As they drove into isolation she felt alone and glum.
“I must leave right away,” Ari said.
“Will we be seeing each other?” Kitty asked.
“From time to time. Do you want to see me, Kitty?”
“Yes.”
“I will try then.”
They turned the last corner and the plateau of Gan Dafna spread before them. Dr. Lieberman, the village orchestra, the staff and faculty, and the fifty children from the Exodus were all clustered around the bronze statue of Dafna on the center green. There was a warm and spontaneous welcome for Kitty Fremont, and in that moment her fears vanished. Karen rushed up to her and hugged her and handed her a bouquet
of winter roses. Then Kitty was engulfed by “her” Exodus children. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see Ari disappear.
When the welcoming ceremony was over Dr. Lieberman and Karen walked with Kitty into a tree-studded lane holding the neat little two-and three-room cottages of the staff. They came to a halt halfway down the dirt, road before a white stucco house which was deluged in blooms.
Karen ran up on the porch and opened the door and held her breath as Kitty walked in slowly. The combination living room and bedroom was simple but tasteful. The draperies and the spread over the couch-bed were of the thick Negev linen weave and the room was almost buried under fresh-cut flowers. A paper cutout was strung from one side to the other: “shalom kitty,” it read, and it was from her children of the Exodus. Karen ran to the window and pulled the draperies back and revealed a panoramic view of the valley floor two thousand feet below. There was another small room, a study, and a pullman kitchen and bath. Everything had been prepared beautifully. Kitty broke into a smile.
“Shoo, shoo, shoo,” Dr. Lieberman said, whisking Karen out of the door. “You will see Mrs. Fremont later … shoo, shoo.”
“Good-by, Kitty.”
“Good-by, dear.”
“You like it?” Dr. Lieberman asked.
“I will be very comfortable here.”
Dr. Lieberman sat on the edge of the couch. “When your children from the Exodus heard you were coming to Gan Dafna they worked day and night. They painted the cottage, they made the drapes. They brought in plants … all the plants in Gan Dafna are on your lawn. They made a big fuss. They love you very much.”
Kitty was very touched. “I don’t know why they should.”
“Children are instinctive about knowing who their friends are. You would like to see Gan Dafna now?”
“Yes, I’d love to.”
Kitty stood a head taller than Dr. Lieberman. They strolled back toward the administration buildings. He walked with his hands alternately clasped behind him and patting his pockets, searching for matches to light his pipe.
“I came from Germany in 1933. I guess I knew quite early what was going to happen. My wife passed away shortly after we arrived. I taught humanities at the university until 1940 when Harriet Saltzman asked me to come up here and found a Youth Aliyah village. Actually, I had been longing to do just that for many years. This entire plateau was given to us by the late muktar of Abu Yesha, a most generous man.
If only our relations could be a model for all Jews and Arabs… Do you have a match?”
“No, I’m sorry, not with me.”
“Never mind, I smoke too much.”
They came to the center green where the view of the Huleh Valley was the best. “Our fields are down on the floor of the valley. The land was given to us by the Yad El moshav.”
They stopped before the statue. “This is Dafna. She was a girl from Yad El who died in the Haganah. The sweetheart of Ari Ben Canaan. Our village is named for her.”
Kitty felt a flash of-yes, jealousy. The power of Dafna was there even in sculpture. Kitty could see in the bronze that rugged earthiness of a Jordana Ben Canaan and the other farm girls who were in the Ben Canaan home last night.
Dr. Lieberman waved both hands. “In all directions we are surrounded by history. Across the valley you see Mount Hermon and near it is the site of ancient Dan. I could go on for an hour … it is filled with the past.” The little hunchback looked fondly around at bis creation and took Kitty’s arm and led her on.
“We Jews have created a strange civilization in Palestine. In every other place in the world the culture of its people has almost always come from the large cities. Here, it is just the reverse. The eternal longing of the Jewish people to own land is so great that this is where our new heritage comes from. Our music, our poetry, our art, our scholars and our soldiers came from the kibbutz and the moshav. See these children’s cottages?”
“Yes.”
“You will notice how all windows face the fields of the valley so their land will be the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they see at night. Half of the schooling here is in agriculture. From this village, groups have gone out and started or joined in four new kibbutzim. We are self-sustaining in food. We own our own dairy and poultry and cattle. We even weave much of our own cloth. We make our own furniture and we repair our farm machinery in our own shops. All this is done by the children and they govern themselves and very well, too.”
They reached the far end of the green. Just before the administration building the beautiful lawn was abruptly broken by a long trench that circled the entire area. Kitty looked around and sighted more trenches and a bomb shelter.
“It is very ugly,” Dr. Lieberman said, “and there is too much worship of fighters among our children. I am afraid that condition will last until we win our independence and can base existence on something more human than arms.”
They walked along the trench. Kitty became intrigued by
an odd phenomenon. The trench works ran past a few scraggly trees. One of the trenches had been dug close to the root system of one of the trees and the roots were bared. The trench revealed layers of solid stone under the topsoil. Sandwiched between the rock there were thin layers of earth, some only a few inches thick. The tree was stunted from trying to grow in such ground but the roots, fought a stubborn fight. They ran over and under and about the rock in thin veins, thickening wherever they found a little life-giving soil between the rock strata.
“Look how that tree fights to live,” Kitty said. “Look how it tries to dig its roots into rock.”
Dr. Lieberman observed thoughtfully for a moment. “That tree is the story of the Jews who have come back to Palestine,” he said.
Ari stood in the high-ceilinged living room of Taha, the muktar of Abu Yesha. The young Arab, his lifelong friend, nibbled on a piece of fruit from a large bowl and watched Ari begin pacing.
“There is enough double’ talk going on at the conferences in London,” Ari said. “I think that you and I can talk straight.”
Taha flipped the fruit down. “How can I explain it, Ari? Pressure is being put on me. I have resisted it.”
“Resisted it? Taha, you’re talking to Ari Ben Canaan.”
“Times are changing.”
“Now wait a minute. Our people have lived together through two sets of riots. You went to school in Yad El. You lived in my hoijie under the protection of my father.”
“Yes, I existed because of your benevolence. Now you ask my village to exist the same way. You arm yourselves. Are we not allowed to arm ourselves? Or don’t you trust us with guns as we have trusted you?”
“This isn’t even you talking.”