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Seven years later, M-19 disarmed and formed a political party. Pabón was elected to the constituent assembly, which drafted a new constitution for the country. M-19 got the second-largest number of seats in the body. In 1998, Pabón was elected mayor of Yumbo, a city of seventy-one thousand in southwestern Colombia. Two years later, he was voted the country’s best mayor by two major newspapers. He returned to national office in September 2006, when he was sworn in as director of Dansocial, an agency that promotes economic cooperatives and volunteer work.

Asencio and Pabón have not spoken since the siege. But through their stories, we see the striking similarities in the body’s reaction to fear, even from two very different points of view. The fear response is profound, and it colors every moment of a crisis, to varying degrees, for every victim, perpetrator, and rescuer at the scene. The next logical question then is about the varying degrees. Why did Asencio respond so appropriately to the gunfight, ducking down below the couch and remaining still, while other diplomats did decidedly unhelpful things? After all, they were all terrified, worldly professionals at a cocktail party. So what made the difference? To find out, I figured it made sense to go to one of the places in the world where stress is part of the texture of life, embedded in the stones and atomized into the air, a place where people have absorbed a lot of fear, on all sides.

4

Resilience

Staying Cool in Jerusalem

BRIGADIER GENERAL Nisso Shacham commands the police force in the southern half of Israel, a triangle of land bordering the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan. It may well be the most stressful job anywhere. In 2000, Shacham was in charge of keeping the peace in the holy places of Jerusalem. He was the only police officer who warned against Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount. His concerns were dismissed, and Sharon’s visit, in September 2000, sparked the second intifada. “If you want to get a doctorate in stress, I’m the case,” Shacham says.

We meet at his home, located, appropriately enough, on a precipice in the hills outside Jerusalem. Shacham spends the first thirty minutes in the kitchen. First, he assembles a plate of sliced peaches, grapes, and cherries. Next come neat squares of chocolate cake. Then he insists on making Turkish coffee. Finally, he settles down at the table with a cigar and starts telling stories. Shacham speaks fluent English but feels less self-conscious when speaking Hebrew, so my colleague Aaron Klein, from Time’s Jerusalem bureau, acts as a translator. When Shacham’s teenage son comes home from school with his report card, Shacham interrupts the interview and slowly and silently reads through the document. Then he plants a big kiss on his son’s cheek. Other than the glowering, equine dogs lying next to the front door, there were no indications that this was the home of a man who had repeatedly been the only thing standing between shrieking Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists in the Old City.

Shacham became a police officer out of curiosity, he says. “I was like a good guy, a nerd. I never had any experience with criminals.” But he did have a ponytail and earrings, so his superiors chose him for the undercover unit. His first and hardest job was to earn the trust of gang leaders. He was afraid all the time in those days. “The gangs tested me every day because I was new.”

One day, Shacham made contact with one of the most dangerous criminals in Jerusalem, a major dealer who had been linked to multiple murders. “He was a psychopath by definition,” says Shacham. After their meeting, the dealer asked him for a ride downtown. Shacham’s cover story was that he worked as a messenger in an office and sold drugs on the side. In the car, the dealer suddenly asked Shacham to show him his office. It was a test. Shacham headed toward the large building where he was supposed to work. He had never been inside. No one there knew him. As he drove, he tried to