Dark moments in captivity: "I waited for a blow, but not like this. Like a punch to the heart"

In the middle of the night he arrives. I wake up to the sound of a door opening, looking towards the stairs. He comes up - as if from my dreams, like daydreams, as I expected - without a bag. I stand up. My moment has arrived, and I am ready for it. I earned it. "Yosef, what?" I ask him. "Come on, bring your things and let's go." My heart swells. My imagination is already running ahead. I can already see myself telling everyone how after total despair comes hope. How precisely when I reached the deepest pit of loneliness, they released me. How the end of a belief that works, actually creates reality. Wait. Something is strange here. They didn't bring me a release grant, clothes, and nice shoes. They didn't stuff me with good food. I am quite smelly and disgusting, and this is not presentable for a release. Something feels wrong to me. "Am I going home?" I ask, and the hope inside stands hunched with hands over its head, waiting for the blow. He just clicks his tongue and shakes his head from side to side. With his hand, he points to the floor and says "Underneath." I waited for a blow, but not like this. Like a punch to the heart. A sequence of punches. I am not being released. Punch. The fighting returns. Punch. We are going down into a tunnel. Punch. I am going down. I am going down into the tunnels. What am I, a mouse? Am I a mole? What will I do in a tunnel? I hate tunnels. Even on trips I liked, I never entered tunnels. I am asthmatic! I really need air. Air and sun. I cannot live without sun. "I stick a finger in my throat, the stomach contracts but nothing comes out. I wasted it earlier. I once heard about someone who died from an asthma attack, and I never understood how. Now I understand." Tunnel! I mumble the word out loud. Tunnel. Tunnel. Remembering how when we would drive through the Carmel tunnels, we would compete who holds their breath the longest from the moment of entry until the moment of exit. The whole tunnel screaming "ahhh" without taking a breath, until they break. I always broke first. Good God, I imagine a tunnel in my head, a black screen descends on me. It is the most terrible thing there is. Darkness and dampness. Tunnels are torture. When he says "underneath" I see the movie "Shutter Island," about the isolated prison for crazy and dangerous criminals. I see myself in the dark, the walls dripping, and I am tied in chains on my legs and hands and undergoing severe torture. Out of terror I forgot the disappointment: a moment ago I thought I was being released. When he returns and whispers "tunnel," the fear is so strong that I don't feel anything else. Two more terrorists join, and all three lead me to the car. They put handcuffs on me and seat me in the back. We drive for a few minutes. My eyes are not covered, I try to learn the way, but it is completely dark. If I ever want to get out of here, to escape, I won't know how. What will happen to me? I have no idea where I am. Does anyone care where I am at all? Maybe I will jump somewhere here, I think wearily. I no longer believe myself in these thoughts. Like that Holocaust movie, where he jumped from the train and they shot him in the back. Suddenly the times I was in the apartment seem to me much easier for escape. Why didn't I escape then?

We arrive at a grove that has many shacks. Of the kind of groves my father would take us to in childhood for a picnic, and everyone would whine and say "Come on dad, let's go eat at a restaurant." The three terrorists who brought me take off my handcuffs. We enter between the trees. Four shadows suddenly emerge from the darkness, appearing from several directions. I feel like in a dark ritual of a cannibalistic African tribe, when they come out from between the trees with masks on their faces and weapons. Soon they will take me, tie me up, rip out my heart and eat me alive. They run towards me. I stand straight, proud, like a death row inmate before hanging. Two of them reach me. Someone else grabs me from behind, gives me a slap. Asks me, in Hebrew, "How are you?" Good that you asked, I wanted to tell him, the situation is really excellent. "They stand outside the bars, amused. The Jew inside the cage, and there is something to look at." The terrorists surround me from all sides, I am in the center. Whoever looks at us from the outside might think I am the chief. They lead me to one of the shacks. The shack is a small cabin intended only to cover a large door that opens into the ground. There is nothing inside it except the door, no display of a house with furniture, no cover for the fact that this shack is just a cover for a tunnel opening. They open a diagonal door, and start descending inside. One goes before me, the others lead me from behind. Such a caravan inside a damp and dark tunnel, at our height, one needs to bend a little. We are inside the earth, but everything is wrapped in concrete. The tunnel walls are concrete, the floor is concreted with a downward slope, like on an altar. I am the victim. Walking in complete silence. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The truth is there isn't even one beam of light that enters from above or from the sides, only the focused light of the flashlights held by the terrorists. Blast doors close all the openings. Every time they close a door, the noise is sucked and swallowed by the noise of sealing. The air becomes heavy. Damp. Breathing starts to weigh on me. We are marching inside a whole underground world. This is not a real place, it is a trip. Like the first time I went diving in Eilat: I just put my head in and saw so many colors and shapes, so many relationships, between the small fish and the giant ones, between the indifferent sea cucumbers and the fancy corals, a whole and completely different world. I remember I said to myself, how amazing that this show happens all the time, and we above see only a blue and flat plate of sea. Under the ground is there all the time all this winding occurrence? All the shacks I saw outside are just a cover for tunnels? Maybe actually the real life is below, and we living above are just their shadow? Maybe in every tunnel that comes out of the openings there is one like me, and we will meet there below and be together. We continue with the tunnel route. Going up, going down, climbing. What is this sophisticated hell? I will tell this to my friends at home, and they won't believe. Even Maya and Itay (Regev) won't believe. The thought of Maya and Itay makes my heart and breathing heavy for a moment. We said we would be released together. Where are you?