I Survived: My 471 Days as a Hostage

Emily Damari

The book will open with Emily on the rooftop on Day 28 of the Gaza War, and then pivot back in time and proceed chronologically, beginning with an opening chapter set in Kibbutz Kfar Azza. Here Emily will describe growing up feeling safe and full of love for this communal farming village along the Gaza border, a place where families and neighbors' lives are deeply intertwined and where life, before October 7, 2023, felt most of the time, like paradise found. It will also foreshadow the massacre with memories of sheltering from the mortar and rocket fire, burning kites from the border in Gaza.
The following chapter will tell the story of October 7 from the moment Emily awoke from the sounds of sirens and missiles overhead to her horrified realization Hamas terrorists had invaded the kibbutz to when she is kidnapped into Gaza.
Next will come the heart of the book, the reader will follow Emily as she vanishes from public view into captivity Gaza: starting with her chaotic arrival, still bleeding, and taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when she and some of the other hostages receive crude medical attention. Emily will describe who she met and what she did in the 22 different places she was held captive, from apartments where at one point she was caged with several other hostages, to the 90 days she spent deep underground in Hamas tunnels. Emily will detail her story of survival, how she passed the long, stressful days as bombs fell outside, managed the agony of her festering wounds without painkillers and hunger pangs from when food supplies dwindled, the conversations she had with her captors and how she was treated by them, the extraordinary bond she made with another hostage, Romi Gonen and how their sisterhood forged in bondage helped keep one another alive.
The book will close with chapters on Emily's release, the joyful, bewildering rush of homecoming and adjustment to life as a former hostage finding her way to return to "normal life" while still fighting for her close friends Ziv and Gali Berman and the other hostages still waiting to come home.
Mandy's voice will appear as mini-chapters between Emily's, reflecting in real time with Emily, among them her own story of survival on October 7. She will give voice to a mother's terror for her daughter, not only a hostage, but one whose identity as a soldier she scrambles to hide, fearing that otherwise her daughter could face torture and worse. The reader will follow Mandy, who grew up in a leafy London suburb, and came to Israel on a whim, only to settle there and raise a family, as she faces agonizing decisions of how to best fight for her daughter, a fight that eventually leads her to the highest corridors of British power.