This was the Government Hospital for Contagious Diseases, where typhoid patients were treated. Early each morning, and as the day wore on, the moaning and sighing in the ward grew louder, as the throbbing headaches became more and more unbearable.

I arrived here by ambulance a few days ago, and was carried upstairs on a stretcher. There were eight of us in the ward, four women on either side of the aisle. Flat on our backs in the white beds, rusty iron showing through the chipped paint. There were two large windows across from my bed, the branches of a huge jacaranda tree almost filling one of them.

In the spring and early summer of that year, the British were trying in vain to hold on to their crumbling empire. This was the last year of the Mandate in Palestine, which was soon to become Israel. This hospital had a very poor reputation; the only way out, according to the grim joke, was “feet first”. Finding myself inside, I realized that there may indeed be some truth in that.

Days began early, with young Achmed, the Arab “sanitation worker” cleaning the floor. He carried a large bucket of grayish water smelling strongly of carbolic disinfectant. He dipped his mop – a long stick with a filthy flour sack attached – and spread the water in long strokes over the floor. The night nurse would then make her last round to record our vital signs. Next came breakfast, consisting of some unidentifiable mush, and warm milk with scum on top. Even when I tried, I could keep none of it down. I just ignored it, since feeling as I did, even the finest delicacies could not tempt me. I was twenty years old, recently married, and slightly pregnant.

With my soaring temperature, my mind began playing tricks. At times I could not remember where I was, nor why. Who were all these women around me? Why was I so steeped in pain, my body writhing in agony and wet with perspiration? My tongue felt like something huge and strange in my mouth, as if covered with a thick layer of cotton. I could no longer focus my eyes on the tree. The branches melted and swam together, turning into a tremendous wave about to crash over me. Gasping for air, I surfaced from my hallucination. I tried to keep a grip on reality and not slip back into my nightmare.