Rape and Killing of a Bedouin Girl
Adania Shibli, the Palestinian author and academic was due to be honoured with a LiBeraturpreis at the Frankfurt Book Festival on the 20th October 2023 for her stunning novel Minor Detail, when her oeuvre was “suddenly discovered” to be antisemitic, and the prize was withdrawn. The novel was based on a real gang rape of a Bedouin teenager by an Israeli platoon in 1949 when they were annexing part of the Negev desert, the facts of which affair were aired on Ha’aretz. The same facts appear in my work in progress (play), Gaza, of which I give a relevant extract.
Rachel is an Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas on the 7th of October. The action is a tunnel somewhere in Gaza. She paces up and down in a state of confusion, when the ghost of the Bedouin Girl appears to her.
Rachel: Who are you?
Bedouin Girl: History did not give me a name.
Rachel: Then go away… why bother me?
Bedouin Girl: But I exist even without a name. I exist on the pages of Ha’aretz, in the diary of Ben Gurion … as the Bedouin girl who was treated with terrific atrocity … I’m described as in my mid teens.
Rachel:Remind me …
Bedouin Girl: Do I need to? You often talked about me at uni, in the days when you cared.
Rachel:I said remind me.
Bedouin Girl: The Englishman … well he had fought Hitler, but was now he was a commander securing Nirim for his new country.
Rachel: In the Negev desert.
Bedouin Girl: I was with my father, when your soldiers arrived … they shot father dead … and our camel as well. I prayed to Allah they’d kill me as well, but they did not. They seized me and dragged me to their camp.
Rachel:I’m sorry.
Bedouin Girl:They gave me_
Rachel:Something to eat?
Bedouin Girl: A bath. They said I was dirty and smelled. They ripped off my clothes and hosed me down … the Englishman then called his soldiers. Boys, he said, let us vote. What we do with her? Return her to her tribe or_
Rachel:I know …
Bedouin Girl:We wanna fuck her, we wanna fuck her … they cried.
Rachel:It was war. I’m sorry.
Bedouin Girl: The Englishman was first, then the others lined up. …
Rachel:How many were there?
Bedouin Girl: How do I know? I never learnt to count, never went to school. Then Sergeant Michael shot me dead in the head. Khalas! (pause)Oh I forget. The Englishman’s colonel, I remember his name, Yehuda Drexler, he asked the commander if he had returned the girl … me … to her tribe.
Rachel: I know. It’s so sad. He answered, no, I was trying to save petrol, we buried her in the sand.
