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While Egyptian jets covered the area from above, Adah was finally rescued by another GAX heading east towards the carnage. The scene of the Israeli attack was like a burnt offering to Satan himself. Those dead soldiers whose bodies were charred beyond recognition were the lucky ones. Those who had survived the horrendous assault screamed their agonies to God, begging Him to take them unto death. Adah was far too busy helping the wounded to think that she could have been among those burnt to a crisp. The convoy was made up of mostly munitions trucks, tankers loaded with diesel fuel, and a few troop transports. The entire column of trucks must have been engulfed in a giant fireball. As more rescue personnel arrived on scene, a young Egyptian lieutenant gently took Adah by the arm and led her to a senior colonel.
“Sir,” the Lieutenant said to the Colonel, “this brave girl was driving another vehicle. She has been injured too. We should evacuate her, sir.”
Too battered and bruised, and too busy helping others, left Adah numb to her own pain; nevertheless, she was an awful sight.
“My God,” the Colonel said, “she’s a child! What was she doing out here driving a truck?”
“A child as brave as any Egyptian soldier, sir,” said the Lieutenant.
“Sirs, my GAZ was destroyed,” Adah said, tears in her eyes and barely able to get the words out as she gulped to fill her lungs with air. “I did not complete my mission. I was transporting medical supplies. I have failed, sirs.”
“What is your name, soldier?” the Colonel asked Adah.
Stiffening her body to attention despite the pain, “Adah Ameen, sir,” she replied.
“Do you still wish to drive trucks for the army, young Adah?”
“Yes sir! I will do my duty.”
The Colonel smiled warmly at her. “Then you are truly brave, Adah Ameen.”
***
ON OCTOBER 26, 1973, the Arab-Israeli War ended. Adah remembered the mood among the rear echelon troops at her base as being angry defeatism. For those on the front lines who had faced the Israeli guns there was joy and relief. These young Egyptian troops had performed so much more valiantly than their predecessors in 1967. They were glad this awful war was over, and they could go back home.
Adah and two other women in the auxiliary, both older and far less pretty, were serving bitter rear echelon junior officers in their tent. The men were drinking, feasting, and grabbing at the three women. Young Adah was inexperienced in dealing with coarse, drunken men. The other two women were not, swatting away hands as if they were annoying mosquitoes while ignoring their foul insinuations.
As Adah followed the other women out of the tent, a captain grabbed her by the leg and pulled her down on top of him. All the men laughed as she struggled to break free, pounding him with small fists.
“Our little warrior of the Sinai,” said the captain, “we should turn her loose on the fucking Israelis! She will bite their cocks off.”
Terrified, Adah tried to cry for help, but the captain covered her mouth with a sweaty palm. He cooed in her ear: “There, there, little one, I’m not going to hurt you. You will enjoy it when I break your cherry.”
The other men roared with laughter and clapped. One of the other officers said, “When you’re done with her, Achmed, pass her to me.”
“Little Christian bitch,” growled another. “They’re all whores, anyway.”
Somehow, Adah managed to free her teeth. She bit down as hard as she could. The taste of his iron-rich blood mixed with his salty sweat in her mouth was nauseating.
“She bit me!” screamed the Captain, shaking his bleeding hand.
Adah crawled away on her knees, and then she stood up to run, but the other men grabbed her and threw her onto the ground. Hatred burned in their eyes, and Adah knew that after raping her, the men would beat her to death.
Suddenly, Imam Colonel Kfir Essa entered followed by the two other serving women. “There, Imam,” said one of the women, pointing. “Sons of shoes!”
The women helped Adah to her feet.
The Imam stood between the women and the men, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You disgrace Islam and His Holy Prophet!” he roared. “This girl is under my personal protection. If any harm comes to her, I will take every one of you before an Islamic council!”
As the Imam and the women turned to leave, Adah heard the Captain snicker, “The holy man wants her for himself.”
Imam Essa heard, too. He walked up to the captain and slapped the man so hard across the face with a backhand that he fell to the ground. As everyone in the Middle East knew, to be backhanded by another man was a terrible insult.
Back in the women’s quarters, the two other women comforted a sobbing Adah like big sisters. One of them went to her cot and retrieved a knife from under her pillow.
“Allah, Imam Essa, and the Christian sergeant Khoury will protect you. But so will this.” She handed the knife to Adah.
“All the women on this base carry knives,” the other woman added. “I’m surprised no one has told you.”
“We simply wish to serve Allah and Egypt,” the first woman said, “but to them, all women are whores, Muslims and Christians alike.”
***
“THAT ISN’T TRUE IS it, that the Imam wanted you for himself?” John eyes pleaded, Say it isn’t so. “A holy man is a holy man and should be respected regardless of faith.”
Her anger flared, but not at John: “Of course not, he treated me like one of his daughters!” Then she lowered her eyes, softly, “He was not the one.”
***
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Adah drove a civilian Soviet Lada onto the base and parked it near the headquarters tent. She saw her friend, the Christian sergeant, Joseph Khoury. He was issuing orders to a driver about to join a troop convoy heading into the Sinai. Empty military trucks were being sent to pick up retreating soldiers and bring them to another staging area a hundred kilometers further west of the Suez.
Adah presented herself to Sergeant Khoury. “Sir, I have returned with Colonel Essa’s (the Imam) personal vehicle.” She pointed. “It is parked over there, sir.”
Sergeant Khoury was slightly distracted as he watched the last truck in the convoy leave the main gate and head east. “Well done, Adah. The Colonel will return from the front tomorrow morning. He will take you back to Cairo with him. You will be a guest of his family until you are sent home to yours.”
“Yes sir.”
He turned his sad eyes to her. “The war is over, Adah, will you please call me Joseph?”
“Yes, Joseph. You and Jalut have been very kind to me. You were like big brothers. I shall miss you both. Where is Jalut?”
Softly, “I shall miss you too, little one.” Then, shrugging off his sadness, “Jalut, our Goliath, is back in Cairo, the lucky hamagi (barbarian).” He chuckled.
***
ADAH HAD REACHED A point in her story so that angry tears that rolled down her cheeks like a flow of hot blood.
“He pretended to be my friend! He lied to me! He did not love me like a sister!” Adah screamed to John. “He turned out to be kuss ummak!”
“The Christian sergeant?”
Still seated at the table, her red face fueled by hate, she looked at him as if he was a dullard: “Who do you think I’m talking about?” she hissed. “He and I were practically the only ones left on base. All the other women were gone. I was alone and defenseless.”
She slapped both palms on the table; then shot straight up like a charge. She stormed into John’s kitchen and began slamming cups, the tin of coffee and the coffee maker. She took in a deep breath to calm herself, and then called to John:
“Would you like more coffee?”
“No thanks.”
“Well I’ll have another cup!”
“In that case, I’ll have some too. Are there any pastries left?”
***
ALTHOUGH TIRED FROM driving the Imam’s car all the way back from Cairo, Adah dared not fall asleep. A seventeen-year-old girl and the only woman left in camp, she knew that being surrounded by so many angry, bitter young men meant danger. Tomorrow, she would leave this place for good when Imam Colonel Essa came to take her back to Cairo with him. Until then, she felt isolated and vulnerable. She dared not go to the mess tent to eat. Out of sight, out of mind; as long as the young soldiers in camp did not see her she would be safe.
When night came, Adah lay curled up on her side in her fatigues and stocking feet, her boots laid on the ground beside her cot. The inside of the women’s tent was large; all ten women in the auxiliary had slept there. Now there was only one. Adah’s cot lay furthest from the entrance. All the other cots had been folded up and stacked in a corner. She laid there on her left side, facing the tent’s camouflaged cloth wall, her right hand ready to reach under the pillow for the knife. Then she heard the tent’s entrance flap rustle. A bright light entered. Men were forbidden to enter the women’s tent, but heavy stagger-steps said that someone didn’t give a damn about army prohibitions. The man hung the lamp he’d been carrying on a support pole
and the near-empty interior filled with light. Adah sat up, turned her body towards the entrance, shielded her eyes with her right hand and squinted while they adjusted to the brightness.
There stood a drunken Sergeant Khoury holding a bottle of vodka. He’d already finished three-quarters of it. The way he looked at her was not brother to sister. His drunken leer frightened her. He stood in the middle of the large tent holding the bottle high and swaying side-to-side.
“Since this is our last night together, let us celebrate another magnificent victory over the fucking Israelis.”
Because he was a Christian, the men used to call him The Monk. He had never before dropped an f-bomb in the presence of a woman. Talk among the other soldiers was that he did not drink and was true to his wife.
“Oh, wait! We lost. Again! We fucking lost again!” He laughed bitterly.
Was it the vodka that turned this monk mad? Was it another Egyptian defeat? Or had the liquor and the war simply unleashed an evil that had always dwelled within him. Certainly the woman that Adah would become knew how that worked. But the teenage version of Adah could not believe the change that had come over her friend. He staggered to the cot where she lay and motioned for her to take a swig of vodka.
“No, Joseph, I do not drink. I’m too young.”
“You must learn to drink. You’re a soldier! You drive trucks! Badly I might add.” He took another swig from the bottle — some of which dripped off his chin. He wiped it away with his sleeve. “And you’re a Christian not a Muslim virgin waiting to take her place in Paradise.” He thrust the bottle to her: “Just one sip. That’s an order, soldier!”
She sat up and held the bottle in both hands. One sip left the worst, most foul aftertaste in her mouth; it rolled down her gullet like flowing lava.
“There, one sip,” she said, squinting. Then she handed the bottle back to Khoury. “Now please leave, how does it look you and I alone together? And you a married man, and I have my family’s honor to protect.”
He grabbed the bottle, finished it off, and tossed it into a corner. He closed his eyes and a wild smile filled his entire face, giving Adah a good look at his terrible teeth. Then, quick as a cobra, he struck. He grabbed her by both shoulders and threw her onto the ground. He straddled her and began to tear at her clothes. She felt like she was being mauled by a tiger.
***
“HE RAPED YOU, ADAH!” John said, looking like he wanted to empty his stomach of the fine meal he’d spent all day cooking.
Cooly, “I thought we had already established that.”
He jumped up off the chair, stomped back and forth across the small living room, beating the air with his fists. “I HATE THE MOTHERFUCKER!” he yelled. “I want to chop him to pieces with Maxwell!”
Calmly, “Quite unnecessary, John, and I can assure you, my revenge was even more gruesome. And quite befitting... Sit please.”
He flopped back down onto his seat. He looked like all the life had been sucked out of his body.
***
KHOURY LAY IN A STATE of semi-consciousness on his back, his lust sated. Adah sat in a corner, her knees pulled tight to her chest — a fortification of sorts but far too late. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until there were no more tears in her. And then she remembered:
The knife!
She retrieved it from under the pillow and crawled over to where Khoury lay. Straddling his ankles, she leaned forward and slapped his face. Hard! She wanted him awake to feel the pain, to be terrified. He groaned but did not open his eyes. With the tip of the knife, she sliced one of his nostrils open.
He screamed.
He opened his eyes and ran fingers across his nose. He saw the blood, but still didn’t realize what was happening, or rather what was about to happen. Then, when he saw Adah holding a knife in both hands, raised above her head, he shrieked. She brought the knife down, again and again and again. His curdling shrieks seemed loud enough to fill the entire Sinai.
Teeth clenched in hatred so pure its flame burned invisible, Adah was in a stabbing frenzy, digging a hole in her rapist’s crotch. The troops had always referred to the women’s quarters as the Red Tent. In Biblical times, a red tent was where menstruating women were segregated. But Adah’s cycle was now one of fury. And the blood that covered her and the inside cloth of the tent gushed from Sergeant Joseph Khoury. By the time she finished digging, the man was dead, his face a death mask of shock and agony. Both his eyes bulged. She finished the job by digging the knife into each socket and shredding each eyeball.
***
ADAH SNICKERED. “AFTER I butchered him like the pig he was, I gouged his fucking eyes out.”
John winched and covered his crotch with both hands. She saw the horrified look on his face, but did not care. Telling, and thereby reliving, the story was enough to set her very soul on fire. If John had a problem with the truth, that was his business not hers.
“Well, you wanted the whole story — and now you have it. So?” she said, smugly glancing at him.
Run away, little Paddy. This world is too cruel for the likes of you.
Then, in a sing-song voice whose melody was sarcasm, “Still love me, John?”
Finally, he must have cleared those horrid images out of his head enough to ask, “Did they arrest you?”
Adah said that when the rapist began screaming, soldiers came running. The stink of blood, sweat and gore turned the soldiers into an angry mob.
“They had me cornered,” she continued. “At least with my knife I might send a few of those sons of their mothers’ filthy cunts to Hell before they killed me ... Then a soldier burst in with an AK-47. He aimed it at me. ‘Kill the whore! Kill the whore!’ the others yelled, but he was a rear echelon trooper. He never killed before, so he hesitated.”
“Oh my God!” John replied.
“Luckily for me, Imam Essa came back a day early. He ran into the tent and stopped them. At the time, I wanted to die, anyway. I was now soiled, unfit to be a wife and mother.”
“But you did nothing!” he said, pleading, but pleading to whom? God? Humanity? Justice?
“I was only seventeen, John. Of course I blamed myself. Did I do something to give him the wrong idea?” She closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “All the while he was raping me, he was telling me how much he loved me that he would divorce his wife and marry me.”
“Sick motherfucker! I’m glad you killed him. He deserved to die. How come they didn’t hang you?”
“Imam Essa, God always be with him, went to my uncle and told him what had happened. Uncle Ahmad is a high-ranking general; he made it all go away.”
What she did not tell John was that her uncle immediately had her transferred to the GID where she later became an intelligence officer.
“God be with him, too,” John said of her uncle.
“Do you think I am a dirty girl?”
“Hell no!”
“Do you still love me?”
Softly, “Yes, Adah, I’ll always love you.”
An emotional truth he’d felt only in the moment. How would he react the next time his body touched hers?
The body speaks truths that the mouth cannot.