When the News Becomes Unbearable: A Literary Reflection
This short literary piece won first prize in the local phase of the Mila Bamakom competition and was first published in a Hebrew anthology by Helicon Press (November 2025). It was written in response to a news report concerning the fate of six hostages killed in captivity.
Eleven Months Under the Ground
by Sagit Alkobi Fishman
I
In the hiding place of the laundry room, beside thick cables of a dusty electric boiler and the vibrating motor of an air conditioner, a carcass still stands: a chick that did not survive. And beside it: an egg that never hatched. Day by day they dissolve into the mixture of droppings and twigs enveloping them–a modern nest of the age of urbanism, a sliver of time that slipped outside the flow, like a present already belonging to the dead. My gaze lingers upon these mute remains as I remember the WhatsApp message reported in the newspapers: “Get me out of here, okay?”
II
Words become orphaned in this place, the shared one, echoing far from the reports of unnatural deaths of these days. And I think to myself: this is what collective trauma looks like–a wound torn open, deepening into the earth, like hell-tunnels dug by those who once were, they too, human beings. And then I remember the carcass lying in the hiding place, and my gaze returns to the sight of the doves who mourned it for many days, standing on a railing covered with traces of those who stood there before them.
III
To vanish in one place and appear in another, like something changing form. Like hope that dies last, yet knows resurrection: near the chick that became a headstone dissolving into its surroundings, a wing lifted, after hours of stillness, and an egg is revealed, far enough from the warm current of the air conditioner motor. Look! It has hatched! And again–life. In its simplicity.
