the boom and the cockroach

            Around ten o’clock, Hanna and I began to head down the narrow residential road towards the bus station on Ahuza, the main street in Ra’anana. The night air was warm, thick, and humid; trees and shrubs lined the street, quite unlike the barren, hot city of Be’er Sheva. We had yet to adjust, after moving from Be’er Sheva late Sunday night because of the rockets.

             Waahhhhh. The tzeva adom siren sounded, loud and blaring, and leaving Hanna and me frozen in the middle of the dark street.

            “Run,” I said to no one in particular; but we were already running, and there was nowhere to run. Following a group of new olim that appeared around our age, to the nearest apartment building, we banged and banged on the glass door. Nobody answered.

            Waahhhhh.

            “Behind,” someone ordered. We obeyed, and ran around the side of the apartment building. There was a dark space between two walls, about two feet wide. The six of us scurried inside.

Waahhhhh.

I sank to my knees, inhaling. This wasn’t the first time I had heard a tzeva adom siren and needed to run for shelter, but it was the first time I was caught outside and didn’t know where to go.

“She looks like she needs a cigarette,” one of the girls remarked, clearly unfazed by the situation. “Breathe, girl.”

The olim continued to chat coolly, casually for the next couple minutes.

“Wait for it,” another one of the girls whispered. “Wait for the boom.”

Less of a boom, it seemed more of a vague and dull thud in the sky, as the Iron Dome intercepted the rocket over the greater Tel Aviv area. It felt as though someone had smacked you across the face, but you weren’t quite sure where on the face. You had nevertheless reacted, and blinked.

“Better luck next time, suckers,” one of the girls commented cheerfully, as she crawled out of the crack. “Who’s ready to go out?”

Back at the absorption center in Ra’anana, a few of my friends and I sat in the lobby with more new olim, currently in ulpan before joining the army in the fall. Hanna and I had not ventured out again to catch the bus to Herzliya for our night shift on the ambulance. I watched a large cockroach skitter down the wall.

“Allo?” Sapir answered, as she picked up her phone. “Tomer?”

It was our shift coordinator, wondering where the hell we were. As per usual, life goes on in Israel without missing a beat, and accordingly, Israel’s ambulance service, Magen David Adom, as well.

An ambulance came by the absorption center to pick up Hanna and Sapir for the night shift. I stayed back; characteristic of my usual neuroticism, I had yet to recover from the siren catching us in the street. I sat in the lobby for four more hours; I tried to avoid thinking of Syrian long-range missiles and bombing Gaza. Instead, I talked to the future lone soldiers. Someone offered me a plum. I politely refused, and watched two cats fight over the cockroach.

Til next time.

return to ha'aretz

Today is Shabbat, and my activity on this holy day of rest has comprised of lying in my sweat-ridden bed, listening to a strange mishmash (مشمش, משמש, mishmish anyone?) of Lorde and Ofra Haza, and reading Jane Eyre. As the buses stop running on Shabbat, in combination with the 100-degree heat, I have ventured out of the apartment today only to take out the trash and eavesdrop on my neighbors.

The above picture was taken from my room in the Mercaz Klitah, or the Immigrant Absorption Center in Be’er Sheva, a part of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

My neighbors are all recent olim, new immigrants to Israel. Most are Yemeni Jews, straight out of Frederic Brenner’s Diaspora. The women wear black abayas, some niqabs, and sometimes complete with green Crocs – visible beginnings of Israeli assimilation. The men don black pants, white shirts, tzitzit, thick peyot, and black velvet kippot atop closely cropped hair.

From Frederic Brenner's Diaspora, a
Yemeni Jewish woman

The first day, leaving the apartment to buy bed sheets and groceries, I noticed an elderly Yemeni man perched on a chair, overlooking the balcony. His dark skin contrasted with his long, bright white beard, which reached his knees. Five hours later, my roommates and I returned; he was still perched on the chair in the same exact position.

“Smells like my grandmother’s kitchen,” sighed one of my roommates, the first night. Her family had immigrated to Israel from Tunisia, and later Canada. Indeed, wafts of rich spices envelop our apartment morning and night, and I am amazed; our kitchen consists of only a refrigerator and a plug-in stove. There is no air conditioning. Yet the women cook full, hot meals daily.

This morning I awoke to singing, chanting in addition to the usual aroma of Yemeni food. It seemed more like Hebrew than Arabic, but it was no Carlebach melody I had ever encountered. Climbing on the kitchen counter, I stuck my head out the window and looked down. I understood nothing; I had read that not only is Yemeni Hebrew different from Israeli Hebrew, but also they speak Judeo-Yemeni Arabic, dissimilar to traditional dialects of Yemeni Arabic.

Tomorrow, my roommates and I meet with the Be’er Sheva Magen David Adom station’s coordinator; we begin volunteering on the ambulances Monday.

Other observations about Be’er Sheva:

This city’s population is about 200,000, and has way more malls than a city should. It recently opened a massive, American-style mall, dryly referred to as Grand Kenyon. Grand Kenyon consists of five floors, a train that runs throughout the mall, and fake grass and fake rocks to adorn a fake front garden.

It’s too hot to do much outside in the summer. Yesterday I went to a park, with real grass and trees, that was completely empty except two Russian women. I asked them if they were normally more people in the winter; one of them responded that she didn’t care, because she had moved to the desert for a reason.

Until next time.