A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Tal writes to Naïm with the news that seeing her therapist twice a week is helping—or at least forcing her to get out of the house. She describes newspaper articles about Israeli and Palestinian children who have been traumatized by the violence around them, and she saw Naïm’s friend Paolo quoted in one of them.

Tal says she confessed to Eytan that she has a friend in Gaza, but Eytan said he knew already, because he had read her letter even though she asked him not to. Her parents overheard their ensuing argument and now also know about Naïm—Tal’s father believes their correspondence is a sign of hope. Later, Eytan apologized for trying to protect her, and admitted that he saw Naïm discover the bottle and instinctively trusted him to keep the message safe. Tal says that knowing her own brother saw Naïm makes her feel closer to him than ever.

Tal writes in her diary about taking a walk with her father in the evening. She describes passing the Hillel Cafe. She told her father that the young woman who died that day before her wedding is what led her put the message in