Living in Translation: The Israel Edition: An expat's take on culture, chaos, and confusion

I recall doing a similar type post after September 11, 2001: how I was living in LA, working by LAX, how I missed the news until I was already on my way to H’s school, how I noticed something amiss in the group of mothers gathering outside the gate but not going in, how I then turned around to head home to watch the news, how later that evening Ken and I went to a diner on Hollywood Boulevard and sat in horrified silence, and how for months after I became obsessed with finding and studying every photograph I could of people who had flung themselves out of the Towers, marveling at their bodies, some graceful, some flailing. It’s a cliche that such moments in history burrow their way into your cells and take root. You don’t just witness the tragedy; you live it too, even if you are lucky enough not to live it through.

October 6th was a fun Friday. S and the kids came over after I got off work, and we went to a nearby goat farm, a charming little family-run place in the moshav country that served wine and soft pats of artisan goat cheese on wooden platters. Afterwards we headed to Poleg Beach for a swim and later lounged in the renovated beach restaurant all sprawled out on their new patio sectionals like we owned them, leaving streaks of sunscreen, ordering French fries with extra ketchup on repeat. The kids dug out deep caverns of sand dunes, intermittently stopping to kick around a football. The evening was coolish, early autumnal, the Mediterranean sunset spectacular. A yoga teacher/aura reader who’d had had too many cocktails meandered over to us, giving ‘live laugh love’ nonstop. I think I even hugged her by the end of the night, so maybe it was I who’d had too many cocktails.

Salty air and sea mist, they cling to your body and hair and have a way of lulling you to slumber so deep that you awaken groggy despite a good night’s rest. And so it wasn’t surprising that when we got up on October 7th and the Red Alert alarms were popping off, it took a good while before anything registered. S looked at the locations of the notifications and saw that they came from the south, near Gaza. I didn’t think much of it because truth be told, sirens are always going off in some other location (i.e., rarely in Tel Aviv) — such is life in Israel. I do recall that the notifications didn’t die down, and at some point S said, wow, I feel so sorry for the folks down south. Still thinking not much of it, we piled into the Jeep to set off on a nice Saturday excursion.

But, as we drove out of Even Yehuda, soldiers with guns started showing up and roadblocks were cast about. We pulled into the corner gas station as more alerts popped off, and S got on his phone and discovered that all citizens were now ordered to stay in and shelter. Slightly alarmed, we headed back to the house and turned on the local channels, and that was when we woke up for the first time that morning. It would take another day or two for the story to unfold or even make sense.

Actually, none of it makes sense, even a year on.