Leon Uris (52 page)

The British balked.

It would only be considered if the Haganah and Palmach were disbanded at once! Preposterous! The British found a dozen more reasons not to follow the commission’s recommendations.

The Arabs were as relentless as the Maccabees. Throughout the Arab world there were riots and protests against the Anglo-American commission.

At last the Yishuv Central had had enough. They sent the Palmach and Haganah on a series of damaging raids on British positions.

The British poured in tens of thousands of front-line troops and turned the country into a police state. In a massive roundup they arrested several hundred prominent leaders of the Yishuv and threw them into Latrun prison.

In a masterful countermove, the Haganah blew up every frontier bridge in and out of Palestine in a single night.

The Aliyah Bet was putting more and more pressure on the British blockade.

Finally the British Foreign Minister burst forth with an anti-Jewish tirade and proclaimed all further immigration stopped.

The answer to this came from the Maccabees. The British had their main headquarters in the right wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. This hotel was in the new city with its rear and gardens facing the wall of the old city. A dozen Maccabees, dressed as Arabs, delivered several dozen enormous milk cans to the basement of the hotel. The milk cans were placed under the right wing of the hotel beneath British headquarters. The cans were filled with dynamite. They set the timing devices, cleared the area, and phoned the British a warning to get out of the building. The British scoffed at the idea. This time the Maccabees were playing a prank. They merely wanted to make fools of the British. Surely they would not dare attack British headquarters!

In a few minutes there was a blast heard across the breadth of Palestine. The right wing of the King David Hotel was blown to smithereens!

T
HE
E
XODUS
WAS DECLARED FIT
and ready for the run to Palestine.

Ari set the sailing time as the morning after the Chanukah party which the management of the Dome Hotel had arranged on the hotel terrace.

Three hundred places were set. The small Jewish community of Cyprus and the crew of the
Exodus
sat at a long head table. There was tremendous gaiety as the children rushed to the terrace dressed in new clothing and were deluged with gifts from the people of Cyprus and soldiers from the garrison. The children took one gift each for themselves and marked the rest for the detention camps at Caraolos. The tables were bulging with food and the children squealed with delight. The terrible ordeal of the hunger strike was behind them; they had carried their burden like adults and now they could act like happy children with complete abandon. All around the terrace dozens of curious Greeks and British soldiers watched the celebration.

Karen looked around frantically for Kitty and lit up when she saw her some distance away, standing with Mark Parker by the rail.

“Come on, Kitty,” Karen called, “there is a place for you here.”

“It’s your party,” Kitty answered. “I’ll just watch.”

When everyone had opened his present, David Ben Ami stood at the head table. The terrace became very still as he began to speak. Only the steady shush of the sea could be heard behind him.

“Tonight we celebrate the first day of Chanukah,” David said. “We celebrate this day in honor of Judah Maccabee and his brave brothers and his band of faithful men who came from the hills of Judea to do combat with the Greeks who enslaved our people.”

Some of the youngsters applauded.

“Judah Maccabee had a small band of men and they had no real right fighting so large and powerful an enemy as the Greeks, who ruled the entire world. But Judah Maccabee had faith. He believed that the one true God would show him the way. Judah was a wonderful fighter. Time and again he tricked the Greeks; his men were the greatest of warriors, for the faith of God was in their hearts. The Maccabees stormed Jerusalem and captured it and drove out the Greeks of Asia Minor, who ruled that area of the world.”

A riot of applause.

“Judah entered the Temple and his warriors tore down the idol of Zeus and again dedicated the Temple to the one true God. The same God who helped us all in our battle with the British.”

As David continued with the story of the rebirth of the Jewish nation, Kitty Fremont listened. She looked at Karen and at Dov Landau—and she looked at Mark and she lowered her eyes. Then she felt someone standing alongside her. It was Brigadier Bruce Sutherland.

“Tonight we will light the first candle of the Menorah. Each night we will light another candle until there are eight. We call Chanukah the feast of lights.”

David Ben Ami lit the first candle and the children said “oh” and “ah.”

“Tomorrow night we shall light the second Chanukah candle at sea and the night after we shall light the third one in Eretz Israel.”

David placed a small skullcap on his head and opened the Bible. “ ‘
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber
.’ ”

Kitty’s eyes came to rest on the head table. She looked at them—Zev Gilboa the farmer from the Galilee, and Joab Yarkoni the Moroccan Jew, and David Ben Ami, the scholar from Jerusalem. Her eyes stopped at Ari Ben Canaan. His eyes were rimmed with weariness now that he had had a chance to relax from his ordeal. David set the Bible down and continued to speak from memory.

“ ‘
Behold!
’ ” David said, “ ‘
he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
’ ”

An icy chill passed through Kitty Fremont’s body. Her eyes were fixed on the tired face of Ari Ben Canaan. “
Behold
...
he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep
.”

The ancient motors of the
Exodus
groaned as she slid back into the center of Kyrenia Harbor and she turned and pointed out to sea in the direction of Palestine.

At dawn of the second day everyone sighted land at once.

“Palestine!”

“Eretz Israel!”

A hysteria of laughing and crying and singing and joy burst from the children.

The little salvage tug came within sight of land and the electrifying news spread through the Yishuv. The children who had brought the mighty British Empire to its knees were arriving!

The
Exodus
sputtered into Haifa Harbor amid a blast of welcoming horns and whistles. The salute spread from Haifa to the villages and the
kibbutzim
and the
moshavim
and all the way to Jerusalem to the Yishuv Central building and back again to Haifa.

Twenty-five thousand Jews poured onto the Haifa dock to cheer the creaky little boat. The Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra played the Jewish anthem—“Hatikvah,” the Hope.

Tears streaked down the cheeks of Karen Hansen Clement as she looked up into Kitty’s face.

The
Exodus
had come home!

... thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning.

The word of God as given to

Moses in Exodus

A
LINE OF SILVER AND BLUE
buses from the Palestine bus co-operative, the “Egged” Company, awaited the children on the docks. The official celebration was kept to a quick minimum. The children were loaded aboard the buses and whisked out of the harbor area, convoyed by British armored vehicles. The band played and the crowd cheered as they rolled out of sight.

Karen tugged her window open and shouted to Kitty, but Kitty could not hear her over the din. The buses disappeared and the crowd dispersed. In fifteen minutes the dock was deserted except for a gang of longshoremen and a few British soldiers on guard duty.

Kitty stood motionless by the rail of the
Exodus
, stunned by the sudden strangeness. It was hard to realize where she was. She looked at Haifa. It was beautiful, with that special beauty that belonged to cities built on hills and around a bay. Close to the waterfront was the Arab sector with crowded clusters of buildings. The Jewish sector sprawled all over the long fingerlike slope of Mount Carmel. Kitty looked to her left, just past Haifa, and saw the futuristic shape of the tank and chimney buildings of the immense Haifa oil refinery, the terminus of the lines from the Mosul fields. At a nearby dock she saw a dozen dilapidated, rickety ships of the Aliyah Bet which, like the
Exodus
, had managed to reach Palestine.

Zev, David, and Joab interrupted Kitty’s thoughts as they said goodbys and offered thanks and hope that they would see her again. And then they, too, were gone and Kitty was alone.

“Pretty town, isn’t it?”

Kitty turned around. Ari Ben Canaan was standing behind her. “We always bring our guests into Palestine through Haifa. It gives them a good first impression.”

“Where are the children going?” she asked.

“They will be dispersed to a half dozen Youth Aliyah Centers. Some of the centers are located on a
kibbutz
. Other centers have their own villages. In a few days I will be able to tell you where Karen is.”

“I’ll be grateful.”

“What are your plans, Kitty?”

She laughed sardonically. “I was just asking myself the same thing, along with a dozen other questions. I’m a stranger in town, Mr. Ben Canaan, and I feel a little foolish at the moment, asking myself how I got here. Oh, Good Nurse Fremont has a solid profession in which there is always a shortage. I’ll find a place, somewhere.”

“Why don’t you let me help you get situated?”

“I suppose you’re rather busy. I’m always able to get along.”

“Listen to me, now. I think Youth Aliyah would be perfect for you. The head of the organization is a close friend of mine. I’ll arrange an appointment for you in Jerusalem. “

“That’s very kind but I don’t want to impose.”

“Nonsense. It’s the very least ... If you can tolerate my company for a few days I will be happy to drive you to Jerusalem. I must go to Tel Aviv on business first, but it’s just as well ... it will give me a chance to set your appointment.”

“I don’t want you to feel that you are obligated to do this.”

“I’m doing it because I want to,” Ari said.

Kitty wanted to give a sigh of relief. She
was
nervous about being alone in a strange land. She smiled and thanked him.

“Good,” Ari said. “We will have to stay in Haifa tonight because of the road curfew. Pack one bag with what you will need to keep you for a few days. If you carry too much with you the British will be going through your suitcases every five minutes. I’ll have the rest of your things sealed and held at customs.”

After clearances Ari ordered a taxi and drove up Mount Carmel into the Jewish section, which spread through the hills on the mountainside. Near the top they stopped at a small pension set in a pine grove.

“It’s better to stay up here. I know too many people and they won’t let me alone for a minute if we stay in the center of town. Now you rest up. I’ll go down the hill and scare up an auto. I’ll be back by dinner.”

That evening Ari took Kitty to a restaurant on the very top of the Carmel, commanding a view of the entire area. The sight beneath was breath-taking. The whole hillside was alive with green trees and half-hidden brownstone houses and apartment buildings, all done in a square Arabic style. The weird-looking oil refinery appeared to be but a dot from this height, and as it turned dark a golden string of lights ran down the twisting road from Har Ha-Carmel into the Arab section by the waterfront.

Kitty was flushed with excitement and pleased with Ari’s sudden show of attention. She was surprised by the modernness of Jewish Haifa. Why, it was far more modern than Athens or Salonika! Much of the strangeness went away when she was addressed in English by the waiter and a half dozen people who knew Ari and stopped at their table to exchange greetings.

They sipped brandy at the end of the meal and Kitty became solemn, intent on the panorama below.

“Are you still wondering what you are doing here?”

“Very much. It doesn’t seem quite real.”

“You will find that we are quite civilized and I can even be charming—sometimes. You know, I never have properly thanked you.”

“You don’t have to. You are thanking me very nicely. I can only remember one other place so lovely as this.”

“That must be San Francisco?”

“Have you been there, Ari?”

“No. All Americans say that Haifa reminds them of San Francisco.”

It was fully dark and lights twinkled on all over the Carmel hillside. A small orchestra played some light dinner music and Ari poured Kitty another brandy and they touched glasses.

Suddenly the music stopped. All conversation halted.

With startling speed a truckload of British troops pulled to a stop before the restaurant and the place was cordoned off. Six soldiers led by a captain entered and looked around. They began to move among the tables, stopping at several and demanding to see identification papers.