The wail
Like any other person who was born and raised in Israel, I’ve had my share of wars. I wasn’t even three months old when the six-day war erupted in June 1967. My mother tells me the 5th was a beautiful spring day and she took me out for a walk in the stroller. My father was called urgently to his military unit about a week before. They came to draft him in the middle of the night, my mother says, they waited for him to pack some essentials, and off they went to the Golan Heights. He was twenty-five years old, and like most men in Israel served on reserve. My mother, who was only twenty-two, a new mother who was figuring out life, was worried as hell. The cool beautiful morning of the 5th of June gave her some comfort as she was strolling the streets of Kiryat Mozkin, where we lived. Springtime in Israel means extreme weather conditions. Heatwaves coming from the east last for days at a time. They bring dry strong winds making every breath a struggle. So having a crisp cool morning is a rarity. No wonder my mother went out to enjoy it. Apparently, I enjoyed it too, so my mother says. And then someone called out to her from a passing car — Lady! what are you doing outside! There’s a war going on!
Being so tiny, I don’t have any memories of the six-day war. But I have plenty of memories from the Yom Kippur war. I was six years old. A first-grader. Yom Kippur is usually a very quiet day in Israel. The roads are empty as people don’t usually drive, and it feels very holy. Being secular my parents didn’t fast. In fact, we were invited to cholent at a friend’s house that day. And we drove there! It was outrageous. Puffy and sleepy from the heavy stew we sat on the porch at the friend’s third-floor apartment. It was around 2 p.m. I was leaning against the railing, looking down at the big trees casting shades over the pavement. There was some movement in the street. Men hurrying by. A few cars speeding. I remember my mother mentioning this is unusual. She said — why are they so many people in the street right now. And then the sirens wailed, tearing the quiet, killing my innocence. This is the most dreadful, scary, intimidating sound I have ever heard. This is the unmistakable sound that every Israeli knows. Since that day in October 1973, I have heard the sirens numerous times and it still gives me the creeps. It shakes me to the core. At war, you get so attuned to hearing it, that you keep hearing it for months even after the war ends. When a motorcycle speeds nearby. When an ambulance crosses your way. Even when the wind whistles through a crack. It triggers your flight or fight response until you realize that the war is over and this is just your mind playing tricks. By then, your heart is already racing and your body is so full of adrenaline that you sweat from every gland.
We hurried down to the shelter. In the 70s almost all apartment buildings in Israel had a shelter. Later, the defense concept has shifted to recommended having a shelter inside the house. Most homes in Israel now have what is called in Hebrew Mamad — a residential secure space. In Yom Kippur, we had to share the shelter with the neighbors. Some of them were in their nighties. I specifically remember one girl, she was older than me. Maybe 10 years old. She was shaking uncontrollably. Someone threw a wool blanket over her shoulders but it didn’t help because she wasn’t cold. The temperature was in the low 90s that day. She physically expressed her feelings.
Someone pulled a bulky dial telephone downstairs. It was hanging on its wire. People talking in hushed voices were staring at us. We didn’t belong because we were not residents of that building. The phone rang, someone picked it up and after a minute announced that there’s a war going on. He probably elaborated, but I don’t remember the rest, just the way he said the word ‘war’ with his voice kind of shakey like that girl.
When the all-clear sign was given and we drove back home in our green Fiat. My father was drafted that afternoon. I haven’t seen him for weeks after that, and I remember missing him so much. We talked over the phone and every time he said, I will be back next week when school will reopen. But he didn’t. And I was angry with him. My four-year-old sister and I helped our mother to put black sheets on the windows. And each time the siren wailed we ran to the shelter. One time, the siren went off when my mother was in the shower. We heard airplanes flying above us. My mother yelled — take your sister and go downstairs! right now! I obeyed, of course. We were on the second floor and there were four flights of stairs between our apartment and the shelter. I held my sister’s hand as we ran downstairs. Counting the stairs as I go. 1,2,3,4. I was afraid we weren’t going to make it. I was afraid my mother would not live to get out of the shower. I feared for my life, literally. No child should ever feel that. No child should ever go through war. Never. Ever.
Unfortunately, my daughter had to endure war as a baby as well. She was about 12 months old during the gulf war. Israel was not even a part of that dispute! But Iraq couldn’t reach America with their rockets so they fired them at us. There was a chemical war scare. We were instructed to prepare a “sealed room” inside our homes and stay there with our gas masks on for at least 10 minutes when the sirens sound. To prepare the sealed room we had to tape clear vinyl over the windows. We had to put a wet rag under the doors of our sealed room to prevent poisonous gas from leaking inside. This seemed crazy and excessive, but we did it. We didn’t want to die. The baby couldn’t wear a gas mask, of course. Her protection was a little cage made out of thick clear vinyl. It was about two feet cube. The instructions were to put her inside whenever the siren is on. The first time it happened was during nighttime. Imagine what it’s like to be wakened up by this horrible wail… We scooped our daughter out of her crib and put her in the little cage. She didn’t wake up. But this wasn’t the case over the next four weeks. She just hated that cage. Who wouldn’t? She cried until she was sick. One Saturday morning I was cleaning her up after being sick in the cage yet again when the sirens went off and I had to put her back inside the sick-infested cage. It was horrible. All my memories from that time are polluted with war residue. She just started walking by herself, and I remember letting her roam free at the apartment while always keeping an eye for her location, in case I would need to sweep her up with the sound of the siren. After a while, it became a reflex, and to this day — my daughter is 31 years old — whenever I hear the siren the first thing that crosses my mind is to sweep her up and put her in the little protection cage. When the war finally ended I swore that I will never endanger my kids like that again. It’s enough that I suffer from post-trauma I don’t want to pass it on to the next generation.
In 2006, in what is now known as the Second Lebanon War, I was already a mother of three teenagers. We were living within the range of Hizbullah rockets. I remembered the promise I’ve made to my younger self during the gulf war. In fact, my husband and I had some savings in what we called our “war account”. We were ready for a rainy day, and I mean a rain of rockets... It was summer vacation and I was between jobs. Let’s go out of the country, I suggested. We can go to Cyprus. Stay there till this is all over. My kids were reluctant. They didn’t want to go without their father, my husband, who had to stay for work. So we stayed at home. All our neighbors left. It felt like we were living in a deserted ghost town. We spent most of our days at our Mamad. This is a regular room that doubles as a shelter during wartime. It’s built of concrete and has a metal window and a metal door that can be hermetically shut. The room is big enough for a double bed, a closet and a TV. We played board games and watched silly soaps on TV. We have developed very dark private humor because you can either laugh or cry. Because there wasn’t enough room for all of us to sleep in the shelter, we would crawl out of our beds with the sound of the siren, kids would drop on the double bed and doze off while my husband and I would stand by the wall till we heard the boom. We became experts on sounds. By the thud of this one, it fell in the sea. By the thump of this one, it’s in Carmiel. Weeks after the cease-fire whenever we heard a deep pound we had jumped with fear, trying to analyze where it fell. One morning, my husband and I were discussing a home security system. in Hebrew, it’s the same word for sirens — Azaka. Not a minute goes by and my youngest, 12 years old at the time, crawls downstairs with his summer blanket. He went straight to the Mamad and crashed on the bed. What are you doing, we asked. He lifted his head, I’ve heard you said there’s a siren so I came down. It’s a funny anecdote but it makes me wonder, what kind of a mother puts her kids through that?
And this brings me to last Tuesday. 4 p.m. I’m baking banana muffins because my grown-up son, the same one from the siren/blanket anecdote might swing by later and it’s his favorite. My phone rings. And it’s my daughter. She lives few blocks up the road with her husband and newborn son. Sirens! my daughter yells, I’ve heard sirens! We didn’t hear it go but soon enough we hear the thud, thud, thump that we were so familiar with 15 years ago. My daughter grabs her three-month-old baby and runs to the shelter. They don’t have a Mamad. And I break. This little boy. My grandkid. What kind of world was he brought into?
Whenever there is a war in Israel, the media starts documenting the killed, the injured, the rubble. Because debris photograph well. No one tells the story of the small, regular citizens like me. We are not interesting. After all, we survived, didn’t we? We didn’t suffer property damage, so nothing to worry about, right? I feel like a pawn in a chess game. My life is not important. I can be sacrificed easily for some cause that I don’t even believe in. It’s been seventy-three years of war now, with no resolution. Using the chess analogy, this is not even a stalemate, it’s just a temporary adjournment. Seventy three years. Isn’t it enough time to figure out that this is not working? Maybe violence, brutality, and bloodshed are not the way to end this conflict?