Towards dawn, following the bomb-fight on the Jaffa Road, those
masses of sulphurous cumulo-nimbus, piled over the Hills of Gilead,
move without the push of a wind behind towards the damp rain-clouds
rolling inland from the Mediterranean, and there is a great
thunderstorm over Shechem. Forked lightning strikes and splits the
rocks, the echoes of Nebo and Gerizim bellow in answer to the
rattling volleys of cloud-artillery. Wadis and passes became foaming
cataracts, field-bivouacs are flooded--men and guns are bogged in the
foot-deep mud of the hill-roads--and supply-columns of British A.S.C.
hopelessly held up in the vast cotton-soil morass that was yesterday
the Maritime Plain.
By noon of the next day the sun regains sway, and the smells of
Shechem their wonted potency. Save for one Turkish sentry at the
gate, the guard has been removed from the Wired Enclosure. In its
littered desolation an offence to the eye--in its neglected filth an
outrage to the adjacent organ, it lies and steams and festers under
the baking rays; and all the winged legions of Baal Zebub seem there
to be holding revel--especially in the neighbourhood of the wooden
hut.
A couple of hours after noon the Enclosure is visited by the Bey.
The _posta_ at the gate stiffens to the salute as Hamid passes in
with the gauze-spectacled Medical Officer and his bilious-looking
secretary, his nondescript Greek interpreter, and his usual following
of big-bearded, red-fezzed _zabtiehs_, armed with German Service
revolvers, and repeating Winchesters.
The fog of flies about the wooden hut thins a little as the visitors
approach its entrance. The heavy door--broken now--stands as wide as
though no prisoner were within worth keeping. The odour of
corruption fills the place. The Bey spits, the Turkish Medical
Officer in the black gauze spectacles furtively sucks a formamint
lozenge, and conveys one to the interpreter--the Secretary holds his
nose....
The wooden bed has been dragged aside from the patch of ground it
covered, where shows the mouth of the tunnel, which has been hastily
filled up with brickbats, sand, and gravel. Flies rise in a roaring
cloud from the bedstead as the visitors enter, and the Bey, with a
pale twinkle in his oblique sandy eyes--the inevitable cigarette
poised between his thick gloved fingers--perpetrates one of his
inimitable jests:
"Come, see a greedy dog we have in here--a Yahudi of the Yahud, who
has eaten stick till his belly burst, and now can eat no more! ..."
At which display of wit the fat, goggled surgeon squirms with
laughter, the secretary and the interpreter, faint with mirth, retire
to the threshold, and even the flies buzz as though they too
appreciated the jest....
The Thing that lies upon the bed looks as though it, too, joined in
the merriment, for its teeth are set, and the swollen lips drawn
back--the Medical Officer learnedly explains--in the rigor of the
early stages of tetanus, so that it grins from ear to ear. A
mountainous bulk of bloody flesh, clothed in a garment of feasting
flies, and bound about with an iron chain that is padlocked under the
_anghareb_--he is no more than the caricature of what was once a man.
A man who has suffered the extremest punishment of the _falagy_. Who
has been beaten by the lithe green rods on the feet and legs, on the
belly and breast, on the loins and thighs and face.... Beaten to
kill by relays of men, skilled in the use of the _asayisi_, and yet,
for a wonder, is not dead....
Labouring breaths issue from the bloated lips, and puff from the
split nostrils. In the glazed eyes staring from their bleeding
orbits, black fire smoulders still.... He is even capable of a
croaking sound, which he reiterates at intervals, with his bleeding
eyes begging at the faces of those beside his bed....
"_So' ûk sû! ... So' ûk sû! ..._"