[0:00]Yarden Bibas returned from captivity a year and three months ago, and since then has not spoken in the Israeli media, not about his time in captivity nor about what he has faced since. Now, after he moved to the Golan Heights, to the house he planned to live in with Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir, he agreed to speak in front of our cameras with Liron Shamam. The interview with Yarden is different, unlike what we are used to hearing from captivity survivors. He who involuntarily became one of the symbols of the massacre of October 7th, speaks with longing and heartbreaking honesty about his beloved, his children, and the most terrible loss of all, about the last kiss he gave Shiri in the presence of the terrorists, and bravely reveals the immense difficulty of moving on with life. To the point that the trauma of captivity sometimes pales in comparison to the current reality. Here is the interview conducted with him by Liron Shamam.
[1:08]Every night, if I am outside, I look for the stars, telling them that I love them.
[1:16]I know I don't... that I can't really take ownership of stars, but for me, when I look at the sky, those are my stars.
[1:25]Three stars, one next to the other.
[1:29]When I feel lost all day long, if for one moment in the evening I know what I'm looking for, then it gives me a moment of calm. Like, a second of... I feel like they're here.
[1:48]What annoys you most when people ask you when they see you today? "How are you?" Why? Because it forces me to either lie, or to give a fake smile, to either lie to them or lie to myself. So I found the answer: "As usual." As usual. As usual. So if I ask you how you are and ask you to answer honestly? Shit. Shit, I'm tired. Tired? Tired. It's a war in my head all the time, to cope. On one hand, it's terribly exhausting, on the other hand, I'm forcing myself all the time not to go to sleep. Because going to sleep means falling asleep and waking up to a new day, where I'll have to deal with everything from the start. So, I prefer to drag out the day as much as I can. Sometimes I end up going to sleep at six or seven in the morning, waking up at three, and then starting to cope later.
[2:53]Almost a thousand days since he last kissed his loved ones, Yarden Bibas agrees to sit in front of the cameras and break a long silence. There were moments in captivity when I didn't want to leave. To many people... Out of fear? Today, I am in hell. The year and a half there, that wasn't hell, it was just an uncomfortable mattress to me. Today, I am in hell. Without them, I am in hell now. I was afraid to leave and face it, if it really happened. There, I could still play with my thoughts and with the... "He said this," "that one said that." Not here. When I left, it was no longer... there's no... Captivity doesn't interest me. It's not the worst thing that's happened in my life. It's not... I'd go back there. Bring them back, and I'll go back there. I'll go back in a heartbeat. Captivity is not... it's not the hardest thing that's happened in my life.
[3:55]He's been here for almost a year and a half, still learning how to breathe, trying to understand how to turn stories and small moments of his family into mere memories. He's afraid that in this transition between different parts of the brain, something of them will be lost, fade, or be forgotten. But within this, there is one thing he wants the whole world to know: who his Shiri was, Yarden's Shiri.
[4:24]When I saw the photo for the first time, my heart broke. That's not the Shiri I swore to myself that I would make her smile for the rest of her life. And that's a facial expression that a person... No one should see the love of his life like this.
[4:51]When did you see this photo for the first time? At Sheba. When I arrived at Sheba. I started coming across photos, some things were shown to me.
[5:03]Some with the family, some things I came across on my own. And suddenly I'm scrolling through Facebook, and I come across many photos of the family.
[5:18]And then I see their photo, and I don't recognize her. That photo tore me apart. It broke my heart. And I thought it was important they know who she really was, because she isn't the photo, she is someone much more than that.
[5:46]We had a fight. Like all couples, we fight. And I woke up in the morning, still with a feeling that was a bit unpleasant, and I left for work. And she says to me, "Yarden, I don't care what we fought about, I don't care what you're angry about, or if I'm angry. "You don't leave the house without giving me a kiss."
[6:26]So you told the terrorist, "Wait..." I told him, "Wait, a kiss." And he says to me, "Okay," I say to him, "A kiss." He says to me, "Okay." Did you kiss her? All of them, all three of them.
[6:43]The relationship with Shiri is just like taking all the cliches and putting them in one place. I understood what it means to say, "my only one", or "my life", I called her "my love", because I didn't know how much it's possible to love another person, or how much one can connect to another person, to trust another person, to entrust decisions to another person. She knew how to give space to my anger, to my difficulties, she knew how to approach me, how to talk to me. How to calm me down. She knew how to give me the space to be myself without feeling bad about it. When they say "my other half," so she is more than half. She is the 90% and I am the 10%. Every good thing I've ever done came from her. I felt the most comfortable in the world when I was with her, when I was near her, when I was around her. Everything, just hearing her voice would lower my tension, or if I was angry, it would lower my anger. That's my biggest difficulty today.
[8:04]I don't have Shiri's hand to come and put it on my shoulder and give me the feeling that it will be okay. On one hand, I met my "one", on the other hand, I don't know if I can live without her.
[11:31]I really loved holding her hand. Until the hand gets sweaty and gross. Until then, we would hold hands. Sometimes it's the small things that are missed most. Sitting on the couch and resting my head on her, and arguing with her to give me a backrub, and she says she already did, and I say it's not enough, I want more. Or sitting with her in a cafe, just sitting next to her, talking to her, teasing her. I used to tease her a lot. She was just the one.
[12:18]She's a very close friend of David and Eitan, she grew up with them. So naturally, David and Eitan are my best friends, so I knew her indirectly, and at some point, when David and Eitan returned from their post-army trip, they invited me over. We had a barbecue. We had a barbecue. Yes, when they returned, Lukas said, "Shiri is single, maybe you should hit on Shiri." I told him, "why would I hit on Shiri? What if she doesn't even look at me?" And Sharon and David said: "Yes, it's a good idea." And you said, "no, she won't go for it, she's not like that." "Don't hit on her at a Purim party." Over protective. Yes. You really said that about her, because Kunio is Kunio is Kunio. "Go, hit on her, hit on her." Exactly. Kunio are like that. "Go, hit on her with that..." No, I'm looking out for her, what is this nonsense? Later, at the party, she was already... When we arrived, she was already drunk. At least she drank enough. And I took advantage of that because I suddenly had the confidence to go to her, since she maybe wasn't seeing 100%. I always thought she wouldn't look my way. Then we went for a walk in the kibbutz, and all that's going through my head is, do I need to drink a lot to be on her level right now? How much do I need to drink to be with her, so if I try to kiss her, it'll be legitimate, so it won't look like I'm taking advantage of her. So I just asked her if I could kiss her, and at first, the first time, she told me not now. Then we didn't find a reason, and I thought, okay, not now. So she doesn't want me, so I'm going back, I'm leaving. Then she came to me: "Where did you go?" I told her: "I thought you didn't want to." She said: "Fine, I don't want to now, it doesn't mean I don't want to at all." Okay, fine. So we sat a bit longer, we went outside and then we kissed. We had this thing where I told her she needs to get 45% ownership of Tony before I can propose to her. And then she asked: "Okay, how do I get 45% ownership of Tony?" "You have to find out for yourself."
[14:15]And one time I was in the room, and I heard Shiri playing with Tony. I told her, "Okay, you got 5%," then she realized that to get Tony, she needs to be with him a lot, and laugh with him, play with him, and pet him. And I wasn't so generous with the percentages, so it was a lot. Sometimes I even lowered it. Just kidding, I decided that like... He felt like lowering it for her. It's moving too fast with the plans, so I need to lower it. When we flew to Italy, we were at a restaurant we really liked, and then I gave her a laminated card that said: "The holder of this card has 45% ownership of the wonderful creature, Tony Tonto Bibas." And when we moved to the second hotel, I proposed to her, at dinner.
[15:18]Shiri's father, Yossi, may he rest in peace, he was a redhead when he was young. I always laughed with Shiri, because I didn't really care about the hair color. I always told her, "what are the chances he'll be a redhead?" And she told me, "Yes, it can happen." He was born in a vacuum delivery, and we saw he was a redhead, and we were so happy. They filmed me holding Ariel, and then we sent it to the group, "Meet the first Yemenite redhead."
[15:58]From the start he was such a sweet and mischievous boy. Who's sweet, Ar? Ariel. And who's cute, Ar? Ariel. Right. Who are you? Daddy. What, really? You're Daddy! One, Poogy, one, Poogy, redhead. I love you.
[16:27]A redhead has a redhead's personality. He's fearless, restless. With Kfir it was even funnier because in the delivery room they were already prepared that one child came out a redhead. So right during the birth, the head started coming out, she just stopped everything, lowered those surgical lights from above. Shiri and I got stressed, because why did she need those lights? Then she said to us: "Another redhead!" So in the middle of the birth, we were laughing, cracking up, and then, "okay, push." We laughed enough, you need to push. Hey, what's here? There's a sign here that our friends, the Kunios, put for us. Come. Now what? Oh, my darling. Come, come, I can't lift you. Come, come, come... This is your little brother, Fulgencio. Do you want to pet him? This is your little brother, Fulgencio. The thing that stood out most to me about Shiri from the first moment, was her sense of family.
[18:03]That she wants a family, for her, family is something sacred, and she is ready to give everything for her family. She had a certain path she paved for herself, of what it means to be a parent and how to raise children.
[18:28]She was born to be a mother. Yes. Period. That's all she wanted to be, a mother. That's why she also left education, because she realized she wouldn't divide herself; she wanted to be only theirs. Is that funny? She taught me everything. Before Ariel arrived, she taught me on a teddy bear how to change diapers. They were very special children.
[19:11]Even Kfir, who was very small, not even a year old, had something of his own. He had something in his behavior. And Ariel had a very strong character. He would get what he wanted. If he was a bit too short for something, he would look for every possible way to reach it, and if he didn't succeed, he would call a bigger friend: "Get it down for me." He's an outdoorsy kid.
[19:40]She knew how to be around them. On one hand, she was very protective, and on the other, she found a way to allow him to be the energetic redhead and curious boy he was. And Yarden was the one who always said, "Shiri, but he's climbing. "But Shiri, he'll fall. But Shiri, he'll get hurt." Yarden, he's a child. It'll be fine, let him. He needs to climb, he needs to get hurt, he needs to fall. Everything will be fine. I was very anxious, very. Shiri called me a helicopter. Every time Ariel was playing outside, I'd hover over him, supervising. She'd say: "Let him be, move away, "let him learn, let him gain confidence on his own. "Let him be, move away, come on."
[20:23]And it was hard for me to let go, because he's mine, I need to protect him. I'd say: "Chuki, it's just a blood test, it's okay." After Kfir was born, he suddenly developed a fever. So we went to the hospital, and they took his blood, so he started crying, and then I started crying.
[21:08]The nurse looks at me and asks, "Daddy, why are you crying?" I say: "My son is crying, he's in pain, why wouldn't I cry?" So today, I feel terribly lost, because I have no one to protect, I have no way to protect them now. I did what I could for them on October 7th, and it ended there, it was no longer in my hands. There are things I heard from the... from the intelligence wiretaps, that... Other than playing them, I don't know what else I can do.
[28:11]These are things I don't share. Hers? You can hear her? No. You hear them talking about them, and how they behaved, and... I... when I heard it for the first time, a line from the song I played at their funeral immediately came to mind, and I started crying. Which song? The song by Roman Sky, the line: "Were you calm when they took your life?" I didn't lose hope. I didn't lose hope for a single moment.
[34:00]And that's what kept me going there, because... If I had known for certain, 100%, there's a very high chance I would have done something. And I had opportunities with their weapons, or grenades they left in a bag, and the bag was left unattended.
[34:39]But I had something to live for. And I didn't want to risk that. Even if the hope was... if the chance was low, I wasn't going to miss it. It's walking into a room and knowing that everyone looking at you is saying, "Well, my life could be worse, "I could have been him. "I wouldn't want to be him." I don't enter a house and they say that because I achieved something in life or something, and then they say, "Wow, I'd want to walk his path, "I'd want to do like him." No, I enter a place and in many cases I am the saddest thing in the place. They look at me and it's like... "Hey, bro, how's it going? Everything okay?" "No." Yarden is still learning to live, to perform small yet big actions, to manage a complex relationship with time, which on one hand insists on moving forward, but every tick of the clock also distances him from the time when he was still beside the loves of his life. There's a lyric from a song I really love, and I really relate to it. "Lord, I'm just killing time, time is killing me." It's a song by Zakk Wylde. And to be honest, that's how I see my life right now. I'm just killing time now, and time is killing me. Because every minute I'm without them, something in me dies.
