Yusuf sat near the entrance, watching the air flow through a narrow opening.
Daniel finally dared to speak, his voice still hesitant:
I joined the army because I believed... I believed that Israel was the
only democracy here. The promised land for us. My ancestors fled
Europe... This was supposed to be our safe haven."
Yusuf turned to him slowly.
There was no mockery in his eyes, only the weight of years.
He said quietly, as if recounting something he knew by heart:
"Daniel... Do you know when the Jews first came to this land after Europe rejected them? How did the people of Palestine welcome them? They opened their homes to them, gave them bread and water, treated them as guests as a sacred duty. The Palestinians did not know then that they would be only to be repaired with fire."
Daniel frowned:
"But... history says that this land was promised. The Bible says..."
Yusuf interrupted him, his voice rising slightly:
"The Torah is a religious book, but it is human beings who inhabit the land. My ancestors lived here for hundreds of years, planting olives and oranges. What book justifies killing children or demolishing houses on top of their inhabitants?"
Daniel had no answer, so he remained silent.
On another night, the conversation resumed.
Daniel said:
"I used to think that Hamas were terrorists. That's what we were taught. That's why I came. To defend freedom."
Yusuf smiled sadly:
"Freedom? What freedom? The freedom that means my city is a big prison? That when a child gets sick, he can't find medicine because he's behind a military barrier? The freedom that builds a wall that isolates people from their land and fields?"
Daniel bowed his head.
These words were not slogans. They were truths spoken by a man who had lost his home and his family.As the days passed, their conversations became a habit.
Daniel would present his arguments, and Yusuf would respond calmly, recounting a history he had never heard before:
"It was called Palestine before it was called Israel."
"Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together there, until the Zionist project came along."
"The conflict was not religious, but colonial... a people expelled to make way for others."
Little by little, something began to crack in Daniel's mind.
He felt confused:
Could what he had been taught since childhood be incomplete? Could the man who gave him
water and bread, his supposed enemy, be more truthful than all the speeches he had heard in New York?
For the first time since his capture, he saw Joseph not as a guard or an enemy, but as a human being with wounds and memories, and a voice he could not ignore.