The night in Florida was no more merciful than the night in the tunnel.
Despite the calm sky and the salty smell of the sea seeping through his window, Daniel woke up every night drenched in cold sweat, his heart beating like a war drum.
In his dream, he saw darkness itself... earthen walls closing in around him... muffled breathing...
and then that voice that haunted him like an inescapable shadow:
"Daniel... Daniel..."
It was Yusuf's voice.
Not as an enemy, nor as a guard... but as a fatherly call, as if asking him not to leave him there.
Daniel opened his eyes in the darkness, panting as if he had just emerged from under the rubble.
He reached out to the small table next to his bed, where the worn notebook lay.
Yusuf's notebook.
He opened it tremulously, turned its pages, and found a picture of the little girl with a
spontaneous smile amid the ruins of war.
He closed his eyes again.
Yusuf never left him, neither in sleep nor in wakefulness.
His mind returned, against his will, to that first moment...
To the day he found himself in the belly of the tunnel, a prisoner, unaware of what awaited him.
Memories began to flood back:
his hands bound, a black cloth over his eyes, rapid footsteps pushing him through the
corridors.
Then the cloth was removed from his face, and he found himself in pitch darkness. Around him were three unfamiliar faces, like tense shadows. The place was damp and cramped, as if the earth had swallowed them up.
At that moment, Yusuf entered for the first time.
He did not know his name then, but he remembered the look in his eyes: harsh, angry, as if his presence there was a personal insult to him.Daniel heard his words in Arabic – he did not understand them all, but he picked up on their tone:
rejection. Anger. Resentment.
Yusuf only approached him to place a bottle of water and a piece of bread in front of him.
He sat far away in the corner, like a wall of silence.
And that was the beginning of a whole month of exhausting silence, where all they could hear was the sound of their breath echoing in the tunnel.