The watch arrived in a small cardboard box, three weeks after Grandpa Shmuel's funeral. Inside, wrapped in an old handkerchief, was a silver pocket watch with cracked glass, and a note in Grandpa's shaky handwriting: "For Yael. Ask your mother about the train."
Yael had never seen the watch before. It had stopped at twenty past four, and on the back there were some words engraved in a language she couldn't read. That evening she showed it to her mother, who sat down slowly at the kitchen table.
"Your grandfather was nine years old when he came to Israel," her mother began. "His family left Morocco with almost nothing. In Marseille, in France, they had to change trains, and in the crowd, Grandpa got separated from his parents. He was alone on the platform with a suitcase that wasn't even his."
"An old railway worker found him crying. The man didn't speak Arabic or Hebrew, and Grandpa didn't speak French, but the man sat with him for hours, sharing his bread and showing him how his watch worked, to keep him calm. When Grandpa's father finally came running down the platform, the stranger pressed the watch into the boy's hand and walked away before anyone could thank him."
Yael looked at the watch again. "So the words on the back are French?" Her mother nodded. They searched online together and translated them: "Time always brings us home."
The next day, Yael took the watch to a small repair shop on the corner. The watchmaker opened it carefully, cleaned it and replaced the broken glass. When he handed it back, it was ticking. Yael held it to her ear for a long time. She decided that one day she would travel to Marseille, stand on that platform and say the thank-you that her grandfather had never been able to say.