Exodus - Leon Uris [289]
Zev Gilboa was alone now and the life was oozing from him. The Arabs waited for a half hour, watching for a trick, expecting a Jew to come up after him. They wanted him alive.
The gates of Fort Esther opened. Some thirty Arabs emerged and trotted down to surround Zev.
Zev twisted the pin out of the grenade, held it next to his head and let the spoon fly off.
Ari heard the blast and stopped. He turned chalky white and his bad leg folded up under him. The insides of him shook; then he continued crawling down to Gan Dafna.
Ari sat in the command-post bunker alone. His face was waxen, and only the trembling of his cheek muscles showed there was life in him. His eyes stared dully from black-ringed sockets.
The Jews had lost twenty-four people: eleven Palmach boys, three Palmach girls, six faculty members, and four children. There were another twenty-two wounded. Mohammed Kassi had lost four hundred and eighteen men killed and a hundred and seventy wounded.
The Jews had taken enough weapons to make it likely that Kassi would never try another attack on Gan Dafna. But the Arabs still held Fort Esther and controlled the road through Abu Yesha.
Kitty Fremont entered the bunker. She too was on the brink of exhaustion. “The Arab casualties have all been removed to Abu Yesha except those you wanted for questioning.”
Ari nodded. “How about our wounded?”
“Two of the children don’t look as though they’ll make it. The rest will be all right. Here ... I brought you some brandy,” Kitty said.
“Thanks ... thanks ...”
Ari sipped and remained quiet.
“I brought Zev Gilboa’s things over to you. There isn’t very much here ... a few personal things.”
“A kibbutznik doesn’t have very much of his own. Everything, including his life, belongs to something else,” he said, with a trace of irony.
“I liked Zev,” Kitty said. “He was telling me last night how he looked forward to tending his sheep again. Anyhow ... his wife may want these things. She’s having another baby, you know.”
“Zev was a damned fool!” Ari snarled. “He had no business trying to take that fort.”
Ari picked up the handkerchief filled with Zev’s meager articles. “Liora’s a good girl. She’s tough. She’ll come through it.” Ari threw the belongings into the kerosene stove. “I’ll have a hard time replacing him.”
Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you were thinking ... you’d have a hard time replacing him?”
Ari stood up and lit a cigarette. “You don’t grow men like Zev on trees.”
“Is there nothing you cherish?”
“Tell me, Kitty. What did your husband’s commander do when he was killed at Guadalcanal? Did he hold a wake for him?”
“I thought this was a little different, Ari. You’ve known Zev since he was a boy. That girl, his wife, is a Yad El girl. She was raised two farms away from yours.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Cry for that poor girl!”
For a second Ari’s face twisted and his lips trembled and then his features sat rigidly. “It is nothing new to see a man die in battle. Get out of here....”
Chapter Seven
THE SIEGE OF SAFED had begun exactly one day after the partition vote of November 29, 1947. When the British left Safed in the spring of 1948, as expected, they handed the three key spots over to the Arabs: the police station looking right down on the Jewish quarter, the acropolis commanding the entire city, and the Taggart fort on Mount Canaan just outside town.
Safed was shaped like an inverted cone. The Jewish quarter occupied a slice of about one eighth of the cone, so that the Arabs were above, below, and on both sides of them. The Jews had only two hundred half-trained Haganah men. Their refusal of evacuation and their decision to fight to the last man was in the spirit and tradition of the ancient Hebrews. The Cabalists of Safed, the least capable among the Jews of defending themselves, had been a primary target for the Mufti’s riots. They had faced slaughter from Arab mobs before and they had cringed. Now they had made up their minds that they would stand and die. The Jewish quarter, jammed into the narrow twisting lanes, sustained