My parents, Yona (Hamama) Nahari, of the Ozeri family, and Shlomo (Saliman) Nahari married already in Yemen and had a number of children. We reached Hashid Camp already in 1948, we were four siblings: Ora was 14, Shoshana (Sham’a) was ten, Naomi (Naama) was five, and the baby was seven or eight month old, by the name of Zemach. The baby was healthy, light-skinned and the beautiful. I remember that on the way there, we were in trucks, mother constantly made sure that he would eat and be healthy. I would hold a candle for her at night and she would feed him while the truck was in motion. When we arrived at Hashid Camp we were told to entrust him to the caregivers in the nursery of the camp. It was in the very beginning of Hashid Camp. We were among the first to get there and it was really hot, an actual desert. We understood that we needed to take care of the child and put him in the nursery. From that moment on we did not see him. A dark-skinned Sudanese guard, tall and large, stood at the door, armed with a gun and threatening us to not go in. After two hours they came and asked - who is Hamama Nahari? The child died, we buried him. How? What? They said, We buried him near the sea. Mother cried and cried ... she tried and pleaded, begged, cried and screamed but they did not show Zemach to her. What sort of thing is it to take an infant from his still breastfeeding mother? God in heavens. This is something I am only now starting to process. Immediately after that we were put on the plane and that was it. We arrived to Israel.

Who knows, maybe he is watching us today and will recognize himself. Maybe he's alive somewhere.

When we got to Israel, we were in Rosh Ha’ayin Transit Camp, where they tried to kidnap me (Shoshana) and my father watched over me. They manage to kidnap my uncle, my mother's brother, in Rosh Ha’ayin at that time. To each their story. Each person swallowed their own story in a roaring silence.

After a month in the Rosh Ha’ayin transit camp we arrived to the settlements in the Jerusalem Corridor, Khirbet al Luz, Kislon, Zanuach, Har Tov, etc. Every time they wanted to put heaps of people in some place to hold the territory Arabs inhabited before, they put us there. When we arrived, we were in a tent for two weeks to a month and again were moved to a new place. In Har Tov, this was around 1950, mother gave birth to a son, stillbirth, after rocky travels in a truck. She was ashamed to say that she was in labor, and when we stopped in Har Tov and got off, she went to the side of the road and gave birth among the stones. Not only did the child die, but she was asked to give a statement to the police that she did not cause the boy's death. They wanted to put her on trial but father objected and said that it was enough he died. After two years, the next son Zachary was born. She gave birth for him at home, of course. Mother did not want to give birth in a hospital.

Mom went on and gave birth to more children, knock on wood, but never forgot Zemach. All her life she cursed the doctors, caregivers and nurses, and never trusted any hospital staff. She continued to talk about him to the day she died. She lost children, she knows what it means when a child dies, saw a body each time. But this, this always remained a big question mark.

Shoshana Shmaryahu and Naomi Nahari