How Israelis seem to have reacted to 10 days of Iran bombing…And more…
A bunch of English writers in Israel got together last week on Zoom to talk about what they had been writing.
It turned out they hadn’t been writing at all.
“My entire attention was focused on keeping my babies safe,” one bearded blond guy said, “and running to a shelter a few nights in a row can cut into your creativity. Especially when the shelter is three flights down and two doors away.”
“Nobody publishes me anymore anyway. I get rejections within hours after sending the poem out,” said a young brunette whose work I don’t know so I can’t authenticate the reason for her rejection.
“If you write something bad about Israel, you have a much better chance of getting recognized,” some other guy I didn’t know said. He was wearing a bright blue hat with some words I couldn’t identify.
I tried to move back to the subject we said we’d discuss – personal reactions to the situation of having bombs of half a ton fog up your life. “How does it feel?”
“This is the first time I’m talking about it at all. We concentrate on surviving, making sure we’ve got food, that we know there’s a shelter nearby wherever we go, wearing clothes, and carrying an escape bag.”
“Very short showers,” the brunette added.
“24-hour bras,” an older woman muttered, “for almost two years.”
“My house got blown up,” my friend, for whom I had arranged this event, finally piped up. “I’m using my cellphone to talk to you all.”
“Nothing left?”
“Everything that was glass shattered, and the shards penetrated everything that wasn’t glass.”
Right after the ceasefire I had gone over to see what was left of her building complex, next to the old age home, and I could verify her description. They had restored the front of the café across the street, so I sat down and evaluated the damage in the neighborhood over a glass of iced coffee. I recalled that my partner’s late cousin had her bed next to the window on the 14th floor of the Home, and she used to watch outside for hours. I calculated that the blast from the rocket blew out the windows of 120 homes leaving at least 500 people displaced, but that was just a rough estimate.
None of the writers I spoke to that evening had been involved in that particular “incident,” as the English referred to the V2 rockets in the Blitz. But once I mentioned it, everyone had a story to tell.
“We were ashamed. It was like being raped – you don’t want to admit it.”
“There are such bigger tragedies around. The hostages, for instance. How could I complain about shards in my bed when I wasn’t even in it?”
“My family is safe – it was a miracle.”
In many ways it was a miracle – that we could share stories from all around the country about malevolent disasters, and feel, just a little, comfort.