Ari knelt for a long time over Akiva’s grave. Yakov Rabinsky had been born in anger and he had died in sorrow. After so very many years of torment, he could at last find peace. He could find here a peace that had avoided him in life and he could sleep eternally looking down upon the land of the Jews. Someday, Ari thought, all the world will know where Akiva sleeps and it will be a shrine of all Jews.
“Goodbye, Uncle,” Ari said. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you that your brother forgives you.”
Ari stood up and began to sway. Mussa rushed over to him as he cried out in pain and pitched to the ground in a faint.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Kitty and Dr. Lieberman were both glum as she went over some business in his office.
“I wish I knew the words that would make you stay,” Dr. Lieberman said.
“Thanks,” Kitty said. “Now that the time is here I feel very empty. I didn’t realize how attached I had become to Gan Dafna. I was up most of the night going through these files. Some of these youngsters have made remarkable progress in light of their histories.”
“They will miss you.”
“I know. And I will miss them. I’ll try to get everything up to date in the next few days. There are a few special cases I’d like to go over with you personally.”
“Yes, of course.”
Kitty stood up to leave.
“Be sure to get to the dining room a half hour early tonight.”
“I would prefer it if they didn’t. I don’t think the occasion calls for a going-away party.”
The little hunchback held up his hands. “Everyone insisted. What could I do?”
Kitty walked to the door and opened it.
“How is Karen?”
“Pretty badly upset. She has been since she saw Dov at the prison. I had a bad night with her last night when we heard about the Acre jail raid. Maybe she will learn soon whether or not he escaped. That poor child has been through enough suffering for a lifetime. It may take a while, Dr. Lieberman, but I am going to make her very happy in America.”
“I wish it were in my heart to tell you that I think you are wrong for leaving us. I cannot say that.”
Kitty left his office and walked down the corridor thinking about the news that had electrified the world. The Maccabees had lost twenty men and women killed and another fifteen were captured. No one knew how many wounded were in hiding. Ben Moshe had been killed. It seemed like a high price to pay for two lives-until one considered that they were not just any two lives. The raid had been a crushing blow to what was left of British morale and British desire to remain in Palestine.
Kitty stopped before Jordana’s door. She hated the idea of confronting Jordana. She knocked.
“Yes?”
Kitty entered. Jordana looked up from her desk coldly.
“I was wondering, Jordana … Do you happen to know if Dov Landau made his escape yesterday? I mean, with Karen’s attachment to the boy it would make her feel much better if …”
“I don’t know.”
Kitty started to leave, then turned at the last second. “Was Ari on the raid?”
“Ari doesn’t give me a list of his raids.”
“I thought you might know.”
“How should I know? It wag a Maccabee raid.”
“You people have ways of obtaining information about things you want to learn.”
“If I knew I wouldn’t tell you, Mrs. Fremont. You see, I want nothing to stand in the way of your catching your plane out of Palestine.”
“It would be much nicer if we could part friends but it doesn’t look as though you are even going to give me a chance for that.”
She turned quickly and left the office and walked out to the main door. Kitty could hear whooping and cheering coming from a football game on the athletic field. Out on the center green some of the younger children played tag and some of the older ones lay on the lawn studying.
The flowers never stopped blooming at Gan Dafna, Kitty reflected, and the air was forever filled with their scent.
Kitty walked down the steps of the administration building and crossed the green, past the trenches. She stopped by the statue of Dafna. This time she did not feel jealous of Ari’s dead sweetheart. She looked down on the Huleh as Dafna always looked down on it and she felt a sudden twinge of loneliness.
“Shalom, Giveret Kitty,” some youngsters called to her as they ran past. One of them ran up to her and threw his arms around her waist, and she mussed his hair and sent him along.
As she walked to the hospital she felt very depressed. Leaving Gan Dafna was going to be more difficult than she had thought.
In her office she began to go through her files, discarding some, sorting others.
It was strange, she thought; she had not felt this loss in leaving the orphanage in Salonika. Kitty never really tried to become a “friend” of the Jews at Gan Dafna. Why was it all catching up to her at this moment?
Perhaps it was because it was the end of an adventure. She would miss Ari Ben Canaan and she would think about him for a long time, maybe forever. But in time things would become sane and organized again and she would be able to give Karen all those things in life she wanted for the girl. There would be good times and wonderful vacations together and Karen would start her dancing lessons again. In time, the picture of Ari Ben Canaan would grow dim as would the memory of Palestine.
It was natural to feel badly, Kitty reasoned. There is a certain regret in leaving any job and moving from place to place.
She began reading through her personal notes on some of “her” children. Were they impersonal objects of prescribed therapies or were they little lost human beings who were dependent upon her? Did she have the right to take them up and just drop them, or did she have a further duty to them beyond her own personal desires?
Kitty quickly shut her mind to this line of thought. She opened her desk drawer and took out her passport. Karen’s British passport was beside her own. There were two tickets -Departure, Lydda-Destination, New York.
Mark Parker was coming in from the Orient to meet them in San Francisco. Dear Mark … was there ever a more devoted friend? Mark would help Kitty get situated around San Francisco. Kitty loved the Bay Area. They could live in Marin County over the Golden Gate Bridge or in Berkeley near the university. They would be near the theater and ballet and the wonderland of San Francisco.
Kitty shut her desk drawer.
She picked up the files again and started to replace them in the cabinet. Of course it was right for her to go … of course it was. Even Dr. Lieberman said so. What did she owe these children? It was a job; nothing more, nothing less.
Kitty closed the drawer to the file cabinet and sighed. Even as she justified it to herself, the shadow of doubt began to creep into her mind. Was she really doing this for Karen or was she going because of her own selfish love for the girl?
Kitty turned and gasped! An Arab was standing in the doorway. He was dressed oddly. He wore an ill-fitting western suit of pin-striped worsted. On his head was a red fez bound
in white cloth that gave his head a square look. His black mustache was enormous and waxed to fine points.
“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Arab said. “I may come in?”
“Certainly,” Kitty said, surprised to hear him speak in English.
She surmised that he was from a nearby village and that someone was sick.
The Arab entered and closed the door behind him.
“You are Mrs. Fremont?”
“Yes.”
“I am Mussa. I am a Druse. You know of the Druses?”
She knew vaguely that they were an Islamic sect that lived in villages on Mount Carmel, south of Haifa, and that they were loyal to the Jews.
“Aren’t you a long way from home?”
“I am Haganah.”
Kitty sprang to her feet instinctively. “Ari!” she said.
“He hides in my village of Daliyat el Karmil. He led the raid at Acre. He asks that you come to him.”
Kitty’s heart pounded wildly.
“He has been badly wounded,” Mussa said. “You will come?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do not take medicine. We must be cautious. There are many British roadblocks and if they find medicine they will be suspicious. Ari says to get the truck filled with children. Tomorrow there is a Druse wedding. We tell the British we are bringing the children to the ceremony. I have a truck. Get fifteen children right away and have them pack bedrolls.”
“We will be ready in ten minutes,” she said, and rushed out for Dr. Lieberman’s office.
It was eighty kilometers from Gan Dafna to Mussa’s village, mostly over narrow mountain roads of northern Galilee. The dilapidated truck made slow progress.
The children in the back, delighted with the unexpected holiday, sang at the top of their voices as the truck chugged through the hills. Only Karen, sitting in the front cabin with Kitty, knew the real nature of the journey.
Kitty pumped Mussa for information. All she was able to ascertain was that Ari had received a leg wound twenty-four hours ago, was unable to walk, and was in great pain. He knew nothing of Dov Landau and said nothing of the death of Akiva.
In spite of the instructions, Kitty had packed a small first-aid kit of sulfa, bandages, and iodine, which would appear innocent enough in the glove compartment.
She had known real deep fear only twice in her life. She knew fear in Chicago in the waiting room of the polio wing of the Children’s Hospital during the three days and three nights of Sandra’s crisis. She knew fear once again as she waited in the Dome Hotel for news of the hunger strike on the Exodus.
She knew fear now. She was oblivious to the children’s singing or to Karen’s efforts to keep her calm. She was dazed with anxiety.
She closed her eyes and her lips moved and she said the words to herself over and over … “Whoever this God is who watches Israel, keep Ari alive … please, let him be alive.”
An hour passed and two and three.
Kitty’s nerves had brought her to a state of near-exhaustion. She laid her head on Karen’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
The truck rattled into the turn at Kfar Masaryk, using the roads that Ari had taken in his escape from Acre. As they moved toward Mount Carmel the roads came alive with troops.
They were stopped at a roadblock.
“These children from Gan Dafna. We have wedding at Daliyat tomorrow.”
“Out, everyone,” the British ordered.
They combed the truck. All the bedrolls were untied and searched thoroughly; two of them were ripped open with knives. The underneath of the truck was searched and the spare tire torn off the rim. The motor was looked over and the children were searched. The shakedown took nearly an hour.
A second British search took place at the foot of Mount Carmel. Kitty was played out by the time Mussa began to drive up the winding turns along the sides of Mount Carmel.
“All Druse villages are built very high places. We are small minority and need high places to defend against Moslem attacks,” Mussa said; “we will be in Daliyat in few minutes.”
Kitty pulled herself together quickly as they approached the outskirts and slowed in the narrow streets.
Daliyat el Karmil seemed to sit on the roof of the world.
It was sparkling white and clean in comparison to the filth and decay of most Arab villages. Most of the men wore mustaches and many wore western clothing. Their headdresses were somewhat different from those of other Arabs, but the most dramatic difference was the carriage of dignity and outward pride and the look which suggested that they could be fierce fighters.
The women were exceedingly handsome and the children