When Hamas terrorists seized Omer Shem Tov at the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023, says Wendell Steavenson in 1843 magazine, the 21-year-old could hear the crowds as they drove into Gaza. “The cheering, the happiness,” he says. “It was like their 4th of July.” Shortly after being locked up, the door opened and three children peered in. “Look at the Jew!” said their father, one of the Hamas fighters. Later, Omer was moved underground to a tiny tunnel cell. He couldn’t stand up straight, or stretch out his arms. It was so deep he could hear nothing, not even the Israeli bombs. And it was pitch black. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

After 50 days, Omer was taken to a much more spacious underground room that served as the base for around 10 fighters. “It seemed like paradise.” He was given a proper meal – his captors “jeered and called him a pig” as he ate – and allowed to take a shower. When the Hamas fighters later found books and magazines left behind by Israeli soldiers, Omer asked if he could keep them in exchange for doing their cleaning and cooking. They agreed. He cleaned the loos and washed the floors; he made bread and cooked, sometimes quietly singing Elton John’s I’m Still Standing. At one point he was even tasked with counting out shekels for Hamas fighters’ salaries. Their behaviour towards him was capricious: sometimes they were friendly, but they would then mock him and show him gruesome videos of October 7. Finally, after more than a year in that room – and 450 days underground in total – Omer was brought to the surface to be released. “There was cold fresh air,” he says, smiling at the memory. “Heaven.”

THE OLD VICARAGE Cedar Hall is a grand Grade II listed property which served as the vicarage of Gresford, north Wales, until the 1990s, says The Times. On the ground floor are two reception rooms, a dining room, a utility with a freezer room, and the kitchen, while the five bedrooms and two bathrooms are on the first floor. There’s a wine cellar in the basement and a large outbuilding with a stable, tack room and a garage. The house sits in around 3.5 acres of land and has a walled garden. Wrexham is a 10-minute drive. £1.85m. Click on the image to see the listing.

Light up your weekend

Smoking is becoming increasingly romanticised, says Christine Emba in The New York Times. Cigarettes feature prominently in Materialists, one of the summer’s most-hyped movies, and they are the “accessory of choice” for Gen Z icons like Paul Mescal and Charli XCX. I have a theory for what’s behind this trend: smoking serves as an antidote to an existence “lived at a remove from the real”...

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