Conversation on a long plane journey

This is my Instagram post from 8 June 2024.

I was on the beach in Sardinia with friends on the 8th of June 2024, when we heard the news that four hostages were rescued by the IDF from Gaza. Although we had never met the four hostages, we were so happy that they were free. I know there were four because we held up four fingers in the pictures that we took of ourselves just feeling happy in the midst of a year of very little good news for our people.

For ages I watched the video of two of the hostages, in t-shirts and very short, cropped hair, looking out of the open helicopter at Israel below. There was something so beautiful about it. When thanked by one of the hostages, the soldier in charge of the operation said to him: This is the most important job we can do’

I used to watch that video over and over again imagining what it must feel like to look out at Israel - after being held hostage for so long in Gaza, and to feel free and safe and human again.

Today I flew back from Israel, where I had spent a week meeting wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful, generous people. My head and heart were full. I had decided not to pay to choose my seat and so Whizz-air allocated me a middle seat one row before the last row of the plane.

As I walked down the plane to find my seat counting the rows as I went, I recognized the person on the aisle seat in my row. He saw I looked.

As I sat down in my seat, I introduced myself. He said his name was Andrei. I took out the book I was reading - Hostages by Eli Sharabi. He said ‘ah he wrote a book. I’m writing one too and drawing it.’ When I looked back at him slightly quizzically, he said: ‘Yes, it’s me. You recognised me.’

It was Andrei Kozlov, whose face I had seen on a thousand posters and whose fate was once important to me. He was a hostage and now he was a person.

We talked. I was hesitant to ask him questions He said the day he was rescued was the happiest day of his life. They were fed the very bare minimum. There were three of them kept together. All three are doing ok. He’s doing ok too / he has his trauma and depression but even in bad moments - it’s part of a bigger understanding.

His family don’t understand what he lives with now. His mother is forever changed. They all are. He spent a year in America painting. He slept badly last night. He thought he could sleep a bit on the plane. When he woke up, he wondered if they had offered snacks in the plane. I insisted he take my northern Israel salad that I had bought at the airport. He looked at the sun setting out of the window and at Israel below as the plane took off. Before he lived in Israel, he was from St Petersburg. I said I had always wanted to see the art in the Hermitage, he said he had visited the Hermitage at least 20 times. He had studied marketing and advertising. We had that in common. He was going to London to visit some galleries. He showed me a painting of his on his phone. It was of men trapped in a globe, with people staring at them. It was painted from the wound and not the scar. He said he had homework to do before starting to work again or building a life.

He said he had been working at the Nova festival on October 07, and by 9.30 he had already been taken hostage and was in Gaza. He had visited the Nova site three times since then.

I tried not to talk to him like he was a hostage. I tried to talk like he was a 29-year-old man around the age of my son. I showed him some of my portfolio and we talked advertising. I had also tried to read the book he was reading by Rick Ruben, and I saw he was also struggling to finish it. But sometimes when I said I was impatient to land already, and it was another three hours to wait. I realised how ridiculous it sounded. He asked me if I really wanted to make Aliyah. I said it was a fantasy. We talked. He was a good listener. I tried to explain how some Jews in my community are very concerned with the pain of Palestinians in Gaza, it felt uncomfortable. I thought I shouldn’t have told him that part of the story. He said it was war. He said he didn’t believe peace in the Middle East was possible.

I noticed my own discomfort and wondered why. Because he was famous? Because I wanted to really talk as humans, but didn’t want to just put him in the Hostage box? I kicked myself for telling him about those in my community who were not as concerned for the hostages in Gaza as they are for the people of Gaza. We didn’t talk for a while after that.

He offered me the packet of chewy sweets he went to buy on the flight. I accepted them. It became easier to talk again.

I finished the Eli Sharabi book and offered it to him. He didn’t want to read it or any Frankl book he said, because he had his own experience. I said I understood because when he was explaining his experience, I could understand it but couldn’t put words to it accurately. It was completely new. I said I hoped the world would hear his new perspective, and that’s what I meant when I said he was intelligent, educated, thoughtful and creative. He said he understood.

I showed him the pictures of us celebrating and holding up four fingers in Sardinia, for the four hostages who were released. He was delighted to see that some people in the world shared his delight of the day he called the best day of his life.

Books referred to:

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Hostage by Eli Sharabi

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

You can see Andrei's art here