CHAPTER 28 - The Tortures Continue and the Might of the Turkish Sword

Eitan, Menashe/Max, Naaman, Mendel, Itzhak, Reuven, Zeldin & Nissim

The tortures continue. Naaman Belkind is already on his way to meet the rope in Damascus. All those who are in any way involved with the spy ring are soon caught. Sara’s cousin, Reuven Schwartz whose wife is expecting a baby, loyal helpers, Menashe/Max Bronstein and Itzhak Halperin, who have been hiding in the vineyard behind the house, are all questioned and tortured. Only those prominent husbands of the raven chorus are excluded.

Nissim Rutman is captured at home and the same torment awaits him as it does to others whose only crime is to serve at the research station. Yehuda Zeldin, even declares under torture, that it is he, not Lishansky who has always gone with Sara on her journeys.

The screams are terrible - grown men groaning and squealing like wounded beasts, as they are dragged through the streets and beaten to a pulp with whips and chains.

And those four women of that Walpurgis Night chorus seem to be celebrating! They shout their relish at the ongoing torture in a frothing madness that spills from their distorted mouths like a vicious poison. Some, even descend upon the unfortunates with more curses and kicks. One tears off Nissim Rutman’s jacket, revealing the whip marks beneath it and continues to beat him with her black parasol as if exorcising evil spirits and witches.

Sara’s dear friend Toba, Nissim's wife, is not subjected to the same agonies. When she is interrogated, she unobtrusively removes her gold wrist watch and places it on Aziz’s desk, so that the military police do not notice. The Captain rearranges a pile of arrest warrants to hide that golden time-piece. Then he addresses the military policemen in a curt undertone and Toba is freed. Her baby having been left with Toba’s sister, Sara Hinda - who is also on the list due to her Aronson surname, but is left alone, no one knows why, but perhaps because of the children in her care.

Reuven Schwartz’s wife has given premature birth to a son, during all this madness, and the baby’s first sight of his father, is a bloody one. The child will be named Asahael - ‘The Will of the Lord’. He will live.

****

The next day is the 4th of October. The will of God continues in total indifference to the fate of mere mortals.

A brilliant, sunny day with a chill wind. The Kaimakam Hassan Bey has called a meeting of the frightened town elders. Some are too ill to turn up, others are already in the local jail.

Rabbi Kornfeld, Alter Albert, and Dr. Yaffe, summoned by the Kaimakam

Committee head, Alter Albert, Rabbi Kornfeld and Dr. Yaffe are summoned as the scapegoats. The Kaimakam informs them that everything is already known.

    “I have seen this Lishansky with the Aronson woman. It is no use denying it!” he says in grim warning. “Do not lie to me!”

Each sentence is punctuated with a beating of his fist on the wooden table.

    “I am a patient man, happy to punish a hundred innocent people to find the one guilty one! With my bare hands I have killed a thousand Armenians! And with my soldiers I can annihilate this whole village, leaving no house standing!!”

The three leaders of the community are pale and speechless, having no idea where the quarry of this interrogation may or may not be hiding.

Alter Albert looks as though he might be having a heart attack. No one can recall seeing the object of these inquiries for several weeks. And if they have, they are certainly not saying.

The Bey’s temper is flaring, his ‘patience’ at an end.

    “Where is this Lishansky who puts women and children into such danger!?” he snarls.

    “If we find him, will you let the Aronson girl go!?” pleads the Rabbi.

    “Find him and bring him to my Commander Captain Aziz, within three days, then we’ll see,” says the irate Bey, before disappearing into a military jeep bound for Damascus.

****

Dr. Yaffe and Rabbi Kornfeld emerge from the building where a small stunned crowd of townsfolk has gathered.

Alter Albert, follows. As head of the Village Committee, he has five hundred pounds from the Monegam’s last trip, but he says not a word.

Battered Sara being lead in chains, by Aziz and his military police.

    “Sara - my God - how are you?” says the shell-shocked Doctor.

Sara smiles wryly. How should she be?

    “As well, as I will ever be in this world,” she whispers, knowing she is en route to further abuse.

Rabbi Kornfeld pleads with her: “Give him up, Sara! For the love of God, where is he?”

Sara's Message to Izi

Sara suddenly remembers the window in the tower - the shutters flung wide open - which indicate to the Monegam that it is safe to land. Her fear that such a misunderstanding might lead to them all being killed, stops her fast beating heart with a jolt. Who can close those shutters?

She begins to sing to the faltering tune of a Hebrew children’s rhyme:
    
    “In father’s vineyard, the window’s open,
    The shutter’s must be closed and I’ve nowhere to turn - ”

The stunned towns people look at Sara fearing her mind has gone at last.

    “You see! You see! She has brought all this upon herself!” Perl shrieks like a banshee.

Adele and Tziporah add to the shrieks: “And upon us!! On all of us!”

Izi stands among the crowd at the side of the road. He understands Sara’s request and nods his answer.
     

The Soldiers, yank the heavy chain, and drag Sara away.

****

In the vineyards, Izi, with great effort, moves the tall ladder, climbs it and pulls closed the tower shutters.

****

The terrible irony is that on October 12th, just five days before Sara’s death, the Monegam finally reaches the Palestine coast. Through Alex’s pressure and Aron’s urgent intervention, another trip has been arranged on that faithful ship. This time, two British warships follow in its wake, intended to take part in the rescue. 

Major Smith, Leo, Alex and Raphael on Deck the Monegam

Major Smith is on deck, as are Leo and Alex, with Raphael and Leibel. They hold weapons and their collective breaths. It is already pitch dark when the pass Atlit and the wind is too strong to permit the little boat to be lowered.

Alex carries with him a telegram from none other than Chaim Weizmann, which he had received on October 6th. Addressed to the members of Nili through the High Command in Egypt, it states: ‘Your heroic stand encourages our strenuous efforts. Our hopes are great. Be strong and of good courage until the redemption of Israel. Weizmann.’

The next afternoon, they see that the window in the tower near the vineyard is open but as the wind is still blowing fiercely, they are unsure whether this is intentional or a mistake. When it is dark enough they try again to land at Atlit.

Alex, though he has been explicitly forbidden to land, goes with Raphael, Leo and Captain Smith. They search the shore but there is no one there to greet them. The cave on the clifftop, where they often find their partners is strangely empty.

Apprehension settles on them, like the chilly, incoming mist.

Back on board the Monegam, anxious, Leo with binoculars and Alex and Captain Smith with theirs, peer through the sea mist.

The tower window is shut fast and there is no sheet, either red or white on the Station balcony.

    “It’s too late - Only God can help her now,” Leo cries bitter tears.

Alex blows his nose noisily, thinking of the fate of those he loves, his part in his sister’s death and thinking too of what to tell Aron.

**** 

Zikhron’s Menfolk Behind Barbed Wire

A line of Zikhron’s menfolk behind barbed wire: Zvi, Meir, Efraim, Reuven, Max, Itzhak, Nissim, Yehuda Zeldin and injured Abu Farrid - the latter who has already been at this address for more than a month without medical attention - being pushed into a prison truck at the Turkish army post.

Shocked towns people stand in transfixed awe, drawn like passersby, to a horrible road accident, traumatised and unable to take their eyes off the sight of their men, old and young, being taken away, to who knows where.

Aziz, declares: “They will be held as hostage until Lishansky is handed over! We will destroy the town - every last building-  if you do not give him up, within the three days!”

****

Nazareth. The prisoners are lead into the Carmelite Convent by their guards. Aziz heads the column as acting Commander in the absence of Kaimakam Hassan Bey, who is reporting to his superiors in Damascus.

Sister Agnes Gives the Prisoners Water

The Carmelite Nun, Sister Agnes, with the Irish lilt to her voice, takes a tray of enamel mugs, to give the pitiful prisoners some water, but the guards shove her out of the way.

    “God’s mercy - let them go!” beseeches the nun, falling to her knees in supplication as her tray goes tumbling.

    “May your God help us, Sister,” Zvi calls, desperate enough to call on any god for help.

Captain Aziz hits Zvi in the face: “ English spy! Dog! We have evidence against you! And we have names - all your names.”

**** 

Torture in the Courtyard of the Carmelite Convent

In the courtyard of the Carmelite Convent, Nazareth, guards with whips beat young men, and then turn to Abu Farrid, striking him on the back, feet and hands until they are a bleeding pulp.

Captain Aziz, who has been left in charge by the fiendish Kaimakam, looks on.
    

    “We’ll make sure, you never drive English spies again!!” he declares with blood thirsty satisfaction.

Abu Farrid's Torture

    “Miss Sara, never did anything!” says that faithful driver of the Nili spies, who has already been languishing in jail for a month with a septic leg.

For answer, Aziz shoots him in the other leg and Abu Farrid falls to the floor yelping with pain.

****

We hear the screams of Abu Farrid over those of the Zikhronites who have been held without food or water, for days, cowering in the adjacent cells.

Efraim & his Torturer

Old Efraim, is next. A new torturer is brought in, one Hassan Bek, who is famous in the north for his brutality. The torturer believes most fervently that the elderly Jew is withholding information. He devotes another day to the task in hand, delivering the traditional falakas to every bit of soft tissue he can find - though there is precious little flesh on the old man's body. He is all skin and bones, refusing to eat the non kosher prison food. He asks his cell-mate to shout curses in Arabic, as loud a he can. The old man said, shouting helped alleviate the pain, so the cell-mate, later recounted. And after each lavish curse, Efraim would say the Sh’ma in a calm and even voice. In the next door cells, the Zikhronites were able to count the number of blows that rained down on the old man by the number of Sh’ma's.

​Next door, the Carmelite Nun, prays in the Convent Chapel. Her God, however does not answer her prayers.

****

Now it is Sara’s turn. She has been kept in the home of her absent brother Sam and his wife Miri. A normal family kitchen with signs of family life - children’s toys and baby shoes, a kitchen range in the centre of the room.

We go close on a pair of smoking, cattle branding irons, being heated in the coals of the stove, in the hands of one of Aziz’s Secret Policemen.  

Sara's Turn

Sara stripped to her nightwear, tied to a kitchen chair. A man's hand covers her mouth. The heavy iron presses a heated metal shape into the victim’s soft flesh.

Screams come unbidden from our heroine, screams which feel to her to be not those of her own voice, but that of martyrs of the past.

All this is watched by a new monster, General Adrianus Bey, famed for his interrogatory skills and his brutality, who has been summoned to help with the ‘inquiries’.

    “Where is he?” General Adrianus demands.

Sara’s body is suffering as never before but her mind is as clear as a bell.

    “Torture me,” she taunts. “Beat me as much as you like. You won’t get anything out of me!”

General Adrianus Bey cannot help but pay her a hideous compliment - the harder the job, the more pleasure he gets from his work; the deliberate infliction of pain for reasons of extracting a confession, one of his most prized and perverse talents.

    “You are worth a hundred men,” he says with sinister but sincere admiration. 

Sara responds with scorn: “You think because I’m a woman, I’ll give in - I despise you. No one but I did anything. Only I knew. I despise you and I am not afraid of death.”

General Adrianus Bey, signals to Captain Aziz for his Soldiers to begin the next round of punishment.

    “Hit me. Torture me. I will be avenged. Your end is nigh,” says this martyr of Zikhron Ya’akov, closing her eyes and slumping to the floor.

Aziz pulls Sara to her feet and they begin again.

    “Where is he?” General Adrianus asks again and when she does not answer another policeman takes a pair of pincers used for extracting nails from horseshoes and proceeds to pull out Sara’s fingernails.

    “Mother! Mother!” she implores her beloved Malka. “I can’t stand it anymore!”

****

From the bedroom where Miri and her little boy are locked inside, we hear Sara’s excruciating cries. Miri tries to cover little Yedidiah’s ears with her hands. Her own ears will forever hear those haunting screams.

****

In the next door room, Sara lies on the floor. General Adrianus gestures to Aziz, who steps forward, undoes his flies and lowers himself over the prone body.

The rape scene follows in all its time immemorial horror: male violence against female powerlessness. Sexual abuse and humiliation, that intimate violence which has no equal in the annals of torture whether of Roman, Inquisitional, Nazi, Isis or Hamas strategy.

We shall not honour those barbarians with softening metaphor or visceral, voyeuristic depictions of the despicable act, except to say that the Turkish sword is a circumcised penis eight inches long.

The pressure of the rapists’ body forces air into her locked throat, and she moves her bleeding mouth, now covered with the sadist’s heavy hands, trying to speak the single phrase that has been waiting to burst from her -    

    “Please” she whispers, “Please”, but her torturer is too occupied to hear her plea.

Then she opens her eyes to the distorted face that is pushing inside her and feels the full force of the tearing pain in the deepest most private parts of her body. The precious place only permitted to her beloved Avshalom. A place of love now violated forever.

A Red Line

This last act is the red line that separates her will to live from her still living body.

Her torturers stand over her, prodding and poking, then toss her aside, like a discarded rag doll.

We fade to merciful blackness as the ravished woman loses consciousness.

****

Miri’s house. Sara lying on the floor, legs splayed, blood on her rucked up skirt, eyes and throat swollen, hands blistered and torn, strands of hair pulled from her scalp.

General Adrianus enters with two military policemen.

    “Now, are you ready?” he asks.

Sara’s only protection is a fortress of silence. 

At this moment, it seems to Sara that death might be her only refuge, where her spirit might mingle with the precious soul of her dead Avshalom...

But General Adrianus is not done yet: “I compliment you again, Miss Aronson - You are a strong woman. But you cannot beat the might of the Turkish sword. We want your Lishansky and if you do not tell us where he is, you'll go to Damascus to hang!”

****

Hunted Joe

Hunted Joe, the object of the search of all of Palestine, crawls through bushes on the slopes behind Zikhron near the village of Fureidis, and crouches in a cave, eating the last of the bread given to him by Sara. He is wearing his disguise of keffiyeh and abbaya which he has as usual in his bag and carries a gun. He has decided to escape to his friends, the Druze, in Lebanon.

He waits at the side of the road and an unsuspecting Arab with a cart stops to pick him. Joe tells him he too is ‘looking for Lishansky’ and the cart driver hastens to take him to Karkur which Joe requests.

In Karkur, a communal farming settlement, he strips off his disguise, bundles it into his bag and goes to the house of Mendel Schneersohn’s girlfriend. She is not there, having gone out to look for Mendel who has been missing for two long days. But her father is there, a kibbutznik of dedicated and suspicious, socialist nature. Here Joe begs for some food and a horse or cart.

The old socialist refuses to oblige, declaring, not that he doesn’t want to help the hunted man but that as all food and means of transport are owned by everyone, he will have to wait for the next day to arrange a committee meeting where the required request can be made. Seething Joe, whose stomach is hurting from hunger and whose malaria has exhausted him, takes out his gun and threatens to shoot this lover of communal protocol, but the stubborn farmer will still not be moved. Eventually Joe puts his gun away and the farmer relents and gives him some bread from the kitchen.

The two men sit munching and glaring at each other until the daughter, Mendel’s girlfriend, comes home. She is shocked to see her father ‘entertaining’ Joe. Her frantic search for Mendel has been fruitless. There are gendarmes everywhere and the road to Hadera is blocked. And Joe is not welcome here. She gives him the rest of the bread and shows him the door, slamming it firmly shut behind him.

****

Unsuspecting Joe & the Hashomer Watchmen

Joe leaves Karkur and moves on, stopping to drink from a dirty puddle where a toad peers up at him with bug-eyed curiosity. Joe leaps up in fright and a bird chirps its alarm.

Crawling through the undergrowth Joe comes to the road where he hears the sound of an approaching vehicle chugging up the incline.

He hides behind a tree, takes out the little bottle of eau de cologne Sara gave him and freshens himself up a little, waiting to see who the drivers of the vehicle are.

A battered truck with two people in it comes up the sharp incline. They look like Jews.

Joe leaps into the road and stops the truck which shudders to a halt.

Inside two HaShomer Watchmen - Zvi Nadav and Shmulik Hefter, from Tel Adas - who recognise him immediately. He is in fact one of the reasons for their foray into the hills.

He recognises them too, though not the reason for their journey.

    “Zvi, stop!” he shouts, “Take me with you!”

The two men exchange a glance. They cannot believe their luck, nor the quandary in which Joe places them.

    “We’re looking for you, everyone’s looking for you! Get in!” says one of them.
    
    “Are you crazy! With our load?!” says the other in an urgent undertone.

The first responds in a whisper: “It would be worse if someone else catches him. ”

And he gives the other Watchman another look.

Joe clambers into the back and lies down on a suspiciously, lumpy pile of sacking, grinning and applying another dab of cologne under each of his arm pits.

He is not to know the trap into which he has fallen. The truck in which he travels with that delicious scent of lavender wafting through his nostrils, is carrying a cache of guns and gold for the defence of HaShomer’s Galilee settlements. Nili’s actions and the hunt for Joe have direct impact on the smuggling operation. Turkish military police are everywhere and a fugitive Lishansky on the run endangers and compromises their plans.

There are road blocks and gendarmes wherever one looks. At all costs Hashomer needs those arms and gold to prevent what they have long feared, will be Turkish attacks, looting and destruction of all the Yishuv communities.  And they need those arms too, to fight for their future homeland.

    ****

In fact in the previous weeks, HaShomer has been buying up arms wherever they can find them. That very month, Nili had handed over forty thousand gold francs to the Palestine Relief Committee in Jerusalem and just at that time the authorities made an unexpected visit to the Jerusalem offices where they found a large safe in which, unbeknownst to them, those francs were hidden. They sealed the safe with a large metal seal and went away to get an expert safe cracker. Much of that money had been minted after 1915 and if the Turks should get their hands on it, the heads of those at the top of the committee would roll. 

Head of the Bezalel Art School & French Gold

The chief of the Bezalel Art School in charge of metals, is summoned. He is a jeweller by training, crafting perfect replicas of ancient adornments. He takes a wax imprint of the seal on the safe and carefully cracks it open. The French gold is quickly exchanged for Turkish paper notes and that Bezalel master craftsman replaces the Turkish seal with one of his own that is even better than the original. So that when the authorities return with more authorities, they discover the seal still in place and only some rather grimy, Turkish notes bank inside.

HaShomer makes it known that they will take the gold and ‘keep it safe’. And some of those shiny francs are now in the bonnet of the truck in which guileless Joe is travelling.

****

Woman Guard at The Watchman Settlement, Tel Adas

The Watchman Settlement at Tel Adas. A granite-faced woman guard who looks like nothing so much as a Soviet worker heroine, notices the truck approaching, its driver and passenger with arms flying. She signals to other Watchmen to come quickly.

Shmulik jumps out of the truck and blurts out in his excitement and nervousness: “We’ve brought the money and the guns and on the way, near Karkur we found this Jewel...”

On cue, Joe, the Jewel, jumps out of the back of the truck.

Everyone is shocked. Everyone yells at once. The hunted man, the risks too great to contemplate. The stupidity of the drivers, the arms, the gold - and Lishansky grinning as usual!

To make matters worse, Tel Adas is at the base of the hills not far from Turkish headquarters in Nazareth. The Turks are probably already on their way!

A fever of activity sees the Watchmen hasten to dispose of both guns and gold, in all sorts of places - inside an outside privy, buried in a nearby malarial swamp, under a stinking rubbish dump, near a kosher abattoir  - anywhere unsavoury and unlikely to be searched.

****

Zvi Nadav comes up the stairs to Rachel, the humourless woman guard in her tower, and the two glare at each other. Nadav announces to that unwilling lady: “Lishansky’s here. He needs a change of clothes and a clean up. You’ll have to watch him until we can get him away.”

The socialist heroine is not impressed.

And then to no one in particular, he describes the terrible journey, their dangerous cargo, the shock of finding Joe on the roadside and Joe’s incessant boasting about the British coming to rescue him!

But Joe is already being shoved upstairs, his head shaved and dressed in someone else’s dirty work overalls and broken sandals which flip flop all over the place. His clothes are burned in the yard, his bag taken from him but he manages to pull out Sara’s blue silk scarf and the little bottle of cologne and stuffs them in a pocket.

He proceeds to whinge in a loud and aggrieved tone of his important mission and his hunger and thirst. Nadav begs him to talk more quietly and asks the disapproving woman guard to bring food and water which she does - unwillingly - and ravenous Joe falls upon the plate like a wild, half starved beast.

Joe with Shaved Head and Gold Earring

Rachel, as is the name of this tough woman, will write of this encounter with some repugnance, observing at close quarters, Joe’s closely shaved head and gold ring in his ear - as if he is some gigolo dandy on a spring outing: ‘The man doesn’t yet feel his bitter fate,’ she says presciently and without pity. ‘Very strange. He’s in high spirits, jumping around, excited, chattering, jumping from one subject to another, showing off about his adventures. Once he was in Egypt, then Zikhron, then in the desert. Who could believe him?!’

Joe digs himself deeper, misjudging the pitying contempt in which they hold him, for sorrow at his ill luck. He assures them that if they just keep him for a while, he will pay them handsomely in British gold! And if they let him go, he will keep out of the way, by going to the Druze in Lebanon.

  ****

The Watchman Committee Gathers

A meeting is called, as one usually is - the Committee gathers to debate their predicament. They condemn the unfortunate boaster, not believing a word of his story and wanting only to rid themselves of the threat his presence places upon them.

Founder of the group, Israel Giladi, insists: “If he’s caught with us, we’ll all be named as spies. If we hand him over, we’ll still be suspected, because there’s no way they’ll believe us. We must keep him with us.”

The dispute continues. Keep him, let him go, eliminate him?

Nadav sums up their views: “The ‘mamzer’ won’t stand up to torture without blabbing. If they get him he’ll drag us all with him to the gallows. Is it our responsibility to keep him safe? If that’s impossible we need to finish him off!”

Shochat and Giladi argue that it’s still better to hide him. Others bay for blood. Some even offering to shoot him themselves.

****

Another meeting, this time with the Jewish Mukhtar or Council Head of the area, a stern and unsentimental man called Nissinov. He arranges for a friend of his, a Turkish officer at Nazareth, that if Lishansky’s corpse is brought to him, the officer will state that it was he who killed him - and in return for this favour, will receive the reward of a hundred pounds being offered by the authorities.

****

Joe, is taken to the ruins on the outskirts of Tel Adas where he continues his babbling, becoming more and more incoherent and aggressive, and in the opinion of his persecutors, unhinged:
    
    “You must get me to Atlit!” he cries, “The ship is waiting for me!” he keeps shouting.

It appears, that he has no idea that his former colleagues and deadly rivals, have already made the decision to kill him and hand his body over to the Turks. He is kept under close guard by two of the Watchmen, arms and legs bound by thick rope.

Shochat smoking, watches the prisoner with an expressionless face.

Joe is feeling very sorry for himself, believing in his egotism and naivety, that he should be welcomed as a hero of the resistance:

    “Why are you holding me like this?” he shouts.  “I am only doing all this to save our country!”

Shochat stares at him, unmoved, but not entirely happy with the job ahead of him.

Joe is lined up against the wall of the old ruin. He begins to panic, trying to undo the rope that ties him.

    “The British are coming for me, then you’ll be sorry!”

If Joe imagines this information will be of any value in his predicament, then he is to be proved fatally mistaken.

Although they hate the Turks, HaShomer is not overly fond of the English or anything to do with them. Haughty monarchs, casual Jew-haters, antisemitic politicians and dangerous Arabophiles - that about sums it up for them. And Joe is just a pawn - albeit an irritating and dangerous one - on that great chessboard of war between Jewish Palestine and the dying Ottoman Empire.
                       
    “You don’t understand yet, do you?” says Shochat pityingly, aiming his revolver at Joe’s chest.

Joe Begins to Panic

Like that proverbial cornered animal, Joe makes a dash for it, but the ropes prevent his movement and he falls over like a clumsy sack of potatoes.

Shochat fires.

 Joe yells and clutches his bloody shoulder.

    “You’ve shot me, you’ve shot me!” he cries in disbelief and shock, completely unable to comprehend a fighting Jew turning against a fellow Jew and a fighter.

They shot him, but he escaped wounded. No one knows how. The bonds were still on his tied hands and ankles. Perhaps Hashomer’s leader, felt sorry for him and at the last moment couldn’t do it. Perhaps he aimed for the shoulder, rather that the chest. Perhaps he just missed his target. Perhaps the guards untied the ropes around his ankles? Even many years later Lishansky’s story and the attempt by HaShomer to execute him will remain under wraps, a sensitive topic, the less said about, the better.

****

Wounded Joe, in a small outhouse, as he sees a hoe with a raked edge, sharp enough to cut his wrist bonds. He starts to saw through the thick rope. Then he sees a slithering snake in a water trough. Joe, as we might recall, has an overwhelming fear of reptiles in general and serpents in particular. In terror, Joe rips off his sawn bonds, trips over the hoe, bloodying his nose, and escapes into the night.

We fade again to black...

**** 

And fade up on Sara lying on the floor of her sister in law’s kitchen, as she opens her swollen eyes, her face and nightdress bloody, her hair in tufts, her fingers bleeding and raw.

Kaimakam Hassan Bey and Captain Aziz loom over her prone body.

    “We are taking you to the prison in Nazareth to join your friends - ” says the tyrant of Jaffa, paying no attention to Sara’s sorry state or the upturned chairs scattered across the kitchen.

Aziz swaggers, thrusting crotch forward like a copulating bull, and regards his bloodied victim with a triumphant sneer. Shame, guilt or a woman’s honour, having no place in his playbook.

Sara has already made her fatal decision. She knows how her men must be suffering and that the sight of her broken body would be that final straw that would make them confess everything.

She hold her head high: “It would not do for anyone to see me like this,” she says, gesturing at her torn and bloody nightie.

Despite the misogynistic sadism of her rapist and his puppet master, she knows, even they would be shamed if their misdeeds against a respectable woman were laid bare to the public eye.
    
    “I must go home first to change my clothes.”

    “Just like a woman to think of her clothes!” bellows the Kaimakam, wagging his finger. “Don’t try any tricks though.” 

Sara answers in unfeigned truthfulness with the purity of heart that will accompany her to the grave:    
    
    “I am resigned to my God and my fate.”

     **** 

Sara in Chains

It is already night. Sara, in her blood-soaked nightdress, shackled by a long chain, walks slowly down the Main Street of Zikhron Ya’akov, for the last time. The shutters of every house in the street, are down - but from inside, through the slats, the towns people are watching her every move. One can almost hear the inaudible gasps of those black-clad ladies and the sorrowful sighs of those she counted as friends. She stops at the home of her youth, resting briefly on the gate and for a single second she sees her father there to greet her with open arms, Rifka back from America, Alex and Aron returned from their travels and travails - before she is hauled out of her reverie by the soldiers yanking the chain. She turns and enters the courtyard, so familiar, so loved. Efraim’s citrus trees, the pots of geraniums, the fountain, the bench where she still sees Avshalom sitting; all are to her as beloved friends. After some quarrelling, the soldiers untie the chain and let her go, waiting at the front door of her father’s house and watching her as she goes.

Sara walks inside in her bloody night clothes, and in full view of the soldiers, carefully chooses a fresh outfit, as if to change her soiled clothes, before shutting the front door.

     **** 

Sara in the Bathroom

Then limping to Aron’s famous bathroom she turns on those brass taps and lets the water run into that marble casket. Then she walks through the silence of Aron’s study where she writes her last letter at his desk.

Sara's Last Letter

First she instructs her family to look after the Station workers with a stipend and the use of grain from the fields, then she launches into an avalanche of fierce accusation and desire for revenge. She writes of the ‘four women’ who she believes have betrayed her, but not to pay any attention to the scandal-mongers and informers and says to ‘Tell the Zikhron council that when judgment comes they will pay.’

‘We are now in a terrible position, and I in the worst of all, because I have taken all the blame on myself.’

She writes in her firm hand of the beatings, torture and abuse. But mentions nothing of the rape.

‘Remember to tell of our sufferings to those who are still to come. I am certain my friends will be victorious, and you will see my brothers. Tell them everything, and tell them that Sara lays on them the duty of avenging her blood.’

She puts down the pen - Aron’s pen - and places the letter into an envelope marked ‘Aron Aronson, Palestine Agricultural Research Station, Atlit’,  then she slides it into the top draw.

She goes into the living room, shuts the door between the study and living room, and opens the secret panel - where her nemesis lies. Through the multi-coloured glass window we see the soldiers still waiting on the street, at the gate and the front door. The sound of the bathwater still running.

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Sara in the Mirror

Inside the bathroom, water gushes from the tap. She regards her face in the misted up mirror, tracing the letters A-V-S-H-A-L-O-M - naturally, in Hebrew letters - on the glass, until they disappear in the steam.

Then she opens the kid-leather purse and takes out the small pistol, Aron gave her so long ago and puts the pistol in her mouth.

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We hear the sound of a shot. An immense bang. The soldiers come running through the house. Water runs down the passage from the bathroom. A reddening stream that flows through those lovely rooms out into the courtyard.

Aziz runs into the court, yelling abuse at the soldiers and kicking them mercilessly.

 ****

Sara lies lifeless on the bathroom floor, her face white, a dribble of dark blood flowing from her lips, her eyes shut.

It is that inestimable Dr. Yaffe, professional to the last, who describes the scene: ‘On Friday, October 5th the Muftir called for me in the morning, shouting: ‘Sara has committed suicide. Hurry to save her!’ I quickly took my instruments and went to the house. I found Sara lying unconscious on the floor of the bathroom. Her pulse was slow and heavy. Blood was flowing from her lips. Consciousness only returned after an injection of morphine. She recognised me, and begged me in a thick voice, in God’s name to finish all this. ‘I beg you to kill me. I cannot live anymore and suffer. I cannot.’ She cursed the military commander, the civil authority and most of all the police officer Aziz who had tortured her. When I wanted to rinse her mouth, she wouldn’t let me. I carried her to the bed and examined her. The bullet had passed through the tongue and had lodged in the spine. Her arms and legs were completely paralysed.’

That afternoon the Kaimakam Hassan Bey came in to watch Sara’s agony. He was not so much moved as to shed even one tear: “So, she has escaped us, has she?”

Dr. Yaffe shakes his head, amazed at the man’s cold heart, and answers to the best of his ability:

    “I cannot tell. She may live - but she is terribly injured. The bullet passed through her spinal chord. She will never walk again.”

The Kaimakam swears that if she recovers, she will not be tortured again.

Three more days of life will be permitted her.

****

Dr. Yaffe waits at her bedside. An army surgeon comes from Nazareth, Adel Bey. He calls for two nurses to come from the German hospital in Haifa. There are others who come to care for her - Sam Aronson's wife Miri, her ears still ringing with Sara's shouts, Reuven Schwartz’s wife, Frieda, Sara's beloved friend, Toba, Zvi's wife, sister in law Sara Hinda and three neighbours - Esther Berkowitz, Dvora Hornstein and Miriam Ladino, who take it in turns to sit with her, wash her limp body and wipe her brow.

Yosef Levi, a Yemenite labourer, who has been posted in the courtyard by the Turks, who mistake his dark complexion for a Turkish one, steals into her room and recites Psalms for her recovery, but she does not hear them.

Sara’s Chosen Weapon

Suicide is Sara’s chosen weapon, a cry of outrage, not a giving in. She shoots herself in the throat, leaving her unable to speak, in order to avoid releasing any information. A scream against the violence and cruelty of the Turkish coloniser. Her response to the horror of violation, followed by the elimination of self. The invasion of the most private and intimate space; a woman’s body. The purity and sanctified precious, personal space, now bloodied and gaping, an invasion both personal and gender-based. A fortress assaulted and entered by base male violence, as effective as any battery ram. Sexual torture. The defiling of the female body, a tool of punishment that reduces the mind of that body to nothingness, shame and guilt. She does not trust herself to endure more torture without the possibility of exposing the others in Nili. The reduction of a woman’s agency and activism, to defeat and powerlessness, where the only relevant act becomes martyrdom.

Her purpose achieved, now she can go.

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