Be Beautiful
My grandmother said. And now I see our released hostages. See how they smile despite their suffering + Holocaust Remembrance Day Poem
“Be beautiful,” My grandmother used to say, handing me a Royal Doulton Old Country Roses cup of tea spiced with cardamom pods, and topped with milk. I didn’t know if she meant on the outside or the inside. I think to her it was one and the same. “Be beautiful.”
We have witnessed the hostages return, one by one, Doron Steinbrecher 31, Romi Gonen 23, Daniella Gilboa 20, then the four girls, Karina Ariev 20, Liri Albag 19, Emily Damari 27, and Naama Levy 20, and then Agam Berger 20 and Arbel Yehud 29. These names I have repeated through the months. We have repeated them together, pinning name to poster, to prayer.
We have witnessed their shrieks - that long animal shriek when she sees her mother and runs into her arms. It reminded me of Mia Schem’s shriek when she saw her mother. Of disbelief, of relief, of pure animal pain.
Who can watch and not cry? Who can see the girls as they wait for Agam to arrive, and how they hug her into a tight weeping circle, and not cry? For everyone the symbol of Agam’s braids has stood out. Beautiful braids. The mystery braids. The mystery of beauty woven in such suffering and hardship. How within all the injustice we hold onto beauty.
They held on to beauty. In returning to us — they have become symbols of beauty. Emily with her Victory sign made of two missing fingers. Now every braid in a little girl’s hair, every braiding of challah for Shabbat is with the thought of Agam. And their beautiful smiles. I have heard and seen posts of people who see our girls’ smiles and say, “See they did not suffer. Hamas isn’t evil.” But we know how Jews suffer, and we say, “See how they smile despite their suffering.”
And then the hostage men - Ofer Kalderon 54, Yarden Bibas 35, without his wife Shiri 33, and children Ariel 5 and Kfir 2 (we are all wondering and grieving with him - where are they?), Gadi Moses, 80, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, who stayed sane in the inhumane, unsanitary, starved captivity by having imaginary conversations with his loved ones, pacing his space each day for kilometers. It is reported he said to his Hamas captors, who murdered his wife on October 7, that one day there will be peace and when that time comes he hopes to teach them how to farm. I also heard how his first statement upon his release was - “I will do everything in my power to restore Nir Oz.” Apparently this is what kept him a live in captivity, how he would rebuild his beloved kibbutz.
Rebuilding is beautiful.
Seeing such beauty is complicated. We need a name for this new feeling, as this poem by Ortal Hilah, I translated, expresses.
We are joyous with the release of our hostages, but very worried as we release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, who are not just minors, and people jailed for Israeli attacks, as the news reports. They are terrorists, many murderers, and too many Israelis are reliving the trauma of the terror and grief they unleashed. A friend tells me how a colleague messages how complicated she feels as the terrorist who killed her brother is being released. A French grandpa I see many mornings at the coffee shop tells me for the first time, about how he almost died from a knife attack on the Tayelet, Armon Hanatziv in Jerusalem, by Arab youths. Their knife just missing his femoral artery. I didn’t ask him if they were also being released.
We are mourning our soldiers, mourning our casualties of war, the injured, the hostages still held. We are mourning the loss of our innocence, the truth that not all children are brought up to believe in, and spread beauty.
Be beautiful, my grandmother said. Because life can be hard. She had eight children. Life can be sad, sorrowful and full of pain. She was displaced from her beloved Iraq in 1951, with my grandfather and five children (and 120,000 Iraqi Jews). Be beautiful even in the deep, dark tunnel of the unknown, and bring light and love where you can. How?
My grandmother made life beautiful one cup of spiced cardamom tea at a time. It didn’t matter if it was in refugee tent camp, aluminum or royal, English porcelain cups. If it was milk powder or real milk she added. Beauty is belief in the simple things — tea, braids, bricks to rebuild. Breathing.
"I chose the path of faith, and with the path of faith, I have returned—thank you to all the people of Israel and our heroic IDF soldiers. There is no one like you in the world!"
Agam Berger’s message upon her release.
We don’t know when we will be tested in this world. We don’t know where people gather their strength and faith when tested. But we can learn from our released hostages — be beautiful, for this moment. Smile, for this moment. Perform one small act of light, as simple as sharing a cup of tea with someone you love or a stranger, for this moment.
As Emily Damari’s Instagram profile message reads, “You only live once but if you do it right once is enough.”
Wishing you the strength and faith to be beautiful, and live!
Sarah
Notes:
Sources - Here are some of the news reports with the details about the hostages:
https://www.ajc.org/news/freed-israeli-hostages-what-they-endured-in-captivity-and-how-they-survived
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryxsjhyuyg
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-840106
Here is my Holocaust Remembrance Day Poem. I wrote it because I want us to remember the friends we do have. We remember not to create hate or more suffering, but to repair this broken world. The fact Germany stood by Israel after October 7 profoundly moved me. The deradicalization of Nazi Germany is what inspires me, that things can change. We can create a new, free Middle East with determined deradicalization of education systems and ideologies. A region where Jews are safe, and no longer a curse word.
Holocaust Remembrance Day
Today we remember
our memories.
Everyone’s memory is different.
I remember the Farhud, June 1, 1941
Iraq - how my grandfather’s cousin, Abdullah
pretended he was dead
next to his mother, who was
shot dead. I remember
and recite the 179 names we know
and light a memorial candle for the hundreds
of unknown names buried in a mass Baghdad grave.
I remember Ziggy
my Czech adopted grandfather
short and bald with smiling blue eyes,
which really said,
“I smile despite my suffering.”
When I was a young girl
he told me about his wife, Esther
and his five children murdered
in Auschwitz. I remember
and I light a memorial candle for all of them.
Why do we remember?
It is so you remember.
So you light a candle too.
Now I light and I remember
the 7th of October, 2023 the Black Saturday
of sirens screaming again and again with every rocket.
This time the trees were too young to hide behind.
This time a bedouin died trying to save two young girls
and their mother. Their mother died. The girls survived.
It took weeks to identify all the bones.
It took months to know all the names.
We still don’t know who is alive or dead.
I remember how we count our dead.
I remember and light a candle every single day.
I remember how the world was silent.
I remember and light more candles.
I remember a light that flickers born from ashes,
a remembering, a German friend
who saw our suffering,
and lit a candle next to mine.
I don’t know how many candles are being lit
next to mine
but every one I see helps me remember
the way this world is meant to be.
Sarah SassoonQesher Book Club Shoham’s Bangle Online, Feb 18, 2025 - Because I’m excited to present my Iraqi Jewish family intergenerational inspiration behind my picture book Shoham’s Bangle with Qesher at this free online event. I hope you can join me link to book here.
Qesher Recovering the Lost World of Iraqi Babylonian Jews Online Lecture, Feb 25, 2025 - I am excited to present the world of my family and ancestors I’ve discovered in my intense research and interviews as I follow my obsession to recover my roots. Below is a description of the talk and here’s the link. I hope you can join me for this too!
For more about me and my writing visit my website www.sarahsassoon.comTo support my work please consider buying my children’s books, the award winning Shoham’s Bangle, and my latest This is Not a Cholent. My mission is to spread and educate about Jewish Middle Eastern culture.
Read my free online, award winning poetry collection, published by Harbor Review - This is Why We Don’t Look Back.
Note - My Substack will be fortnightly. Maybe more often… I appreciate all comments, all conversations, and all sharing.
Further - All mistakes are proof that I am human, and this is not an AI publication.
Thank you, Sarah. The beauty and pain of your post reflect the beauty and pain we are experiencing right now, that we experience every day in life.
The tea that my grandmother shared was drunk black from a glass with a sugar cube under the tongue, Russian style, but it contained the same lessons of resilience and hope.