a beautiful life ... it's our victory

For Ziv, the moment was equally overwhelming but tinged with uncertainty.

- BY JANE WARREN

“He didn't know I was alive. We had such different experiences. So when he came out, he just expected to see his family. I asked myself, for a moment, would he actually want to see me? Because 18 months had passed and I just knew that he didn't think I had survived.” When they embraced, crying and kissing, she says simply: “It was a very special moment.”

Eliya was in hospital for two weeks. But physical healing was only the start of his recovery.

“It's not easy to come back after a year and a half,” Ziv says. “There are a lot of problems because of what we have been through. We work on it a lot. We really, really knew that we've got a gift from God, that we had the opportunity to come back together.

“We work hard on our relationship just to make it work and to love each other.

“Everyone thinks it's fairy tales,” she adds, “but I have my problems with PTSD, and he has his problems also with PTSD. There are nights without sleeping, panic attacks, a lot of things we are both going through, but we have each other now. For the year he was in captivity, I just had myself in an empty bed, but now I have him to hug.”