'We could hear from the phone the bombing and the shooting and the Arab screaming.'
The Arievs make a beautiful family picture.
Two gorgeous daughters, Karina, 19, and Sasha, 24, with lovely long dark hair -- one a little more serious-looking than the other -- flank their parents.
Everyone is wearing a shade of teal blue.
Everyone is hugging.
They can't hug that way anymore.
The tight family unit has been fractured. Ruptured cruelly by a grotesque and enormous act of terrorism. Karina, the wee one in the Ariev family (pronounced Ari-yev), who was serving the first of her mandatory two years with the Israeli Defence Force or Tzahal, post high school, is missing.
She was abducted, some time before 8 am, October 7 from her remote Nahal Oz military base in the Negev desert, a few kilometres from the border with the Gaza strip, where she was serving in a woman's unit, ever since she joined the IDF.
That ill-fated morning Karina called, at about 6.30 am, first her sister Sasha and then her parents in Jerusalem, where they live, and told them that the base was being raided and bombed by terrorists and "She said she was calling to say goodbye," Sasha tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
The teenager was sure it was the end because, as Sasha described, "We could hear from the phone the bombing and the shooting and the Arab screaming -- it was bad."
After that the next they heard of Karina was some footage a few hours later on an Arab channel on Telegram "We identified her on the video."
Since then, the complete lack of news and the deafeningly quiet information vacuum has been nerve racking and soul suffocating for Sasha, her father and mother.
Their parents -- her father works in a Jerusalem hospital and her mother in a local medical centre; they migrated, as teenagers, to Israel from Uzbekistan and Ukraine, when both countries were then part of the Soviet Union -- aren't doing so well. Says Sasha somberly: "(They are) not good. They just want her back, safe and sound and nothing else."
Sasha rues the fact that there is not enough support from the Israeli government's side "There is no arrangement. We live in our home in Jerusalem, as we have been living before. The government doesn't do anything. It's only the people, the citizens that are helping us -- bringing food, bringing supplies, asking if we need someone to talk to. But this is only the people, not the government."
Their constant enquiries about Karina's whereabouts elicit no answers. There are no fresh facts at all. Zero updates. "There is nothing new. We do not know anything. A few families know that their loved ones are kidnapped officially, like us, and but for others their beloved ones are still missing. Many, of course, are murdered and are dead."
There is a phone line to contact in the headquarters for the families of the missing and kidnapped people. "But they do not have answers. They cannot say to us if they know where my sister is. Or something. They do not have any information that can be helpful. They don't know anything."
Sasha, who was born and raised in Israel, and is a Master's student of neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has found an outlet for her anguish in volunteering at the very same headquarters.
"They are really organised. And they're trying to help everyone. I'm a volunteer at this headquarters. But answers they do not have. They only can talk and give interviews to foreign media, foreign press, so the world can hear us. But (questions) about the whereabouts of our loved ones they cannot answer, because they just don't know."
Karina's cellphone could not be tracked either. "The phones were taken by the terrorist organisation -- maybe they did something to the phone, maybe they broke them, maybe they are jamming the connection."
Sasha has only one request of the Israeli government "Well, you know, they betrayed them once, they betrayed them in that morning of the seventh of October. They just left them there unprotected and unarmed. We don't want any apologising or something. We just want the government to not betray them again now and want that our government will do all the efforts to bring the hostages, and the missing people back home."
By "betrayal" Sasha seems to allude the fact, that -- as news reports have highlighted -- the young IDF soldiers, like Karina, at the base, had no weapons to defend themselves with or to use fight the terrorists.
As a result, all the girls from unit are either dead or missing. "Only one girl from the unit survived and she is at home now." But this woman soldier was in a different part of the base from Karina and cannot offer them any information.
Sasha, who seeks prayers from all over, has a message for India too: "We want all the citizens in India to know what is happening in the world. To not to be silent. We also know that parts of India (have been) in terror attacks by terror organisations, and that you may feel for us."
To the outside world, Karina is an Israeli soldier, in uniform, and all of 19, but for her elder sister Sasha, "She's a child. She likes to decorate her room with stickers and photos. And she likes to draw and paint and sing and cook. She's very childish, very innocent, very naive, very lovable. She's very loyal to her family and friends, who are her first priority."
Karina had so many plans. She was thinking of studying psychology when her military service was done. She was into style and cosmetology was an option too.
Sasha says Karina was particularly gifted. "She could just take an interesting recipe and she would do it and it would, from the first time, be amazing. It's like a talent. She is very talented.
"No (she's not outgoing) she's more quiet. She's more like a family person, home person. She has friends, from the neighbourhood, from school, from the army. She likes them, but she's not a person of festivals and all that stuff."
At the moment Karina's colourfully-planned future is on pause. Life for the Arievs is also temporarily frozen as they wait for their family portrait to be complete again, a wonderful loving quartet once more.
Sasha's oxygen today is Hope as the achot g'dolah or older sister (didi) waits for her little kid sister to return. "She is the one my heart belongs to."
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
