Israeli hostage struggles to rebuild his life

During the two years he was held captive in Gaza, Segev Kalfon had a recurring dream: slowly walking through a supermarket, browsing each aisle for his favourite foods, taking in the brightly coloured packages and smells.

Since being released on October 13, his dreams have flipped: Most nights when he closes his eyes, he is back on a dirty piece of foam mattress in the 2-square-metre (22-square-foot) room in a Hamas tunnel where he was kept with five other hostages, counting each tile and crack in the cement to distract himself from severe hunger and near-daily physical torture.

“I was in the lowest place a person can be before death, the lowest. I had no control over anything, when to eat, when to shower, how much I want to eat,” said Kalfon, 27. During the worst parts of captivity, he was so skinny he could count the individual vertebrae jutting from his spine.

Now that he's back home in Dimona in southern Israel, Kalfon is trying to piece together a post-captivity life. He spends much of his time juggling appointments with an array of doctors and psychologists. One of the strangest aspects of his release, Kalfon said, is that for two years, his entire life revolved around trying to please his captors, so they might share more food or spare a beating. Now that he's out, "everyone is trying to please me,” he said.