Reflections Between the Shadows: Reading חטוף (Kidnapped)

I didn’t expect a bottle of orange Fanta to pierce my heart. But then again, nothing about Eli Sharabi’s story comes gently.

I read Kidnapped in Hebrew — in Eli’s own words. Line by line, his voice guided me through tunnels of silence, sorrow, and survival. No translator, however skilled, can carry the full weight of a silence lived in captivity. Eli’s pain hums through the unsaid.

There is a moment that won’t leave me: Eli and his fellow hostages found a bottle of orange Fanta. They drank it together. Later, confronted by a guard, they denied it. Eli called this moment "HaNitzachon HaKatom" — The Little Orange Triumph.

What was it, really? A drink? No. It was a quiet rebellion. A sip of defiance. A shared flame in a place designed to extinguish every ember of humanity.

A bottle of orange soda. A whispered joke. A round of Shesh Besh played in silence.

Moments like these became anchors of resistance — small acts that said: We are still here.

And so I ask you, dear reader — from your quiet place between the shadows:

🔸 What rituals, words, or gestures help you hold on?
🔸 What is your orange Fanta — your fragile triumph, your whispered memory that insists on surviving?

Some books you finish.
Others finish you.
This one — Kidnapped — left me carrying Eli’s memory like a flickering flame.

Because even in the dark,
stories survive.

— Rifka