Held hostage in Gaza: a Thai worker’s prayer for freedom comes true
There are some things she doesn’t want to remember. There are some things she can’t do.
But one image remains etched in Nutthawaree Munkan’s memory from October 7, the day Hamas and other militants stormed into Israel and held her hostage in Gaza for nearly 50 days. As the percussive sounds of war grew closer, her boyfriend, Bunthom Phankhong, a fellow Thai farmhand who worked just five miles from the border, rushed to his bicycle. Mrs Nutthawaree jumped on the back and threw her arms around him as he kicked hard towards what they hoped was safety.
She remembers his legs swirling across the pure earth. Then armed men stopped the pair on bicycles. That was the last time she saw her boyfriend before she was taken to Gaza, she said.
Captive, along with four others in an underground cell, Ms Nutthawaree prayed that her friend would survive. She prayed that she would one day see her children again in Thailand, her hope fueled by the affection of one of the hostages held with her, an Israeli girl. She prayed that she would see her mother, to whom she sent money every month to maintain the household and pay off the family debt.
Ms Nutthawaree, 35, survived on a piece of round bread and barely enough water and made a vow: if her boyfriend survived, they would get married. But first they would be ordained as Buddhist monks and nuns for a time. This was love: submitting to the absence of worldly desire, to the promise of life.
The cell was not small, but fear filled him. Ms. Nutthawaree recalled being locked up with two Thai men — she was the only Thai woman held hostage — and an Israeli woman, Danielle Aloni, and her 5-year-old child, Emilia. To pass the time and distract from their hunger, Mrs. Nutthawaree used her halting English to tell Emilia about Thai food, especially rice noodles seasoned with tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce. Pad Thai noodles, Ms. Nutthawaree thought, would be best for a little Israeli girl unaccustomed to the bracing spices of Thai food, especially the chili-heavy dishes of her native Isaan in northeastern Thailand.
She learned Emilia songs in Thai. She taught her how to count to 10. In return, Emilia, with the conviction of youth, told Mrs. Nutthawaree that she would see Mr. Bunthom again.
When their captors said they would be released in one or two days, or maybe three or four, Ms. Nutthawaree wasn’t sure she could trust them. She had been transferred several times to different underground cells. She regularly heard explosions, although she did not know who was carrying out the airstrikes. She didn’t understand where the guards told her she was.
“Gaza?” she said. “I’ve never heard of this country.”
On November 24, the five inhabitants of the cell were driven out into the open air for the first time in 48 days. Ms Nutthawaree did not yet know that at least 39 Thai farm workers had been killed by the terrorists. And she had no idea that three dozen Thais had been kidnapped, making them the second largest group of victims of the October 7 attacks after the Israelis.
A man stood at the border, among the crowd of 24 hostages from three different countries who were released that day. His height was about that of Mr. Bunthom, but Mrs. Nutthawaree is nearsighted. She remembered narrowing her eyes as the man, thinner than she remembered, came closer.
Mrs. Nutthawaree and Mr. Bunthom joined forces, finally a peaceful reunion.
Six days after her release, while Ms. Nutthawaree recovered in Israel, with Mr. Bunthom by her side, she made a video call to Emilia, arranged by Israeli officials. She counted on her fingers and watched as the Israeli girl practiced her Thai numbers, only stumbling over the number seven.
After showering and eating, the two looked different. Emilia said Mrs. Nutthawaree looked beautiful. She returned the compliment and blew kisses into the phone, like she used to do in Thailand with her children.
Separated from her 12-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter for years, Ms. Nutthawaree knew that life could somehow be shared through a screen. She video chatted with them three or four times a day, she said. When Ms. Nutthawaree opened her Facebook account after arriving from Gaza, she found a flood of messages from her children. Every day for seven weeks they sent news about their lives, a singing competition or a school triumph. Her children especially wondered where Mrs. Nutthawaree was and told her they missed her. They ordered her to come home.
The messages, Ms. Nutthawaree said, saddened her.
“It seemed like a conversation,” she said, “but I couldn’t answer.”
On December 11, a week and a half after the couple returned to Thailand, Mr Bunthom, his head shaved and his body wrapped in a ceremonial white tunic, climbed onto his cousin’s shoulders in his home village of Ban Hin Ngom. A crowd of relatives and villagers cheered as Mr Bunthom was lifted into the air as part of his monastic ordination ceremony. A woman threw marigold petals into the air, a shower of botanical confetti.
The sun was hot in Isaan, home to most of the 30,000 Thai farm workers who tended fields and processed produce in Israel. Salaries in Israel are at least five times what people in Isaan can earn, and Mr. Bunthom and Ms. Nutthawaree both had family debts to pay off.
While jobs in Israel have provided financial salvation for many Thais, the October 7 attacks were a terrifying demonstration of the risks.
Anucha Angkaew was among the Thais taken hostage from a farm near Gaza. Gunmen shot dead two others he was hiding with. For the first four days of his captivity, while held in an underground complex just a 30-minute drive from his farm, Mr. Anucha’s hands were tied behind his back. He ended up losing 37 pounds.
Mr Anucha was released shortly after Ms Nutthawaree and Mr Bunthom. (Nine Thais are believed to remain hostage.) His family debt has been paid off. Back in Isan, he sat in front of the nearly completed house he had bought with his salary from Israel. His father couldn’t stop grinning as he smoothed out cement. His mother also laughed as she had managed to return more than six pounds to her son’s body in just over a week by feeding him his favorite spicy beef tartare and fried locusts.
“I am happy that I went to Israel to make money,” said Mr. Anucha, “but I am afraid to go abroad again.”
Many people in Mr. Bunthom’s temple procession had worked abroad or had relatives who had done so. The scale of the October 7 attacks shocked Isaan residents, even though they knew that farms near the Gaza border were occasionally targeted by Hamas rockets, killing Thai workers. Ms Nutthawaree said she was never used to the explosions.
“It is a global war, and it is difficult to imagine how Thais would get involved,” said Phra Kru Photit Wattirakhun, a senior monk at the village temple.
At the entrance to the temple, Mr. Bunthom was lowered, with a golden parasol protecting his newly shaven head. He will serve as a monk here for a week before continuing his religious duties in Mrs. Nutthawaree’s village, a few hours’ drive away. She plans to take vows as a nun for a month.
Mr Bunthom reiterated to the senior cleric the precepts he had to follow as a monk, such as avoiding perfumes, dancing, sex and alcohol. His Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism, was rusty. The cleric joked that Mr. Bunthom had been in Israel too long.
After Mr. Bunthom disappeared into the meditative seclusion of the temple, Mrs. Nutthawaree reflected on more earthly matters. During her four years in Israel, where she worked even on her days off, she had paid off her debts. But like the other 22 Thai hostages released so far, she had to pay for the plane ticket from Bangkok to her home province. (The flight from Israel to Bangkok was covered by the Thai government.)
The constant flow of well-wishers and government officials to her family home meant she had to buy gallons of refreshments and food. The ordination ceremonies are expensive. That includes all the document work – notarizing, copying, printing – required to apply for compensation from the Thai and Israeli governments. So far, Ms. Nutthawaree has received $300 from the Thai government and $280 from Israel, she said. She hopes for more, but doesn’t expect it.
While Ms. Nutthawaree was detained by Hamas, her salary was no longer sent home. Her mother went to the pawn shop to sell gold rings and necklaces to cover costs. Ms. Nutthawaree says she will soon have to travel abroad for work, as her mother once did while picking berries in Sweden. She hopes Mr. Bunthom can come with her – perhaps to Australia, because the idea of harvesting carrots and spring onions while kangaroos hop by sounds fun, she says.
However, there is no certainty that Australia will be open to the couple. Israel, she said, could beckon again. The pay was good. It’s where they fell in love.
“Maybe when it calms down and they stop shooting, we’ll go back,” she said. “I was very happy to work there, and he and I, as partners, were never short of work.”