Two and a half years ago, I went to Nir Oz and wrote about not looking away.

I walked through the kibbutz, past homes that had been left exactly as they were on October 7. I remember the surrealness of it: the beauty of the kibbutz alongside the devastation, the quiet alongside the terrible stories, the bright, colorful toys strewn across the burned grounds, the ordinary details of people’s lives frozen in the middle of something unimaginable.

I wrote then that some things are simply too painful to look at, but that looking away is not an option.

I never could have imagined that I would return two and a half years later for a concert.

I never could have imagined the crowd that would gather there. Religious and secular. Young and old. People from all over the country. People who have lived through this war in very different ways, standing together in a place that still carries the physical scars of October 7.

And I never could have imagined that the person performing would be Sagui Dekel-Chen.

Sagui wrote nine songs while he was in captivity. He composed them, held on to them in his memory, and, immediately after his release, while still in the hospital, sang them into his phone so they would not be lost.

Tonight, for the first time, he performed them publicly.

At one point, he sang “Pashut Yom Pashut” – “Just a Simple Day.”

He explained that the song was about the ordinary days he dreamed about in captivity. The days we barely notice when we are living them. He would dream about them, then wake up and remember where he was:........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)