Margalit recounts: I immigrated to Israel in '48 and married Yehiya (Yechiel). In 1949 I gave birth to a son named Avraham, in Jaffa’s Dajani Hospital. After about two weeks they told me that because the child needed to get stronger and because he had stomach pains he would have to stay in hospital. Five days later—I went to breastfeed and see him twice a day—they told me that the baby had died. They did not show me his body or a death certificate. My husband returned from the army and asked to see the baby but they did not let him. He shouted and they called the police who arrested him for twenty-four hours.

For eighteen years we got birth grants from the National Insurance Institute for the supposedly deceased boy. After eighteen years the army came to us. My husband, blessed be his memory, was forced to state and sign that as far as he knew his son had died, even though he had never seen a body or a grave. The National Insurance Institute demanded the money be returned to them. On my ID card—in the Ministry of the Interior—Avraham’s name is still mentioned.

When I fell ill a month ago I cried incessantly for Abraham to come back, to come back to me. Every Friday I light a candle for him. I still hope to see him.