The West Wing

I thought I might stay up last night to watch the hostage release, but I started flagging after midnight and thought it might be better to take it all in first thing in the morning anyway. Then Gingko woke up around 5:30 needing very badly to go out, and I didn't go back to sleep then. I went straight to Twitter, where the first video I saw was Bar Kupershtein reuniting with his family.

Bar is related to a close friend of mine. He looks so, so much like my friend's kids. He is one of three hostages I am two or three degrees removed from (that I'm aware of, it could be more), and the only one who's alive. Bar's father was unable to walk or speak because of a stroke following a car accident, but he was determined to do both by the time his son came back, and he did.

I've spent hours watching every reunion: Noa Argamani and her partner Avinatan Or, who the hospital says lost 40% of his body weight. The Horn brothers from Argentina, the Berman twins whom Emily Damari loves, the absolutely ridiculous Cunio brothers whose partners and very young children were also hostages, Evyatar David who looked like a skeleton forced to dig his own grave in a tunnel on camera. More, more, more, more of them. Two people especially stand out.

One is this video of Segev Kalfon reuniting with his parents, who didn't know if he was alive for a year and a half after 10/7. I have never, ever heard a sound like the noise his father makes. The fathers are the ones losing it, in so many of these videos.

Then there's this one — not of a hostage, but an anonymous? guy alone in what looks like a highway tunnel somewhere in the desert around sunrise. He takes the coolest drag of his cigarette you've ever seen and then launches into the Shema like I've never heard it. Just incredible. Thrilling, beautiful, defiant, gorgeous. Takes another drag in the middle!

Now for the dead to come home. Hamas has only released four of the promised 28, including Eli Sharabi's brother Yossi, including Nepalese ag student Bipin Joshi. I wish I could take a nap (Gingko is snoring softly beside me on the bed), but I'm working until 7. I can't stop trawling for videos and images and information and stories. I can't believe they're finally, finally (almost, mostly) home.