‘Just hold on and be very brave and strong’
A mother’s message to her child
Six months after she shared her last phone call with her daughter, Meirav Gonen says she trusts the universe to bring her home.
Romi, 23, was kidnapped from Israel’s Supernova music festival on Oct. 7. Over a harrowing four and a half hours, Meirav listened as her daughter described the horror she was witnessing.
“She was terrified,” Meirav told the National Post last October. “She told me, ‘Mommy, I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.’ ”
Half a year later, Romi remains a captive of Hamas. “People think she’s in prison, but she’s not in prison, she’s in hell,” Meirav said in an interview this week. “Just imagine the impossibility of communication with hell. This is the same.”
Meirav said the last update she received came from hostages who were freed during the temporary ceasefire last November.
“Some of them were with her in the tunnels and that’s the last information we got for 125 days,” she says.
She knows Romi had been shot in her right hand and that her fingers had become discoloured but beyond that, nothing.
“I have no new information, whether she lost her hand, or anything.”
In the face of Romi’s absence, Gonen says she continues to draw strength from her family, including a Canadian cousin who is now in Israel, her husband and four other children as well as from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer-run organization dedicated to reuniting hostages with their loved ones.
“I’m a mother and I have obligations to my kids. One is to keep them safe. The second is to give them the support they need to grow and be good people. And for the last half a year, I know I’ve failed in this responsibility to Romi. But I have four other kids that look at me and wait for my guidance. They see how I act and they learn from it. This responsibility to my five kids is one thing that has driven me forward. We are talking to each other and listening to each other and we are doing it all the time. We are strengthening ourselves and making sure we are together.”
She describes Romi, who had been working as a waitress, as effortlessly endearing, deeply compassionate and driven by a love of adventure and exploration. After spending seven months in South America last year, she had been saving up for another trip before she was taken hostage.
“I think the world cannot grasp what happened here on Oct. 7. And as the days go by, they understand less and less what is going on with the situation here in the Middle East.”
She says that the cruelty and complexity is difficult to comprehend but she wants the world to “try and imagine.”
“We talk about peace, we talk about negotiation and we know what these words are, but when you talk to Hamas, the words are different. Hamas will do whatever it needs to hurt us, to make us weak. I’m not talking about the Palestinians. It’s two different things. The Palestinians are governed by Hamas and Hamas is cruel to them, not just to us, we have to remember that.”
Mierav says she keeps her bond with Romi alive by speaking to her and listening as if they were talking, even if that’s not possible at the moment.
“I trust our connection. I trust the universe to be aligned with the reality I want to see. And she’s my daughter so I know she’s strong. I know she will do whatever she needs, like I will do whatever she needs, to come back home.”
She says if she could speak with her directly, her message would be one of strength and love and encouragement.
“If you’re listening, I love you. I’m strong for you and I know you are strong for yourself and for me, also. Your brothers and sisters love you. Your father, your grandmother, the whole of Israel is doing whatever she can to take you out of there and we will succeed since we are together in it. You just hold on, just hold on and be very brave and strong.”