We are living in fragments.
Time is fragmented. Sooner or later, at any hour of day or night, the boom-chaka-chaka of an alert that missiles are heading your way hurls you out of sleep or work or cooking or whatever you’re doing. Then, in case a siren will follow telling us to take shelter, there’s the rush to be ready: shoes, bathroom, glasses, check if there’s anything on the stove which has to be turned off… And then… seconds turn to minutes until either: a siren sounds, and there’s the rush to get everyone out of the house, down the stairs, into our shelter… Or: enough minutes pass quietly, that you realize the rockets headed elsewhere and this will not require a shelter run. You can go back to whatever you were doing. Or try to.
Of course, between alerts and sirens and waiting, attention is fragmented. And there’s the unconscious, uncontrollable tic of my thumb scrolling and my gaze pulled to the phone checking what was launched, by whom, towards what, who was hurt. Or, in the midst of trying to work, a tsunami wave of tiredness overwhelms me, and I have to put my head on my hands right there at my desk and close my eyes, because I’m so tired after so many disrupted nights. Though I try not to complain because people in other parts of the country have it way worse than we do in Jerusalem, waking to sirens multiple times a night.
Nerves are starting to fragment. I never realized just how many truck and bus engines accelerate with a high-pitched wail. But now that I find myself snapping into a state of rigid attention with each one that lumbers by, I realize that, in fact, it’s quite a lot. Ditto that every glint of light off my phone screen makes me tense up, thinking it’s the flashing light of an alert going off.
I’m not usually quite so on edge when missiles are being launched towards Israel, since we generally believed that Jerusalem is less likely to be targeted due to the risk to Al Aqsa Mosque. But now even Jerusalem is getting hit, with fragments raining down everywhere. On roof tops and sidewalks and synagogues and churches, in East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, on the holy and the mundane. All are subjected to the rein of an equalizing randomness. Fragments of something – whether rocket or interceptor – fell two blocks away from us, and a few dozen feet from my friend’s apartment. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was hit. And, in the same attack, shrapnel fell just in front of the gorgeous new National Library – my own holy site.
I send pictures of Jerusalem hits to my kids so they continue to find shelter with every siren even when they are not at home. And make a point of mentioning that in Dimona, the boy who was badly hurt hadn’t made it to the shelter in time.
Though, to be fair, my kids have taken the risks seriously. And, to be honest, they are also pretty happy about all of this. Not that they want anyone getting hurt. They’re just thrilled to have the normal routine of school totally disrupted. A few zoom classes and tasks. A lot of hanging out with friends. Eating. Goofing around with each other. Projects. A good lesson in point of view.
“Ima, let’s talk!” said my middle son, when I emerged from my study for another cup of coffee a few days ago, and launched us into a big discussion about the politics of this war. Such moments are pure gold.
But eating routines are definitely fragmented. I nosh each time I get close to the kitchen. I think I’ve quadrupled my intake of ice cream (New York Super Fudge Chunk) and chocolate (bittersweet), though my coffee intake is up only by a third.
On the plus side, the kids have variably been inspired to make schnitzel, chocolate chip cookies; sushi is up next.
It’s kind of like during covid, except that instead of masks we have missiles. And instead of having to isolate from friends, we are seeing more of them to keep our spirits up. And people are dying.
One friend who moved to Haifa last year, just fled back to Jerusalem with his wife, toddler and newborn. Their Haifa apartment had no safe room or shelter, so they had moved in with his in-laws. But the in-laws are further up North, where the missiles and sirens have been relentless – as in hundreds of them, significantly worse than what we’ve had in Jerusalem. Those closest to the border with Lebanon have only seconds after a siren to get to shelter. If that. Sometimes the explosion comes before the siren. So my friend found a place to stay in Jerusalem for now. Sleep deprivation with a newborn is hard enough, but combined with sleep deprivation from multiple sirens and shelter runs at all hours of day and night?
I’m grateful – wholeheartedly and on a daily basis - that I am not dealing with all of this with young kids at home. It is 1000x harder to be managing sirens and explosions and total uncertainty, and trying to get work done and calculating when’s the best time to go shopping and do you care that the closest supermarket has no shelter and what to cook when everyone is at home all the time and willfully ignoring the dishes piling up even though it’s crazy-making because the piles never end but doing dishes all the time makes you crazier, while also having to worry about getting your little kids up and out and into the shelter at all hours of day and night and up and sitting in zoom classes when they are supposed to and keeping them appropriately entertained and busy and keep them from interrupting your own zoom calls when you are desperately trying to get work done.
I was on a work zoom call a few days ago with a colleague when her six-year-old started popping in and out of our call screen, wearing a green dragon costume and an impish grin. Her face froze. She tried everything. First carrying on as though he wasn’t wriggling all over her and making funny faces. Then gently pushing him away and urging him to return to his drawing. Finally, she gave up and handed him a lollipop. Then he popped in and out of our call waving his bright red lollipop, until he finally wandered off. I wanted to hug them both.
Another colleague had a breakdown with me after she found out that her flight to the US was just cancelled. Both because she was supposed to have been with her not-so-young-anymore mother for Passover. And because coping with all of this with four kids at home has brought her to the brink of insanity.
But flights are getting cancelled for months out now, even with the stalwart El Al. For the desperate, the adventurous and the sturdy, options have developed to go by land to the border of Egypt or Jordan, cross over, make your way to their airports and head onwards from there.
We’re 25 days into this war. When this started, I kind of figured it couldn’t last that much past Purim, and that certainly it would be over well before Passover. Now, with Passover just a week away, I just wish I could believe that this whole thing would be bookended by the two holidays. An existential war with the Ayatollah, sandwiched between Haman and Pharaoh? That’s material for generations to come.
But I just heard one rumor that we’ll be spending Yom Ha’atzmaut/Independence Day in our shelters. And my son reports that a friend in the army thinks it will last through August – maybe that just means the Hezbollah part, and Iran will somehow be resolved by then? But that’s still terrible. And of course, there is a constant flow of updates, quotes and claims that it will be over in a matter of days… or weeks… no, months… actually, years...
In the meantime, there is little public bandwidth or media space for the upcoming elections, the Haredi draft, the skyrocketing death rate in the Arab sector, escalating settler violence, chaos in the judiciary, Gaza recovery and a host of other urgent issues.
It’s hard not to feel that we were damned if we did, and damned if we didn’t. The risks posed by a nuclear Iran with an insurmountable ballistic missile capacity were significant for Israel, but also the region and, likely, the world. But as this war plays out, new risks arise. I just wish I had more confidence in the leaders runing the show.
So, I’m just trying to get through it one day at a time, and hoping to cut back on the New York Super Fudge Chunk. At least that I can control.
Besides, there’s fresh chocolate chip cookies to finish off… or at least fragments of them.
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