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.
