Exodus - Leon Uris [249]
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 pinstriped 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