Exodus - Leon Uris [143]
“Speak! Speak! Speak!”
For three days and three nights the Turks tortured Sarah Ben Canaan. Even the Turks were awed by the woman’s endurance. At last they let her go as a token to her courage, for they had never seen anyone endure pain with such dignity. Ruth, who had been waiting and pleading in the station anteroom, carried Sarah back to Shoshanna on a donkey cart.
With the first labor pains she allowed herself the luxury of screaming in anguish. She shrieked for all the times the Turks could not make her cry. Her battered body rebelled convulsively.
Her cries grew dimmer and weaker. No one believed she was going to live through it.
A son was born and Sarah Ben Canaan lived.
She hung between life and death for weeks. Ruth and the farmers of Shoshanna lavished every affection and care upon her. The remarkable courage that had kept the little black-eyed Silesian alive under Turkish torture and the pain of childbirth kept her alive now. Her will to see Barak again was so strong that death could not intervene.
It took over a year for her to mend. Her recovery was slow and filled with pain. It was months before she was able to stand and walk on her battered feet. There was a limp that would never go away.
The child was strong and healthy. Everyone said he would grow up to be another Barak, for already he was lean and tall, although he had Sarah’s dark features. With the torment over, Sarah and Ruth awaited their men.
From Cairo to Gallipoli to England to America the brothers wandered. Each day they were tormented with fear for the lives of Sarah and Ruth. They were aghast at the tales being brought from Palestinian refugees of the terror of Jemal Pasha.
Early in 1917 the British Army swept out of Egypt and pushed the Turks back over the Sinai Peninsula to the doorstep of Palestine. At Gaza they were stopped cold. General Allenby then took command of the British forces and under him the British renewed the offensive. By the end of 1917 they had slashed into Palestine and captured Beersheba. On the heels of this victory the ancient gates of Gaza were stormed and Gaza fell. The British knifed up the coast to capture Jaffa.
With Allenby’s successful campaign, the long-overdue, much heralded, very costly, and highly overrated Arab revolt began. Faisal, son of the sherif of Mecca, brought in a few tribes from the desert when it was obvious that the Turks were losing. With the Ottomans on their backs, the Arabs dropped their cloak of neutrality so that they could share in the coming spoils. Faisal’s “rebels” made a good deal of noise and hacked up an unguarded rail line but never put it out of commission. Never once did Arab “rebels” engage in a major or minor battle.
At the ancient city of Megiddo the forces of Allenby and those of the Turks set for a battle. Here was the testing ground for a hundred conquering armies over five thousand years—Megiddo, where the stables of Solomon were to be found and where it was said that the second coming of Christ would take place. Megiddo commanded a ravine to the north which was a natural passageway. It had been the route of conquest since man had begun to record time.
Megiddo fell to Allenby!
By Christmas, less than a year after Allenby assumed command, he led his British forces into liberated Jerusalem!
The British rolled on to Damascus until the Turks were scattered and driven to oblivion. The fall of Damascus was the death knell of the Ottomans.
The Czar of Russia, who had wanted so badly to start a war with the Turks, never lived to realize his dream of a Russian Constantinople. The Russian people rebelled against centuries of suppression, and he and his entire family were shot by a firing squad.
Although his empire was completely crushed and stolen and he had lost his position as the “Shadow of God” to a billion Moslems, Mohammed V was enjoying life in his harem as the war ended.
Barak Ben Canaan and his brother Akiva came home. The roses were in bloom and the land was alive and green and the waters of