Memory

Remembering the hostages is pain, love and never forgetting

Inside a happy memory (my husband Adam on the bottom left and his cousin Tsachi on the bottom right)

Yesterday I gave a speech at a vigil for my husband’s cousin TsachI Idan, who is still a hostage in Gaza. I stepped in for my husband Adam because he was too ill to make it. He has been speaking at the vigil for almost a year. Every Friday he opens his heart and soul. This week it has overcome him. His heart is under attack and his soul battered. So I stood in the cold November air with all the beautiful people who show up for the hostages and told them my husband’s heart was broken. 

He had a similar experience last October a few weeks after the massacre. After his cousin was stolen and Tsachi’s daughter Ma’ayan was murdered by Hamas. He says that the season change of late woke up a physical memory of that episode a year ago. The body remembered the shock and horror. 

Memory held.

A few days ago I watched a video from Lishay Miran, the wife of Omri who was kidnapped with Tsachi. Both families were held together in the Idan home for hours until finally the terrorists took the fathers away from their loved ones. Lishay and Omri have two girls Alma and Roni. Alma was only a baby when October 7th happened and a year is a very long time in the life of a toddler. Lishay was talking to her about Omri. She is trying to keep Omri’s memory alive with Alma and points to his kidnapped poster. 

“Who is this?”

Alma replies “Daddy.”

An immediate response, its quickness revealing how a mother has tried to keep the father present in the life of a tiny child. From one second to the next Alma’s face shifts to a darker expression. One I have never seen on a child so young. A shadowed innocent. Unprompted she says:

“I want to see him.”

“See?”

“See.”

Memory guarded.

I spoke about how we have felt the lack of remembrance of the hostages of late. They have slipped off the public agenda, off the lips of politicians. We see them fall further into forgetting. Here in Brighton we wanted to create a drone display, lights in the sky to push them back into the political eyeline. Alas the weather conspired to thwart us and we could not complete our mission. So we sit in raw frustration while they slip and slip into the dark. 

Memory lost.

But we cannot sit. Nor despair. We decided to create the images of light on the ground instead. With people and yellow lanterns. Soon we will be the light to draw them back into remembering. We will be their light.

To be memory awoken.