Perhaps Y'all Want to Hear the End of "The War Saga"?

I was reading back over my posts, and I can't believe I never finished the war story!  So, for your reading pleasure, while I'm enjoying my last beer before Passover begins, here you have "The War Saga:  The Final Days."

We left off with me in the center of Israel with my friend Liran and his family.  Artur, the person who I can easily say is my best friend here, unfortunately had a birthday in the midst of this mess, so I planned to travel from Modi'in to north of Tel Aviv in order to celebrate.  Another close friend, Noam, was also coming, and he and I planned to meet at one of the train stops.  I saw him running down the escalator towards me, and I started jumping up and down like a maniac, because being separated from those who are your security and your life during such a tragic time is just painful.  On the way to meet Artur, my Facebook exploded because one of the main news agencies in Israel had interviewed me earlier in the day, and the reporter had just published this story (you will have to Google Translate it).  It basically dealt with how sad and poor I was, being a new immigrant to the South and having to learn words such as "safe room," "red alert," and "siren" from the beginning.  It was, for sure, a sweet story, so please check it out.

When we met Artur, it was like 14901784931 teenage girls screaming and squealing at each other.  It was such a relief to wrap my arms around my closest friends and to know that they were safe and that we were together, even in the middle of this mess.  We went to a fancy shmancy Italian restaurant for dinner and made a schuna (neighborhood...or we made a scene, for my English speaking readers), laughing and singing and drinking and doing everything we could to forget what was going on.  The manager gave us a 20% discount on the meal because we were poor "Southern refugees," and when a group of customers complained about our noise, the waiter said, "Don't mind them - they're from Be'er Sheva," which seemed to fix the entire problem.  What.  A.  Night.  It was much needed, for sure.

Fast forward to the following evening.  After an extra-intense day of rocket fire on Be'er Sheva, Artur and I debated whether we should actually go through with our plan of returning or not for his birthday party.  His family said no, our friends said no, but in the end, we said yes basically because we wanted to be home and to feel some sort of normalcy.  He picked me and the puggers up from the train station, and we began our journey down south, eating chocolate and listening to good music and laughing.  Suddenly, we saw what looked like fireworks in the sky, and there was a very pregnant pause before I said, "Those were rockets."  He quickly tried to tell me that they weren't and that everything was okay, but we both knew better.  I got on the net to see if someone had reported where the rockets hit because we were in the middle of the desert at this point with no real clue of where they were.  He calmly said, "I don't want to scare you, but while you were looking at the phone, there were three more rockets..."  I then asked him if we could still be friends if I vomited in his car. 

The music went silent, the windows went down, and we both stopped laughing and talking, now carefully listening for sirens from a nearby city so we could get out of the car and take cover, if necessary.  The stark contrast from the start of our trip was deafening.  We soon also got stuck in a traffic jam, which even had cool-calm-and-collected Artur nervous because, frankly, being stuck at a standstill on a highway in a war zone is not safe.  We got to the cause of the traffic jam, which was on my side of the car, and I gasped at what I saw - the remains of a rocket in the middle of the road.  Again, Artur chimed in with "it was a car accident" but with the military and police vehicles all around the scene, we both knew it wasn't a car accident.  The last 30 minutes to Be'er Sheva were intense, and I felt like crying and getting sick all at once.  The feeling of relief once we arrived in the city and were again sheltered by the Iron Dome was indescribable.  Artur dropped me at my house, and I swear, I held my breath until I knew he was home, but thankfully, no sirens sounded.   

I made pizza that night for Artur's birthday party, but I've never been more detached from a situation or from people in my life.  I watched the TV, and I checked my phone, and I don't really remember what happened at the party.  Artur sweetly took me and our other amazing friend, Meirav, back to her house, where I planned to stay until the end of this mess.  She didn't have a safe room, but to me, being around human beings was much more important than having reinforced walls.  She and her boyfriend went to work the next morning, leaving me with Pepper and her dogs during a few different rounds of sirens.  I still remember the feeling of jumping straight up from her couch, grabbing Pepper, and calling her dogs into her "safe space" while the sirens blared.  When she did return home, we tried to sit and have coffee together which was rudely interrupted many times with sirens.  As was the cooking of dinner.  We sat in her hallway with our dogs saying the "Shema" prayer just out of fear for our lives.  This continued for a couple of days, and we watched in horror as a bus in Tel Aviv was blown up by a terrorist, and all I could think of was, "How does someone survive during an intifada (the time when terror attacks are prevalent and personal)?"  Magically, a ceasefire was announced for 9PM on a Thursday, a week and a day after this whole mess started.  Meirav and I impatiently waited for 9PM to come, and I kid you not, at 8:59PM exactly, the last long round of sirens went off as Hamas tried to get in one last, massive attack.  I saw on the TV as it was written in Hebrew, "Ceasefire in affect" as it read underneath, "Alarms sound in Be'er Sheva."  I could go into the mentality and politics of this whole thing, but I'll save it for another post.  Suffice it to say that none of us really slept soundly that night because no one trusted a ceasefire would actually hold.

And that's where we are today.  Not trusting that this ceasefire will hold and knowing that at any moment, our lives can come to a halt again by a rocket attack.  I still find myself waking up, listening for sirens, or I find myself searching out where I'll run to if I'm outside and a siren sounds.  It's something that will never leave you.  Which, I guess, is a good thing, because we have to be prepared for anything here.  So, now you have the full story of living through a war.  May the following posts be humorous and light-hearted, although no about more dates.  Until next time, my dear friends.