It took a little time to saddle up a horse and accompany the old man back to the defile, a journey which they accomplished in silence. The jingle of harness must have alerted Daud, for he appeared in the doorway of his tent with his dark eyes wide with expectation and delight. The two men stood for a long moment looking at each other, then each cried the other’s name as they rushed into an embrace. It was almost like man and wife meeting, so tender was Daud’s embrace, so genuine the emotion of Aaron. Arms round each other, they turned back into the tent to complete the civil formalities of their meeting by an exchange of coffee, fruit and bread dipped in salt. Daud was like a child, beside himself with delight. “Oh Aaron, I knew you would come. I knew it. I knew it.” He stroked his friend’s arm, pinched his cheek. “So we could speak of everything and settle everything without anger. Before God, how could I have anger for you, my friend? Oh Aaron, you understand, don’t you?” And, before Aaron could reply, he placed a sugar-dusted loucoum between his lips. “The nations are speaking of us Arabs,” went on Daud incoherently. “They will grant us back… Aaron, the valley I must have once more. Come.” Impulsively he led his friend across the dunes towards the steep cliffs which overlooked Ras Shamir. “I am to be invincible in war and games of skill. Oh Aaron, is it not marvellous, my friend? But we will arrange everything in peace and amity. Your people shall go in peace, with presents, and not a hair of the head harmed. I promise you. Do you see, my dear friend?”
It was difficult to know how to reply to this torrent of disconnected phrases, and while Aaron was still hunting for words, Daud clapped his hands and signalled to his servants.
“Now a surprise for you, which will make you smile, give you pleasure. We will play the old game we have not played since childhood. Then you always won, but today, my dear friend… He squeezed Aaron’s arm affectionately. As if from nowhere two big box-kites had materialized, carried onto the scene by grinning Arabs; they were beautifully made, slender and vivid, with long tasselled tails. One was blue and one was black. Aaron smiled as he saw them. “Still the same old Daud!” he said.
“Still the same old Daud,” echoed the prince with a giggle, obviously delighted at his own ingenuity. “You have forgotten, Aaron?”
“No,” said Aaron, grinning at his friend. “Of course not!” “Shall we play?”
Their horses had been led to them, and mounting now they galloped across the dunes, trailing the kites behind them until these rose gracefully into the air; then, reining and turning about, they began to play them. The mild currents of air drew the kites over the cliffs and they let them out to their full extent now, to swim and tremble in the sky over the silent valley. They were all but knee to knee as they played. Daud chuckled with excitement and pleasure. He began to talk profusely, never taking his eyes off his kite. Aaron’s black kite was some way behind. Daud said: “Aaron, when the valley is ours again we shall often play, eh? But this year I shall win every time. Next year perhaps you will, old friend. Did you see the wonderful cars they have sent me?”
Aaron sighed and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Four.”
“No, six, six!” cried Daud. “They are so…
Aaron cut him short impatiently, “Daud,” he said, “this can never be, for the valley is ours now and forever will be, for we have worked it with our hands. We bought it lawfully — remember?” Daud pouted and looked at him cajolingly. “Come, friend, be reasonable. You will spoil everything,” he said. Aaron said: “I am speaking the truth.” Daud said: “But if our King says I must take it, you will have to give it, do you see?”
Aaron, his eyes still on the dancing kites, said: “Think, Daud. My grandfather paid your grandfather money for this valley. Then it was a desolate swamp and dangerous with fevers. With the money he paid, your own clan became rich in tents and camels and wives. Before they were not.” Daud nodded irritably. “All this is known and finished,” he said, and yawned. “Now we need it again. My brother has said so, it is so. The matter is finished.”
“Then it will be war,” said Aaron. “I tell you that.”
Daud’s eye flashed with sudden malice. “Those who want war will have war,” he said softly, between clenched teeth. “But not with you, Aaron.”
“With me if necessary, Daud.”
But the war was taking place in the heavens above them now, for with the old manoeuvre which had won him so many victories in the past, Aaron had allowed his kite to cross strings with the blue kite. They trembled and swayed in the guttering wind, as if they were two brilliant fighting-cocks attacking each other. “No!” cried Daud suddenly. “It shall not be!”
Aaron’s kite managed at last to sever the string of the blue kite; it reeled and careened and began to settle, to fall trembling into the valley. A sob broke from Daud’s throat. They stared at one another grimly. Aaron dropped the stick to which his own kite was attached. It fell in the sand between them.
“I leave you the omen, Daud,” he said, staring keenly at his childhood friend under his dark brows. “Now I will return. Goodbye.”
Daud stared after him. His eyes were full of tears now, but they were tears of pique, of rage; so this is how his overtures of friendship had been greeted by his oldest friend!
“You will see, then!” he called incoherently after the receding figure. “You will see, Aaron.” He was suddenly overtaken by a fit of coughing. He pressed his hands to his sides.
Meanwhile, Aaron was grimly riding among the tents toward the head of the pass, keenly noticing everything: Two regiments deployed across the sand were practicing open-order advance by sections. As he passed the command tent, he came face-to-face with Donner, now dressed in the traditional Arab headgear of the army to which he had been accredited. It gave him an absurd fancy-dress air, that of a pirate in amateur theatricals. They stared at each other.
“So you are here,” said Aaron softly.
“Yes. I’m here,” retorted Donner with a scowl.
Aaron rode on into the valley, deep in his reflections. That evening he made his report to the small council of at the kibbutz. They sat at an old deal kitchen table in one of the great underground bays, next to the shooting gallery where Anna plied her trade with the weapons they possessed. In spite of the new emplacements which they had tried to scoop out around the perimeter of the camp, the arrival of the armoured cars presented them with a new problem. Aaron smoked his pipe thoughtfully. He scribbled on a pad. “We haven’t got enough mines or enough know-how to lay more than a 20 x 20 field,” he said gloomily, “but we can easily lay a fake field carefully marked up for all to see; that might help.” Then he had a brainwave. “How about cleaning out those two Byzantine granaries? The ones we filled with stores — remember the time some children fell into them?”
“What are you going to do — catch elephants?” Pete said.
“They’d make a sort of anti-tank ditch.”
“But they’d see that.”
“Not if we cleared by night and camouflaged them with branches during the day. If your minefields were laid on either side with an enticing-looking fairway between…?”
Everyone groaned. “How much more digging do you expect to get out of us?”