.  The last student left at ten in the evening.  By that hour the Sabbath had started, but some Jewish professors and students remained to finish their work. Others had retreated to the all-night university coffeehouse.

   Yigal was still there having coffee when he saw Farah passing with her overnight bag and weapon.  Reservists had an option to take weapons with them, especially when traveling in dangerous areas.  The road was not closed along the Jordan River, but another incident could bar travel through there.  He called to her and invited her for coffee--on him.

   She stopped, smiled, and said, “Just one because I need the caffeine for my long drive.”

   “Is the road still cleared for travel?” he asked.  She nodded as she stepped into join him.  Non-Jews ran the Sabbath work shift, enabling it to run twenty-four hours a day.

   She took a seat and said to him, “It’s reasonably safe.  You can see that I am armed.”  She took black coffee and toasted Yigal, smiling as she put it to her lips.  Yigal’s look told her he had more in mind than coffee, but he would never pressure her to date him.  He had already tried.  For all her openness, he still knew her to be aloof about things of the heart.  Tonight he hoped to crack her open and per into her shell.  Not that he himself would ever become intimate with her.  He just wanted to know why she never dated.

   He looked up after putting down his cup and said, “Doctor Abed, you are a genius, lovely, popular with students and staff. You’re accessible to anyone during work hours.  You have rescued fledgling students we thought showed no promise and made excellent archaeologists out of them.”  He grew more serious.  “But what about things of the heart that Farah Abed might want for herself?  You have a right to a husband, love, happiness, children, and a dog, as Americans might say.  There’s always that part of you that you keep from the rest of us.  I’m not talking about making a go of things with me, but you must need somebody.”

   With a warm smile, that many men hoped would mean she was interested, and deep, penetrating eyes, she looked at Yigal.  After long pause, she answered, “Yigal, my dear friend, I appreciate your having given me no hard time of things all of these years.  You never pressed me to have an affair with you at the risk of losing my job.  I appreciate never having had to say no.”

   “Yigal, my friend, as you have long suspected, my life is a complete contradiction to all conventional thinking. You seem to think I have never known love.  Just this once, I will say, ‘yes I have.’  I have already known a love far more fulfilling than any modern woman or feminist could ever expect in a lifetime. That love is not with me now.  He did not walk out, die, or divorce me. We may never be reunited. But if he comes into my life again, he will not even know me at first. Yigal, if that happens, you yourself will know who he is and that I will need your help.  Please accept what I say without trying to understand it so hard.”