Freed from Hamas captivity, former hostage tells his story through his paintings

NEW YORK — You'd be forgiven for looking around Andrei Kozlov's studio, dotted with paintings inspired by his eight months as a hostage of Hamas, and seeing only darkness — canvases splashed with gray and ocher, guns tucked into waistbands or resting against a wall, moments of angst and disbelief and pain.

He is a free man now, who often lets a wide smile spread across his face, who can't believe his luck of surviving it all, and who urges you to look further.

A painting of a blackened street his captors led him down is drowned in darkness, but in the distance is a sliver of cerulean sky. A screaming man's reflection is caught, but it's in a mirror on a bubblegum-pink wall. A house beside barren trees is seen in the desolation of night, but its windows glow with lamplight.

''When you're surrounded by something dark,'' the 28-year-old Kozlov says, standing in a shared art studio he works at in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of New York, ''there always can be light inside.''

Nearly a year after his release from captivity, Kozlov is familiar with juxtapositions.

He is mostly happy and well-adjusted, able to matter-of-factly describe his ordeal, but sometimes returns in his mind to what he went through. He is alive and filled with gratitude but feels the weight of those not yet free. He is no longer a hostage but knows the world may always see him as one.

''I will be a former hostage forever,'' he says. ''It will forever be a part of my life.''

Captured while working at music festival

Kozlov grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, but had long felt a sense of wanderlust. After serving a mandatory year in the military, he decided he wanted to live in Israel, arriving in August 2022 and taking part in Masa, a gap-year program that included an internship in motion design at a Tel Aviv company. His life was carefree, reflected in Instagram posts of beaches, biking, surfing, road-tripping and otherwise enjoying the days of a relaxed, unemployed 20-something.

That ended on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israel's history. Kozlov had picked up a job working security at the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border, barely sleeping in two nights keeping watch for ticketless intruders. On his third morning, daybreak unleashed hours of chaos and confusion, the sound of gunfire, mad dashes for escape, scaling down a cliff and ultimately being led to a vehicle that Kozlov believed would bring him to safety. He hadn't been killed, he rationalized, so he would be rescued. He never considered kidnapping.

He sent no messages to his family. He was sure he would survive. He'd be home by night, he thought.

Soon, though, Kozlov was in Gaza, tied with rope. Reality set in. Guns were aimed and blows were delivered. He was certain he knew what would come next.

''You are sure that you will spend the last moments of your life like that,'' he says, ''and maybe tomorrow they will kill you.''

Those first days of Kozlov's captivity were a ''disgusting, terrible hell.'' Over eight months, he says he was held in eight different houses, guarded by a rotating cast of two dozen militants who lived beside him.

Some, he said, feigned compassion; others treated their captives as animals. In some holding sites, he slept on a wet, sticky mattress that stunk of mold; others had far better conditions. Ropes were replaced by chains until restraints were removed altogether. He knows it could have been far worse.

''They didn't pull out my nails,'' he says. ''They didn't torture me with electroshock.''

Card games, prayers and drawings

In time, a weird normalcy set in. He spent time picking up Arabic from his captors and Hebrew from fellow hostages. They'd talk of music and women and life before. Days passed in endless hands of cards or invented games like listing 10 Will Smith movies or 100 songs with the word ‘love' in the title.

He'd muse about escaping, but knew he'd never make it out alive. Sometimes, he wondered if he could telekinetically send a message to his parents. At others, this agnostic found himself trying to talk to God.

After a few months, his captors provided a small mercy: A pencil and a thin notebook.

Kozlov knew he had artistic talent from childhood, but it was a pastime that came and went. Sometimes, years went by without drawing. Now, with nothing but time, he drew daily — cartoonish aliens and Don Corleone of ''The Godfather'' and the summer home in Russia where he spent his happiest days of youth.

He wrote out goals, too. To go home the same person, or maybe better. To use his skills. To be free.

And, on the 247th day, it came. Israeli Defense Forces burst into the house in the Nuseirat refugee camp where Kozlov was held — a dramatic operation that rescued him and three other hostages, and killed at least 274 Palestinians caught in the cross-fire and an Israeli commando. In a moment, he was outside, feeling sun on his face for the first time in months, a Coke in his hand and a cigarette at his lips. A helicopter whirred him to safety.

''Euphoria,'' he says. ''You're able to feel fresh air, to see a sea, beach, sand, sky without any clouds.''

He calls it the best day of his life.

With freedom, scars and hope

In the days that followed, he'd be reunited with his family, crumpling and bawling at his mother's feet at a hospital outside Tel Aviv, and recognized by passersby as that hostage on the news. Some nights, he'd wake up thinking he was back on that sticky mattress. Some days he had to pinch himself to believe he was truly free.

''Sometimes I feel what it means to have a war and sometimes I feel the pain of every hostage,'' he says. ''I feel pain of families who don't know where their loved ones are right now. ... I feel pain of people who left their houses in the south. I feel the pain of all the people who lost their houses. I feel pain.''

He says the vast majority of the time, he feels fine, but a day or so a month, the darkness returns. He spent his first few months of freedom in Israel, then traveling in the U.S. He was back in Israel for a time earlier this year, but found too many triggers, so he returned to the U.S.

Along the way, he's made good on his goal, working on his art.

In his studio space a block from the Hudson River, he's finalizing a planned exhibition of his work — a series of mostly acrylic paintings showing his capture, captivity and release. He wants to finish a few more pieces influenced by his time as a hostage before pivoting to new inspirations.

Maybe he'll flit off to New Zealand, he says. Maybe he'll write a book. So many doors are open to him. Maybe art will become his life and his work will be filled with color and happiness.

He sees that joy even in the paintings others might insist are dark.

''It's not dark,'' he says. ''It's about hope.''

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Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky

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