Eyeless

... Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves ...

                                        Milton, Samson Agonistes

     Irine lay in the hospital bed in Carcassonne, wondering what happened to her eye.  Her right eye, the weaker one, where was it?  She could feel the outlines of an enormous patch with a metal surface covering part of her cheek and the sense that her eye socket was not as it had been before she closed her eyes to sleep, lying in her bed in a house on the main avenue in Caunes.

     When the man climbed on the bed, waking her, he delivered a violent punch to her face.  She remembered that she felt her nose cave in, but even startled she was alert enough to start swinging her arms and butting with her head to try to throw the intruder off the bed.  For a woman in her sixties, she was stronger and taller than average, but the man, who was fully masked and dressed in camouflage gear, was strongest.  He punched her in the face again, this time hitting her directly in the right eye, at which time she lost consciousness.  

     She feared for her life, but more, that she would be sexually assaulted.  So after a few seconds, when she regained something like consciousness, she lay still as if dead, hoping the man would ignore her and take whatever he wanted.  

     She heard some tromping around --the man was heavy enough that his boots reverberated on the tile floor-- then she heard a door close loudly.  She thought it was the front door, but she did not dare move yet.  After waiting, counting to one thousand, then two, then three, then four, then five thousand, she was satisfied that the intruder would not return, and allowed herself to try to open her eyes.  Only her left eye was intact, but she could see the phone by the bedside.  She pulled the receiver off its base and punched in "17" for the police, mumbling her address and the word attaqué before she fainted again.