Family flyerIn a remote village in eastern Nepal, thousands of miles from Israel, Mahananda Joshi was sitting tensely at apartment on Thursday, his telephone in his hands.
The telephone is never far away from his hand right now. And never on motionless. He is waiting for information about his son, Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese crops student who was taken to Gaza and kidnapped by Hamas.
Any moment the telephone rings, Mahananda, a native schoolteacher, thinks it may send news of Bipin, or also- his deepest hope- his son’s voice on the line.
” Unfortunately, it is always one else”, Mahananda said.
Bipin was one of the lots of international workers who were kidnapped alongside Israelis during Hamas’s assault on October 7, 2023.
23 from Thailand and one from the Philippines were later released, but Bipin and nine people remained.
It was never distinct why.
The next day Bipin’s family Padma spoke to him was 6 October, she said, the day before he was kidnapped.
He showed off the garments he was wearing and assured her that he was eating properly.
The family saw him again after Israeli officers showed them video footage from the Al-Shifa clinic in Gaza and demanded that they identify him.
It provided proof that he had been taken back.
The BBC now understands that Bipin is believed to still be alive, but Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, said he had” no concrete information” yet about Bipin’s condition or whereabouts.
Family flyerMahananda, Bipin’s family Padma and 18-year-old girl Puspa lived in a small light, one-storey house in the town of Bispuri Mahendranagar, close to the border with India.
As of Thursday, they had never heard anyone from leaders, they said, only the stories announcing a peace deal.
They had all regained hope thanks to the information.
” I feel like he did text me today or tomorrow saying mother, I am completely now and I will return house immediately”, Padma said.
But the Joshi mother’s reduction, if it comes, will not be that hard.
” Anything may go wrong.”
Along with the nine other foreign workers who remain hostages, Bipin is not expected to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire, which will prioritise the release of elderly men, women and children.
The concern for the home is that, while they wait, all you shift.
” Anything may fall off”, Padma said, with tears in her eyes.
The mother’s struggle began on the day of the invasion.
Bipin was one of several Egyptian students studying in Kibbutzim in southern Israel that evening, and one of them, Mahananda, a professor at the university, contacted him to report that Bipin had been abducted.
Mahananda was having trouble understanding what he was hearing because he had no idea what was happening in Israel or how Hamas’s assault was going to impact him.
He would eventually learn that one of his brother appeared to have been taken prisoner while 10 Egyptian pupils had been killed in the attack.
Mahananda and Padma said on Thursday that the disconnect has persisted for 15 agonizing times.
Every prisoner family has endured great pain, but some of those who are far from Israel experience added loneliness.
” It has been a very unhappy knowledge”, Mahananda said.
Mr Guru, Nepal’s adviser to Israel, told the BBC that he had been in regular contact with the family and visited the town.
Mahananda claimed that although the family did acquire numerous visits from officials during the war, they were extremely left alone as it dragged on.
” Since the new peace agreement, no-one has come to view us or communicated with us at all”, he said.
” All we know comes from the news,” says one journalist.
A representative for the business of the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who has been assisting prisoner people for the past 15 weeks, claimed that it treated all victims the same, whether they were Jewish or foreign, and was working diligently to free them both.
The peace announcement for some of the families gives them hope that their 15-month suffering is coming to an end and that they will see their loved ones once more in the coming days.
For some, like the Joshis, any wish had been tempered.
The longer they have to delay, the more likely it is that the peace agreement will collapse.
Puspa, Bipin’s girl, was holding a photograph of her brother as she spoke at house in Bispuri Mahendranagar on Thursday.
When she mentioned to him coming house, tears filled her eyes. She was convinced he had.
” And when I see him again, I’m going to hug him”, she said. ” And cry”.