When closed drawers of the mind reopen

Our lives are overshadowed by the realities of the October 7th massacres, and the 59 innocent hostages still being held under the ground, in unbearable conditions. Most days, the memories and thoughts of that black Sabbath morning are wrapped up gingerly in bubble wrap, stored in a drawer in the corner of my brain. It enables me to have the wherewithal to “soldier on,” do what I need to do and rebuild my life again. On the other hand, there are days when that drawer gets opened and the memories of total, abject reality stored within, slice through the protective linings like a machete and penetrate deeply again.

I live on Kibbutz Nirim. We are situated two kilometers (nearly a mile and a quarter) from the border with the Gaza Strip. Our kibbutz branches off a tiny 11.7 kilometers (some 7.25 miles) long slip-of-a-road, officially named Road 2410, leading from Road 232 – aka “The Road of Death” since October 7, 2023 – and back to it. Residents of the Eshkol region appropriately call it “The Horseshoe Road.”

Our neighbors on this road are four other kibbutzim. One kilometer southeast of Nirim is Kibbutz Nir Oz. About one kilometer north of us is Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. Some five kilometers north of Ein Hashlosha are Kibbutz Kissufim. All of us were invaded on October 7th, along with 20 other rural communities and towns. The hardest hit were our neighbors just to the south — Nir Oz, where one out of every four people present on the kibbutz that day were either kidnapped or slaughtered, or both. From preliminary investigations, I know that one of the reasons why they were so devastatingly hit, was because when the terrorists failed to penetrate Kibbutz Magen — just one kilometer south of them as the crow flies — those terrorists whose goal was to destroy Magen, turned to the closest target to them: Nir Oz. Another fact uncovered by the army investigations was that the first soldiers to come to Nir Oz, arrived after the last of the terrorists there left. The seven hours gave the sadistic marauders plenty of time to kidnap, slaughter, burn, steal, destroy and sexually assault and mutilate.

Map of the horseshoe road, and its proximity to Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, which was invaded by thousands of terrorists on October 7, 2023.

I had been to Nir Oz since October 7, 2023, to meet up with certain people for short periods of time. This past Thursday, however, October 531, 2023, was different. This time, I went with a specific task: to photograph artwork of Haim Perry z”l who was a farmer and a welder but mostly: an artist. 79-year-old Haim was brutally kidnapped from his garden on October 7th when he stepped outside of his safe room, attempting to protect his wife, Osnat, hiding inside, hoping that the terrorists would take him and not go back in and look for Osnat.

It worked.

Haim was kidnapped along with 76 others from Nir Oz, alone. He was taken alive, and executed in a tunnel on February 14, 2024, by his captors along with others from Nir Oz and Nirim. They survived 131 days, 188,640 minutes, in the hellholes of Gaza.

In order to photograph the part of his legacy which is left on the Nir Oz gardens and paths, for purposes of a commemorative event to be put together by my friend Galia — I needed to get to Nir Oz. The gates are guarded by soldiers and only those with permission are allowed in. My guide was Nir Metzger — a former student, the previous secretary of Nirim and today — a garage worker on Nir Oz. He is one of the members who take visitors around Nir Oz, and whom I believe will be one of the rebuilders of Nir Oz when that day comes. When we finished eking out Haim’s different metal statues, Nir asked me if I had been on Nir Oz since.

“Just a little. For a few minutes. Here and there.”
“Come, I’ll take you around.”

He didn’t ask. He drove.

We rolled through the paths which were once again green — gardens partially growing wild despite their owners’ absence, lined by houses with demolished walls and graffiti army code instead of welcome signs by the doors. We passed a handful of people working along the way, no one I knew.

Outside different houses, there were flags: yellow for former inhabitants who had been kidnapped, black for those murdered. Sometimes both.

From the walls and doors, smiling visages of the kidnapped and slaughtered former inhabitants, looked out at us from pictures snapped at birthdays or treks or other happy occasions before our world imploded in flames and smoke around us, in times when they could not have even imagined in their wildest nightmares, what their future fates would bring them.

As we drove, he showed me where people I knew had lived: Aviv and Ariel and David, Yoram and Yair, Sasha and Saguy, Carol and Carmla, and so many, many others. People of the land, people with aspirations for peaceful existence. He pointed out the junction near the garbage receptacles surrounded by low concrete walls, where Dolev and Tamir fell in battle trying to protect their families and friends, impossibly outnumbered and out-weaponed. The winding paths seemed endless, as did the names of people I had known in the past. Students and parents of students; former colleagues, neighbors and friends. People I knew from standing in line to enter the regional theater, and yoga class, or collaborative community celebrations. These were people I would see at exhibitions in the White House of the Western Negev, situated between Nirim and Nir Oz, which Haim Perry had revamped and turned into an ecological statue garden, with sculptures by artists from Nir Oz, Nirim, and others from around the Western Negev and Israel. It was often a venue for special art shows and music concerts on balmy summer nights.

Before we finished, I asked Nir to drive past Judih and Gadi’s — one of the few places I had specifically gone on previous visits. I knew their house was locked but wanted to see my friend Judih’s studio again: Judih the puppeteer among her other talents. I expected to open the wooden structure attached to their house and see the eyes of puppets on their shelves staring blankly, soullessly, awaiting the return of their creator to bring them back to life, in vain. As I had last time I came.

“They were packed up and cataloged for preservation until the family decides what they want to do with them.”

When Nir returned me to my car, he said:
“We will come home. We will rebuild and come home.”

“With people like you, I know you will,” and I hugged him.

Not everyone will come home. But there will be new pioneers who will come to join them.

“And when you do, we, your neighbors, will be here to help”

When Nir was in high school, as a joke, shirts were printed that said “Nir Oz — the kibbutz next to Nirim, the center of the world.” These days, due to the tragic devastation, when people ask me where Nirim is, I tell them: “Next to Nir Oz” and I bless our lucky stars for our relative anonymity.

As I drove away, I took with me a new understanding of why it is so important that we be on Nirim. Why it is so important that I be on Nirim, as much as I can, despite the discomfort. As if I could ever have forgotten. But even the choir needs to be preached to every so often.

PS: Judih was always my copywriter-editor for my blogposts. I would send her a WhatsApp: “Hi! Do you have time for an edit?”

“Sure”

It would often happen Saturday mornings, like today. I would be writing next to my first cup of coffee; she — at home after already having come back from her sunrise walk in the fields with Gadi, improving my words in a shared Googledoc. The world, and my blogposts, and I, am poorer for her loss. We await the return of Judih, Gadi and the other 57 — many of whose names I mentioned, above: those still alive, to heal in the arms of their loved ones, those who are not to be buried in our land and enable family and friends, closure.