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After the Declaration of Independence of the Jewish State in 15 May 1948, Elkano and his collegues were sent to an operation of capturing the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The first night for that mission they spent in the woods of Kibbuts Hulda. A very hot Hamsin air has wrapped the whole contryside. Warm wind slipped from the mountains to the valleys and to the plain of Sharon and to the seashore as well. At once you could feel the dryness of everything surrounding you: the wetness of grass and flower had disappeared. Also the orchards and woods and other plantations- had become grey from dust instead of green, and the throat was dry and thirsty… The eastern wind was capturing everything. You could do nothing against this secret-silent wind, which was sawing the roofs of houses, stables and huts. Also the moon and stars had disappeared, and the few that remained would become gloomy.

  The hens suffered very much from this weather, and Nahumik helped his mother, by taking a rubber pipe and sending water on the hens-coops’ roofs; but that had not helped much. The boy and his mother had to pull out dying chicken from the coops into a grave digged thereby. The rest of them, having remained only fainting or completely alive – Ramona and Nahumik took into their living room, and were splashing water over them…

  Nahumik was not attending school in that day. In the afternoon he went to Rabbi Aaron, and told him about the hens’ disaster. The Rabbi immediately arrived in Ramona’s house, and butchered fifty of the fainting hens, strictly keeping the Jewish Kosher way of Butchering,( a partial cut of the chicken throat- not fully separating the head from body). So, Ramona was able to sell the hens and chicken’s flesh and get some money from a Butchery owner in the towncenter. The man sold the blue-sallow hens very cheaply to whoever would buy… About half of all Ramona’s chicken died in the hundred ten Farnheit degrees night, and in the day after.

  The son and mother felt desparate. They did not know that in those hours – Elklano had a much more horrible experience.

  CHAPTER 17