It was cold, it was dark, and I was sitting alone in the middle of a stairwell on a lower floor in my apartment building in Jerusalem, for I could not remember how many times that day already.
What day was it anyway, I wondered? Saturday, Sunday? Or maybe just that witching hour found in the middle of all nights that is always accompanied by an unbridled sense of dread.
And how many days have passed since Operation Roaring Lion began? Was it three, four, or five? In my dazed state after waking to the unearthly screeching sound of yet another Home Front Command missile alert on my phone, it was hard to tell.
But I had bigger problems at the moment, I reminded myself in the deadly silence that followed; survival would be a good one to fixate on, for instance.
Unlike most of my friends, some of them in southern Israel, most in the Gush Dan region, my housing complex has no bomb shelter. That is why I keep dragging my carcass down two flights of stairs, where I mercilessly plump my protesting backside down on a cold, hard marble step every time the alerts blare.
“It’s not safe to do that,” one of my editors lectured me during the 12 Day War. “You need to locate a bomb shelter near you and get to it. Those ballistic missiles weigh a half a ton, if not more.”
Often, I almost told him, I just wanted to crawl into bed, close my eyes, and never wake up again. But maybe that is a lie I tell myself. I think I might just be waiting for someone to jerk me back to life – someone who is not me, for once.
Snapping me out of my thoughts, my cell phone started lighting up with incoming messages. My friends were all texting over our WhatsApp group as we routinely do to report on our status, i.e., the “I’m not dead, yet” type of information.
“Bomb shelter,” one wrote with our favorite exhausted emoji. “Bomb shelter,” said the next, using the same expression. “Safe room,” texted the third drily, bells and whistles excluded.
“Stairwell,” came my reply just as our cities were bombarded, sounds of extremely loud explosions rocking the sky while fighter jets buzzed above. Someone at work said earlier that those are used as decoy planes, but I was too tired to ask him what he meant.
“Going back to bed,” I wrote when it was all over. “Same,” answered one. “Same,” came the next response. “I really need a restroom,” came the third. It is always a relief to hear back from everyone quickly, which is not always the case.
Met with Cookie, my big black cat, upon my reentry into my (dangerous) top-floor apartment, I informed her that for now, the Iranians have tried, and failed, to kill us. Her response: A large, bored, lazy yawn.
As I crawled back under my chilled bedsheets, I remember thinking blearily that I needed to investigate her lineage – make sure that there wasn’t any Persian in her bloodline.
Operation Roaring Lion: Day 13?
It may have been day 10 or 15. It was hard to say. The point is, my editing team at The Jerusalem Post was trying to get to the influx of news items that needed their attention. I was attempting to be a good supervising editor. We were all muddling through on no sleep.
Then, at some point, a message appeared on our platform from one of our staff members.
“Taking cover,” she wrote.
I immediately pictured her diving behind a bookshelf, snatching her own cat, complete with its claws, fangs, and whiskers, on her way down.
Why a bookshelf? I’ll tell you: I don’t know.
When she did not understand why I was so rattled, I reexamined her text message.
“Taking cover story,” is what she actually wrote.
The Islamic Regime did try to kill us all again later, sending its latest weapon of choice, the cluster munition, raining down on us.
“Bomb shelter,” one wrote with a sad emoji. “Bomb shelter,” said the next.
“I’m trying to hang in there, I really am,” the third friend, a young mother with a baby girl, texted.
“My apologies for this message, but I’m starting to lose it. It’s just that I need to teach, but I’m not getting any sleep. I’ve been running back and forth to the bomb shelter, and I have a baby to take care of, and my husband was told he must be physically at work. How are we supposed to function like this? I’m really, really struggling. I can’t think. Sorry for complaining.”
“Don’t apologize. It's okay to let off steam,” the first friend responded. “This is a safe space.”
“Is it, though?” the third confidant pondered. “I don’t recall her saying she went into her safe room.”
Lions, wars, and roars: Day 18
Warplanes were still zooming back and forth above; bombs were still exploding below. How many times had we been in imminent danger? There were 30 sirens at least in my section of Jerusalem by then alone. That’s how many, I suppose.
This time, though, when I sat down on my step of choice, earmuffed, coated, and warm, my upstairs neighbors, whom I have come to know in these past weeks “thanks” to the ayatollahs, came down to the relatively safer floor, too.
They are Parisian, currently staying in Israel temporarily, and have many family members in the country.
When the local missile siren alerts went off, the sun was out, I could hear birds singing, and the downstairs neighbors flung their doors open as well, joining us. Since the latest war began, I have come to know them all by name.
“Look at my hands,” the elderly woman who lives on the first floor said. “They are shaking. I am frightened.”
“Carrots,” the neighbor who lives across from her, a thin, chipper travel agent with bouncy, fading-orange curls, muttered as she walked out of her apartment and sat beside me, squinting at an app she had open on her phone.
“This is a scary situation. It is normal to be frightened. Are you shopping for vegetables right now?” was all I could muster, referring to both ladies in a reply lacking all my usual gusto.
Days and nights seemed to bleed into each other, so I am less and less coherent on most days, given the lack of sleep. But we were still there, together, in that cold little stairwell with rays of sunlight strickling in.
“Are you looking for a husband?” the older woman asked me.
“No,” I said, noting the two French women behind me giggling at my rather quick, loud reply. In my defense, I was competing with the explosions' sounds, trying to be heard over them.
“But if one falls into my lap, I’ll take him,” I supplemented, given that I would rather the poor woman, an expression of utter shock on her face at my response, not have me cited as her cause of death.
Her wide, if somewhat confused, smile indicated that she was, indeed, relieved.
“What are those little cabbages called?” the redhead interjected, oblivious.
“You mean Brussels sprouts?” I asked to my own satisfaction, noting that my long-term memory had apparently not yet left the building.
We then discussed rising antisemitism and lionesses – as far as I can tell, my building is composed entirely of females, our fortitude not gone unnoticed by any of us.
“Bomb shelter,” came the usual, welcomed reprise from the friendship WhatsApp group. “Safe room,” came the next. “Those were loud booms,” came the third. “But we are fine. I even feel a little better. We are in the bomb shelter, too.”
Holding on: Day 20
It was afternoon. There was another siren, or should I say, another attempt at killing us, about half an hour before.
My boss was sitting in my living room, given that I objected to going to work, citing fear of death.
The sun poured over the coats and notebooks scattered across my sofa, with texts and emails sent in a concentrated frenzy from our phones and laptops.
Looking up, his little girl asked if she could show me what she was watching. They had both dropped by, so we could try to figure out how to make a work schedule with a war very much intact and Passover on the way.
“If you do that, Auntie Audrey will just sit there watching your Disney movie with you without getting any work done,” he answered as she and I exchanged grins.
And just like that, two pairs of kind, warm eyes reminded me of what normal is supposed to feel like, and this was only reinforced later, when both tried to get me to put my shoes on to “get some fresh air,” and come with them to the office.
I did not. Frankly, I still looked and felt like a shmatte.
That evening, though, when I was back in the stairwell feeling the strength of my people at my side despite the knowledge of incoming fire, I watched as the text messages trickled in one after the other.
“I’m in the pipeline,” came the lighthearted text by one. “I’m under the floorboards,” came the next. “I’m up the chimney,” the third read.
And, as thunder erupted in response to the distant detonations heard above, I felt more alive than I have in weeks.