Escalation
Tuesday afternoon:
Work. A whirlwind of emails and meetings, open excels, documents and reports. A fandom tab open for every five work tabs on my browser. Once in a few hours, I'll click open a new tab and check the news, which seem to be describing a whole other planet: one where rockets are raining down in the south, where the military is making heavier and heavier moves, where alerts are being issued for other parts of the country including Tel Aviv, where the army has approved drafting thousands of reserve soldiers.
Noon. My colleague M is gathering her things. "I'll call you from the road to give you a rundown of my clients," she says, and asks if anyone has a car charger she can lend. The army called her up a few minutes ago: pack your things and come.
6:45PM. An American client is in Israel for the week. We have a meeting scheduled for Sunday. "By the way," I bring up on Skype. "Have you been following the news?" He hasn't really. I explain about the alerts, trying to toe the line between freaking him about and being cavalier, being apologetic about the situation and not getting into the politics because god knows what he thinks."So what should I do if the siren sounds?" he asks. Go to the hotel safe space; follow people to a shelter; go to the stairwell, but not on the top floor, I explain, thoroughly embarrassed for my country. Fifteen minutes later, the alarms go off. "Is that a siren?" he chats at me from halfway across the city. "Yup," I say. "Heading for the shelter, talk to you in a few minutes." The few dozen people still at work at 7PM all gather in the shelter. It feels pointless - this isn't London during the blitz, it's a single rocket headed towards the city, and if it's identified as likely to land in a populated area Iron Dome will shoot it down, so the chances of it hitting us are so, so minuscule. But better safe and feeling stupid than sorry.
Neighborhood. 9PM. Sushi and cider with
marina. The sushi place isn't as packed as it usually is, which is the only reason we snag a spot. All of the restaurants are less packed than usual.
Home. 11:10PM. I have a presentation to prepare, but I'm so tired I fall asleep when the score is 0-1 for Germany. Surely nothing too dramatic can happen.
Wednesday:
8:30AM. Three hours after waking up to do the presentation I have checked the score, washed the dishes, cleaned the house but progressed exactly zero with work. I'm about to put my sandals on to leave for work when the siren sounds. No time for sandals, I grab flip flops, phone and keys and walk down four floors to the building shelter, which apparently exists. The neighbors are there; it's the first time I've met most of them. There's an old woman in a housecoat, a dad holding his baby, a young couple, a student in her PJs. We small-talk awkwardly for a few moments, hear a boom (Iron Dome in action) and disperse. I get to work early.
Work. 6:30 PM. I chat with my visiting client again. He says he was taking a walk on the beach when he saw Iron Dome shoot down a rocket. It's a little disturbing, given that there'd been no sirens that afternoon. I offer to show him around town tonight if he wants some company.
Rothschild Boulevard. 10:30PM. Strolling down the avenue, we bump into my middle sister, because Tel Aviv is, in the end, a small town. She's a flight attendant; spent the day before flying to Amsterdam and back. They'd had a violent passenger on the way north, and she was worried about the return; since the plane had taken off in the afternoon things back home had gone downhill fast, and the flight back carried an assortment of Israeli Jews and Arabs, tense and upset because of a flight delay, crammed together in an aircraft. In the end, it turned out okay. Over the PA system, the captain updated the passengers about the Brazil-Germany score in real time, and everyone shook their heads with amazement and grumbled together.
Thursday:
8AM. The siren catches me in the middle of my shower. For a moment I consider grabbing a towel and rushing for the stairwell or shelter, but dismiss the thought pretty quickly because haha, okay, no. Apparently avoiding inconvenience trumps safety concerns, at least when I'm naked.
9:30AM My baby sister, now 22, is about to take a second-try qualifying exam for a job (after failing the first test she took by a point), when she gets a call from the army, drafting her for reserve duty. She texts the family to let us know. She has to get to the rendezvous point and from there they'll head south this afternoon. I honestly have no idea how to handle this information. This is the first time any of us in my family had been drafted to take part in an ongoing operation.
Work. 11:30AM. It's probably because it faces a great big wall and the windows are closed, but you can't really hear the sirens well from my office. It doesn't really matter, because people will just walk down the hall collecting everyone else from their offices, like paper boys or town criers, "Up up, come on, there's an alarm." About 30 people crowd into the tiny shelter, interrupting a job interview that had been taking place in the room. Our VP turns to the applicant and jokes, "I told you we're a very close-knit, warm family."
1PM. My sister passed her exam, already went home and packed up. My mom is driving her to the rendezvous point. Can't talk right now, will call later. I text baby sis congrats, try to convey support. No idea what to say. My colleague who was also called up texts us that she has some free time, if anyone has any questions about her clients they're babysitting while she's away. She's in Hebron. I call just to ask how it's going. "The first night I slept for three hours in a hangar," she says dryly. "And lost my charger. It's okay here, nothing special. I just want to go home."
6PM. Baby sis never called, but I finally talk to Mom. We don't know the details, but they're sending them down south, to one of the towns closest to Gaza, one of the ones that's most under fire. She said my sister was tense. She's not a combat soldier, never been to battle, has only done the job she's being assigned to during a training exercise once. No one knows how long this thing will last, how long she'll be away for, except that it's safe to say she won't be home for the weekend, if this is still going on tomorrow. And from here, it's just this feeling of utter helplessness - there's nothing we can do to make it easier for her, nothing we can do to take it away. Emergency draft isn't voluntary, there's no option of being Katniss to her Prim. She probably won't be able to communicate too much, and smartphone batteries don't last long anyhow, and she needs to worry about herself, not about updating us on whatever's going on with her, and just. I'm not worried about her safety, not really; maybe I should be, but as long as they heed the alarms and take cover, as long as Iron Dome keeps doing its job, chances of physical injury are incredibly slim; but I just keep thinking of her there, of the emotional and mental toll this could take on her or more, and she's a strong girl, she's a trooper, but it's going to be so scary, and there's no way to protect her from that. (And there are more people involved - there are so many more people, on both sides, who live with so much worse, there are Palestinians dying, there are Israelis who live in the south who live in danger of rockets their whole lives, there are people with kids which is the most terrifying thing in the world, there are people suffering more than any of us. But right now, for me, today, it's all about my baby sister.)
10PM. Refresh phone until battery dies. Lots of missiles dropping in the area sister's supposed to be in.
11PM. Phone revived in car, new message from Mom: she spoke with baby sis, who sounds okay, and won't be heading south until tomorrow.
*
And now we wait. And hopehopehope that a ceasefire comes sooner rather than later.
comments on Dreamwidth.
Work. A whirlwind of emails and meetings, open excels, documents and reports. A fandom tab open for every five work tabs on my browser. Once in a few hours, I'll click open a new tab and check the news, which seem to be describing a whole other planet: one where rockets are raining down in the south, where the military is making heavier and heavier moves, where alerts are being issued for other parts of the country including Tel Aviv, where the army has approved drafting thousands of reserve soldiers.
Noon. My colleague M is gathering her things. "I'll call you from the road to give you a rundown of my clients," she says, and asks if anyone has a car charger she can lend. The army called her up a few minutes ago: pack your things and come.
6:45PM. An American client is in Israel for the week. We have a meeting scheduled for Sunday. "By the way," I bring up on Skype. "Have you been following the news?" He hasn't really. I explain about the alerts, trying to toe the line between freaking him about and being cavalier, being apologetic about the situation and not getting into the politics because god knows what he thinks."So what should I do if the siren sounds?" he asks. Go to the hotel safe space; follow people to a shelter; go to the stairwell, but not on the top floor, I explain, thoroughly embarrassed for my country. Fifteen minutes later, the alarms go off. "Is that a siren?" he chats at me from halfway across the city. "Yup," I say. "Heading for the shelter, talk to you in a few minutes." The few dozen people still at work at 7PM all gather in the shelter. It feels pointless - this isn't London during the blitz, it's a single rocket headed towards the city, and if it's identified as likely to land in a populated area Iron Dome will shoot it down, so the chances of it hitting us are so, so minuscule. But better safe and feeling stupid than sorry.
Neighborhood. 9PM. Sushi and cider with
marina. The sushi place isn't as packed as it usually is, which is the only reason we snag a spot. All of the restaurants are less packed than usual.
Home. 11:10PM. I have a presentation to prepare, but I'm so tired I fall asleep when the score is 0-1 for Germany. Surely nothing too dramatic can happen.
Wednesday:
8:30AM. Three hours after waking up to do the presentation I have checked the score, washed the dishes, cleaned the house but progressed exactly zero with work. I'm about to put my sandals on to leave for work when the siren sounds. No time for sandals, I grab flip flops, phone and keys and walk down four floors to the building shelter, which apparently exists. The neighbors are there; it's the first time I've met most of them. There's an old woman in a housecoat, a dad holding his baby, a young couple, a student in her PJs. We small-talk awkwardly for a few moments, hear a boom (Iron Dome in action) and disperse. I get to work early.
Work. 6:30 PM. I chat with my visiting client again. He says he was taking a walk on the beach when he saw Iron Dome shoot down a rocket. It's a little disturbing, given that there'd been no sirens that afternoon. I offer to show him around town tonight if he wants some company.
Rothschild Boulevard. 10:30PM. Strolling down the avenue, we bump into my middle sister, because Tel Aviv is, in the end, a small town. She's a flight attendant; spent the day before flying to Amsterdam and back. They'd had a violent passenger on the way north, and she was worried about the return; since the plane had taken off in the afternoon things back home had gone downhill fast, and the flight back carried an assortment of Israeli Jews and Arabs, tense and upset because of a flight delay, crammed together in an aircraft. In the end, it turned out okay. Over the PA system, the captain updated the passengers about the Brazil-Germany score in real time, and everyone shook their heads with amazement and grumbled together.
Thursday:
8AM. The siren catches me in the middle of my shower. For a moment I consider grabbing a towel and rushing for the stairwell or shelter, but dismiss the thought pretty quickly because haha, okay, no. Apparently avoiding inconvenience trumps safety concerns, at least when I'm naked.
9:30AM My baby sister, now 22, is about to take a second-try qualifying exam for a job (after failing the first test she took by a point), when she gets a call from the army, drafting her for reserve duty. She texts the family to let us know. She has to get to the rendezvous point and from there they'll head south this afternoon. I honestly have no idea how to handle this information. This is the first time any of us in my family had been drafted to take part in an ongoing operation.
Work. 11:30AM. It's probably because it faces a great big wall and the windows are closed, but you can't really hear the sirens well from my office. It doesn't really matter, because people will just walk down the hall collecting everyone else from their offices, like paper boys or town criers, "Up up, come on, there's an alarm." About 30 people crowd into the tiny shelter, interrupting a job interview that had been taking place in the room. Our VP turns to the applicant and jokes, "I told you we're a very close-knit, warm family."
1PM. My sister passed her exam, already went home and packed up. My mom is driving her to the rendezvous point. Can't talk right now, will call later. I text baby sis congrats, try to convey support. No idea what to say. My colleague who was also called up texts us that she has some free time, if anyone has any questions about her clients they're babysitting while she's away. She's in Hebron. I call just to ask how it's going. "The first night I slept for three hours in a hangar," she says dryly. "And lost my charger. It's okay here, nothing special. I just want to go home."
6PM. Baby sis never called, but I finally talk to Mom. We don't know the details, but they're sending them down south, to one of the towns closest to Gaza, one of the ones that's most under fire. She said my sister was tense. She's not a combat soldier, never been to battle, has only done the job she's being assigned to during a training exercise once. No one knows how long this thing will last, how long she'll be away for, except that it's safe to say she won't be home for the weekend, if this is still going on tomorrow. And from here, it's just this feeling of utter helplessness - there's nothing we can do to make it easier for her, nothing we can do to take it away. Emergency draft isn't voluntary, there's no option of being Katniss to her Prim. She probably won't be able to communicate too much, and smartphone batteries don't last long anyhow, and she needs to worry about herself, not about updating us on whatever's going on with her, and just. I'm not worried about her safety, not really; maybe I should be, but as long as they heed the alarms and take cover, as long as Iron Dome keeps doing its job, chances of physical injury are incredibly slim; but I just keep thinking of her there, of the emotional and mental toll this could take on her or more, and she's a strong girl, she's a trooper, but it's going to be so scary, and there's no way to protect her from that. (And there are more people involved - there are so many more people, on both sides, who live with so much worse, there are Palestinians dying, there are Israelis who live in the south who live in danger of rockets their whole lives, there are people with kids which is the most terrifying thing in the world, there are people suffering more than any of us. But right now, for me, today, it's all about my baby sister.)
10PM. Refresh phone until battery dies. Lots of missiles dropping in the area sister's supposed to be in.
11PM. Phone revived in car, new message from Mom: she spoke with baby sis, who sounds okay, and won't be heading south until tomorrow.
*
And now we wait. And hopehopehope that a ceasefire comes sooner rather than later.
comments on Dreamwidth.