Where the Desert Meets the Sea

by Werner Sonne

She had tried to get her apartment back in order after it was ransacked by Jewish intruders, but her father had stopped her. It’s pointless, he kept saying, pointless, pointless. She tried not to think about it, tried not to keep having the same thoughts. They would have to decide, soon. Her father pressured her about it every day. The more she considered it, the more she found that there wasn’t much to deliberate, not with David dead. He had been her bridge to another world, to their world, the Jews’ world. But this bridge had been burned just as he had been burned to death in that bus. What options did she have left? Live here, alone? Or with her father, who didn’t even wish to live anymore? Deir Yassin belonged to the Jews now. Her mother was dead as well, murdered. What had once been her home village was now inaccessible even though it only lay a few miles to the west. Her father was right. It was pointless. Hana stood up and went into the kitchen. She pulled out the sharp carving knife and went back to her bed. Gently, as if probing, she ran the sharp blade across the veins of her left arm. Judith had attempted it, and she hadn’t succeeded. But Hana was a nurse. She knew what she needed to do to truly make the cut deadly. She pressed the blade harder to her lower arm, making a small incision. Suddenly she stopped. She thought she felt a slight movement in her abdomen. She caught her breath. Again she felt something moving. It had moved, her baby had moved.