Zahraa, a Freedom Fighter of Other Kind!

Zeinab Daher

On the day the Zionists invaded her hometown, the story of Zahraa came to be...

Fatima al-Abdallah, alias Zahraa al-Sayyed, was subjected to forced displacement, just like many southerners who were forced to leave their villages under the ‘Israeli' invasion of south Lebanon in 1982.

As days passed, with a killing routine, people started hearing of some operations against the occupying army. However, people still didn't believe at the time in their ability to resist that huge enemy.

The Resistance movement started growing, in which the bloods of its martyrs promoted a positive sense among the people, awakening their consciences and sprouting hope deep in their hearts.

Respectively, self-sacrifice operations represented a landmark turning point in the age of Resistance. They horrified the ‘Israeli' occupation entity which started intensifying its oppressive measures against the landowners.

The growth in Resistance operations' scheme turned the equation upside down. From that point, people started believing that a small group of fighters can combat the once-called legend of the ‘invincible army.'

Watching all the suffering and oppressions, and bearing in her mind her detained brother in the Khiam prison, Zahraa made her decision not to keep her arms folded: "I must be part of the Resistance," she was fully determined.

Making use of her mother's livelihood in the occupied south, Zahraa managed to get introduced to one of the Resistance leaders, martyr Said Mawassi.

The next step was that she was tasked to provide the Resistance with information on the spies in the village as well as the regular movement of the enemy's soldiers whenever she comes to visit her mother.

One day, Zahraa was in Khiam, her village, when the Resistance performed an operation against the ‘Israelis'. The Zionist entity, in the aftermaths of what they refer to as an ‘attack', ordered their soldiers to arrest whoever they doubt belongs to Resistance, including Zahraa.

At the detention camp, the interrogator started asking her:

-What are you doing here? Where are the weapons?
-Which weapons?
-The ones you brought with you!
-I've passed through your checkpoints... How could I have transferred weapons?!

Zahraa insisted that she has nothing to do with all the accusations against her. One officer threatened to detain her in the Khiam Prison in case she didn't confess. Zahraa, however, didn't fear his threats. She stood up and said: I have nothing to say, take me to the prison.

Meanwhile, she was hearing screams from other interrogation rooms as the notorious ‘Israeli' way to interrogate suspects was to torture them using several inhumane means. They beat prisoners, use electric shocks, immerse their heads in water, and pour hot water and cold water successively. Zahraa was just wondering if she will be able to bear all those kinds of torture as she kept hearing the prisoners' screams all over the night she spent there.

Three more days passed, Zahraa was still in the same conditions. Later, she was taken to the Khiam prison for some one hour visit before she was taken, with her eyes blinded, in a trip to a place she didn't know.

Interrogations there resumed, but Zahraa insisted not to submit. She wanted to document her daily adventures, and managed to find papers in the foil sheets found in cigarette packs. The pencil was a little one she found somewhere in the prison. Zahraa narrated her dailies on a bunch of those papers.

Weeks passed and Zahraa remained in her cell... she got to know some of the prisoners, some of which were intelligence agents sent by the prison's administration!

Days and days passed, but Zahraa had never confessed a single word... She triumphed in her own way, the jailer concede defeat as he couldn't obtain the information he was dying to know...

Finally, they decided to set her free. Zahraa saw the sunlight and later knew that she has benn spending all those days in the holy land of Palestine. The prison she was kept at is Kishon, she later figured out.

Zahraa, carrying the fresh air of Palestine, was sent back home, free, and continued her Resistance work in several ways.

She wrote about Resistance, she defended and supported it. She kept the cause of wiping out ‘Israeli' in her top priorities, until a day came when her dream, like all true land lovers and freedom fighters, came to be.

Zahraa lived after the land was liberated in 2000 for 15 years. It happened that her love of land gifted her a trip to heaven on that same day. Zahraa passed away on the day of liberation in 2015.

Al-Ahed News