Exodus - Leon Uris [250]
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 the 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 were bright-eyed and sturdy. The women were dressed in wild colors with white cloths over their heads.
Daliyat teemed with hundreds of visitors. They had come for the wedding from all the Carmel Druse villages, and in addition there were Jews from the kibbutz and as far away as Haifa.
The truck inched past the village reception house where solid lines of male guests gathered to congratulate the groom and the village elders. Alongside the reception house a veranda was built over the hillside. It held a twenty-five-yard-long table filled with fruits and rice and curried lamb and wines and brandies and stuffed marrows. The women, balancing dishes of food on their heads, kept a steady stream moving to and from the table.
Mussa stopped the truck beyond the reception house. A half dozen villagers came up to greet the children. The children unloaded the back of the truck and marched off with their bedrolls to their camping area to set up their camp and then return to join the festivities.
Mussa, Kitty, and Karen drove on down the center street. Here, Druse dancers wearing silver silk shirts and multicolored embroidered skullcaps were in the middle of a wild performance. They were lined up, each with his hands on the next man’s shoulders. Keeping the line straight, they continuously bounced from the ground, holding their bodies rigid, using only their feet as springs. In front of the line the finest Druse dancer in Palestine, a man named Nissim, went through wild gyrations with one knife in his teeth and a pair of knives in his hands.
Nearby, at the sanctuary, a verse maker told a story by calling out extemporaneous chants. Each line of the chant was repeated by a hundred men around him. As his story unfolded, each new line was repeated louder and louder, and as he came toward the end of his legend half the men drew pistols and fired them into the air.
Mussa turned the truck off the