After a long journey by foot, we reached the Hashid transit camp [Yemen]: my parents, my siblings, and I. My siblings were a brother and sister older than me and from a different mom, as well as my younger brother Shlomo. The immigration workers decided to fly the children separately, without their parents. Shlomo and I were flown into Israel, and after a month and half, the rest of my family arrived. Mom never saw Shlomo again, but she managed to get me back.

When I was two years old in the nursery, mom came to visit every day, but one day I disappeared with no trace together with other children. Mom did not accept all the excuses about my death. She did her homework and understood that they had transferred some children to another hospital; She arrived there somehow and demanded to see me. They answered back again that I was no longer among the living. Mom decided to scour all rooms, including a locked room. She burst the door open and in that room she saw four children in their beds. She came to me and I shouted, “Mom, mom.” She recognized me and immediately took off my clothes to identify my birth marks, and without asking permission from anyone, she covered me with her arms and returned home.

Mom was determined to find us. She went to Haifa and she moved heaven and earth. They tried to trick her. They told her that her children had died, but the next day she found me and she took me without asking. But she never found my brother Shlomo, and she never forgave herself until the day she died. She had a feeling he was still alive.

Yehiel Aharon