Outcast

The story takes place in Tiberias in 1936, during the British Mandate.

Act One

At Nadim’s club, a crowd of Arab men awaits the performance of Bahiyya, the star singer. Bahiyya takes the stage and sings to the enthusiastic audience a song of longing for freedom and love. That same night, after the performance, Jewish youths ambush Bahiyya in an alley, call her a whore, and throw a stone at her. Bahiyya threatens them with a pistol. A mysterious stranger drives the youths away and tends to Bahiyya’s wound. He warns her about what is to come: in the tense political climate, with the conflict between Jews and Arabs escalating, she will be required to choose sides. Bahiyya, whose Jewish family has cast her out, responds with contempt. The stranger predicts that they will meet again soon; His name is Gabriel, and he is a commander in the Haganah.

The following day, in the dressing room, Bahiyya’s friend Hind speaks with her about the acts of violence and terror. Bahiyya expresses disgust toward her family, which cast her out, but Hind, whose own family has also rejected her, argues that “the fingernail can never detach itself from the flesh.” They promise one another: “You are of my flesh, my sister.” One of the club’s patrons, an effendi (Gentleman) from Jenin, bursts into the room and demands to buy a night with Bahiyya, by money or by force. Hind offers herself to the effendi and saves Bahiyya from rape.

Bahiyya returns to Gabriel and offers him a deal: she will serve as an informant for the Haganah, and in return he will get her out of Tiberias after a year, to a new life in Tel Aviv. With this promise, Bahiyya gathers the courage to visit her mother and her sister Clara, whom she has not seen for twelve years. They live in a village on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Clara hurls insults at Bahiyya, who lives as a fallen woman. The mother, who has sunk into dementia, recognizes no one except Yaakov, Clara’s son. Bahiyya is enchanted by the nephew she never knew, but Clara demands that she leave and never return. On the way back to Tiberias, in Gabriel’s car, Bahiyya dreams of the new life awaiting her in Tel Aviv, where no one will know her.

Some time later, drunken British officers run wild in Nadim’s club. Just before a fight breaks out, Bahiyya calms the situation. She and Hind spend time with the officers and extract intelligence from them: the next day, an attack is expected in the Jewish market of Tiberias. The following day, Bahiyya goes to the market. She encounters Yaakov and urges him to flee, but other boys mock her and once again call her “Bahiyya the whore.” The frightened Yaakov runs away — straight into the scene of the attack.

Act Two

At the hospital, Clara sits beside the bed of Yaakov, who was wounded in the attack. She accuses Bahiyya of knowing about the attack and failing to prevent it. While Clara prays for Yaakov’s recovery, Gabriel comforts Bahiyya, telling her that she did everything she could. He proposes that Bahiyya establish “a house of her own” — a brothel that will host the leading figures of the Arab community and the senior British command in the Galilee. Bahiyya persuades Hind to join her and promises her money, freedom, and security. Hind suspects that there is a man pulling the strings, but agrees.

Bahiyya recruits two more women and attracts a loyal clientele. She serves them drinks, flirts, and converses with them, while secretly peeking and listening to what takes place in the bedrooms. The information she gathers she passes on to Gabriel. The women of Tiberias are shocked by the promiscuity and denounce Bahiyya as a traitor. Hanan, one of the workers in the brothel, speaks with a client. Aware that Bahiyya is listening to them, he tells of a gang of terrorists that is about to attack a Jewish neighborhood in the southern part of Tiberias. A week later, the women of Tiberias lament the massacre that took place in a Jewish neighborhood in the northern part of the city, contrary to the information that had reached Bahiyya. The women in the brothel raise a lament of their own, over murders committed by Jews in an Arab village as an act of retaliation.

Gabriel bursts into Bahiyya’s room. He accuses her of deliberately giving him false information regarding the nature of the expected attack. The senior leaders of the Haganah hold him responsible for the massacre and remove him from his position and from Tiberias. Gabriel promises Bahiyya that he will return to take her away soon. She demands that he swear it by her real name — Michal.

A British major, one of Bahiyya’s clients, arrives at the brothel with soldiers and announces that Bahiyya’s espionage activities have been exposed. The soldiers destroy the house while searching for hidden weapons. The major wishes Bahiyya a bitter end.

Hind is horrified to discover that Bahiyya used her and the other women and betrayed the trust they had placed in her. Bahiyya replies, “The fingernail can never detach itself from the flesh”; that is, her loyalty is ultimately to her own people. Heartbroken and furious, Hind abandons her. Bahiyya is left alone. She waits in vain for Gabriel to return or send someone to rescue her. She knows that her time is running out. Yaakov, now recovered, arrives to take her to the village, to Clara, who has forgiven her. From the street come the cries of Arab men who have come to take revenge on the spy, alongside the voices of the Jewish women of Tiberias, who disown the fallen woman. Bahiyya urges Yaakov to hide and save himself. She opens the door to the attackers, who shoot her to death.