Exodus - Leon Uris [150]
It was a race to get the channels in before the winter rains. If the water didn’t drain off, the summer’s work would be wasted. Hundreds of Australian eucalyptus trees were put in to suck up water. Every kibbutz and moshav in the area sent over as many workers as they could spare each day to help the pioneers.
At night, by candlelight, Sarah and Barak took turns schooling Ari and the other two children.
The winter downpours came and all but swept the base camp into the swamp. After each downpour they rushed to the channels to keep the slush from blocking the runoff.
Even a man as strong and resolute as Barak Ben Canaan was beginning to wonder if they hadn’t attempted too much this time. Each time he looked at Ari and Sarah his heart bled. They were always covered with bug bites or suffering from dysentery or hunger or thirst.
And worse was the ravaging malaria. In that first summer and winter Sarah had five attacks and Ari four. The chills and fevers and deliriums all but killed them. Ari, like Sarah, took his pain in silence.
The swamp broke many of the families. Half the original group quit to return to the city to find an easier way.
And soon—Yad El had a graveyard. Two members died of malaria.
Yad El: the Hand of God. It may have been the hand of God that led them there but it was going to be the hands of men that licked the swamp.
For three solid years they beat back the swamp!
At last there was enough land to make twenty-five farms of two hundred dunams each. There was no time to gloat, for there were crops to be planted and homes to be built.
Young Ari Ben Canaan had shaken off the effects of malaria and the other illnesses and had become as sturdy as a rock. At the age of fourteen he could do a man’s day’s work.
When they moved into their cottage and the fields had been plowed and planted Barak was given a reward for his years of toil. Sarah told him she was pregnant again.
At the end of the fourth year two momentous things happened to Barak Ben Canaan. Sarah presented him with a baby daughter who had flaming red hair like his own. The second occasion was the harvest of the first crop at Yad El.
At last the weary pioneers stopped their labor and took time to celebrate. What a celebration it was! Kibbutzniks and moshavniks from all over the area who had lent a hand at Yad El came to join in the celebration. Arabs from Abu Yesha came. There was gaiety for a week, each night ending at dawn as weary hora dancers collapsed with joy. Everyone came to look at Barak’s and Sarah’s new daughter. She was named Jordana after the river which Bowed past the edge of Yad El.
As the celebration continued, Barak took his son Ari and saddled two horses and they rode up to Tel Hai to that place where he had crossed into the Promised Land from Lebanon forty years before. Tel Hai, the death place of Joseph Trumpledor, was a shrine of the Yishuv. Barak looked down from the hill to Yad El as he had sworn he would long ago.
“I took your mother up here before we were married,” he said to Ari. He put his arm around his son’s shoulder. “Someday there will be two dozen settlements in this valley and it will be green all the year around.”
“Look how beautiful Yad El is from here, Father.”
The irrigation sprinklers were whirling and a school was under construction. They could see an enormous shed where the community had put a dozen pieces of heavy machinery. There were paths of rose bushes and Bowers and lawns and trees.
There was sadness, too, for the Yad El cemetery had already claimed five members.
As Kammal had hoped, the establishment of Yad El had a tremendous effect upon the Arabs of Abu Yesha. The creation of the moshav was in itself a startling revelation. Barak was true to his agreement and set up special schools for the Arabs to teach them sanitation, the use of heavy machinery, and new farming methods. Their school was open to any Arab youngster of Abu Yesha who would attend. The Yad El doctor and nurse were always at the call of the Arabs.
Kammal’s favorite son was a youngster named Taha who was a few years younger