Waiting For The Bomb

 

I wrote the below in 2018, as part of attempt number one million (give or take) to get my shit together and turn all my assorted bombing materials into a book. Like all previous attempts, that attempt was derailed. This time the culprits were (1) an involuntary sharp detour into writing about autism which then proceeded to hijack the entire project and (2) going into business on my own and shifting into insane workaholic mode.

In any event, when Barbara told me she wanted to link to my long defunct blog, I thought it might be nice to add something new. I chose this piece because I really like it. It seemed a shame to leave it to molder on my computer forever. That being said, it hasn’t been updated for the events of the last year, in part because I just can’t think how to do so. Since I imagine many of you are in the same position –not knowing just what to do with the events on and since October 7, 2023—I trust I can count on your understanding.

***

This title is a misnomer. Even in the depths of the Second Intifada, people weren’t actually waiting for a bomb or some other version of terror attack. It’s more like an edgy feeling, a sense of wary anticipation.

It’s happening.

It’s happening every day.

It’s happening everywhere.

It might happen to you! You might be next! Have you bought your ticket?

It’s the lottery from hell.

***

When I look back, it’s hard to even imagine, much less remember, how we dealt with this waiting and how it affected us. This, even though we’ve gone through it countless times since then. It’s a state of affairs we call the Matzav, the Situation. It gets better, it gets worse; it never fully goes away. There was the summer of rockets which led up to a full-blown war in 2014. The Knife Intifada in 2015-2016. The other wars which pop up every few years. In the South, the primary target of the rocket attacks as it’s such a convenient target, it’s more a permanent state of affairs. Sometimes there are more rockets and sometimes less but there is no such thing as a year without rockets. They have to think as well about the tunnels under the border—where are the exits? How will they be used? There are periodic surges of incendiary and explosive balloons, rocks thrown at moving cars, moving cars rammed against people, and riots on the border. A veritable cornucopia of terrorist options.

Actually, there has been an uptick in attacks recently. A few more knife attacks. A few more shootings. A few more car rammings. I’m not afraid, but I’m a little more aware. I’m a little bit more on edge when I leave the house in the morning, when I walk from my car to the office, when I’m running errands, when I’m out with friends.

Not that the edge will help me, mind you. But then, if someone decides to blow themselves up three meters from where you’re standing, not much will.

***

A month after I moved to Israel and eight months before the bombing, I was interviewed by journalist Erik Schechter for an article which appeared in the September 10, 2001 edition of the Jerusalem Report. The article featured those hardy souls who had decided to make aliyah despite the recession and the Intifada. Erik asked me if I were afraid of being caught in a terrorist attack. My response: "I’m not afraid, but I do realize that it can happen to me". This was the truth. I did realize that this could be me. I still realize it. This realization is my way of dealing with the Situation. But there are lots of different ways of dealing with the Situation. Everyone has their own approach. Each approach makes its own sense to me.

There are the people who learn self-defense, or who get gun permits and who are always armed. If it happens to them, they’ll be ready. There are the people who watch the news all the time. Knowledge is power! There are the people who avoid the news as too depressing, and why think about all this unpleasant stuff until it’s actually required? There are the people who put their faith in God, with the tacit understanding that God will prevent it happening to them. There are the people who know that it will happen to them or to someone they love. If it does happen, their fear will have been entirely justified. They had a Premonition! And there are the people who tell themselves that it can’t happen to them because they are sensible enough to stay away from obvious targets or because…well, just because. How could it possibly happen to them?

And there are the people like me, who accept that they are helpless. The people who understand that shit happens and sometimes it happens to you. That recognize that they aren’t special. They didn’t get a pass. And if it does happen, there will be nothing they can do about it.

***

One might assume that I think this way because of what happened to me. Perhaps prior to the bombing I was in the “it can’t happen to me” category? But no. As a case in point, in the months prior to my move to Israel, when I was still safe and sound in Rockville, Maryland, each and every time a terrorist attack in Israel hit the news, my father made a point of calling to ask me if I had heard about it and did I really think this moving to Israel thing was a good idea. Initially my response was that all the bombings were in Jerusalem, and I was going to live in Tel Aviv, (albeit with an initial six months in Jerusalem for Ulpan, but never mind that). Then came the bombing at the Dolphinarium, in Tel Aviv. This time when he called, my response was that I could just as easily get killed in a car accident on the Beltway, aka I-495, the highway encircling Washington DC and its inner suburbs. There were accidents there all the time and I was on the Beltway on a daily basis. What are you going to do? If it’s your time, it’s your time.

He stopped calling after attacks. What was there to say? If it’s your time, it’s your time.

I was right about the Beltway, by the way. And if you think the Beltway is bad, you should see Israeli drivers. I’m in far more danger from them than I was or am from any terrorist.

***

Speaking of the Beltway, let me tell you about a car accident.

A few months before I made aliyah, there was a terrible car accident on the Beltway. A dump truck was cut off by another car, lost control, hit a concrete barrier and was launched airborne. On landing, it crushed two passenger vehicles. Five people were killed instantly. I neither witnessed the accident nor saw any footage of it on TV. Nonetheless, that accident haunted me for weeks. The whole mental image of death just smashing into you from the sky, while you are rendered completely powerless, shook me to the core. There must have been other tragic accidents while I lived in the DC area, but that’s the only one I remember. To this day, I can’t think of it without catching my breath and twisting up inside from terror. Without remembering that I too am helpless.

So yes, if it’s your time, it’s your time. Even in Jerusalem. Even in Tel Aviv. Even in Rockville, Maryland.

And also yes, I totally get why my bombing freaks people out.

***

Don’t get me wrong. Knowing that pithy “if it’s your time, it’s your time”, is different than really knowing—fully internalizing—that if it’s your time, it’s your time. I knew a terrorist attack could happen to me when I came here. But it was a different sort of knowing than the knowing I have now. It was a little more theoretical. A lot more bravado. It included a heavy dollop of “how cool am I, brave enough to live in a Dangerous Place”. Take for example, a particularly cringe-worthy email I sent to my email list a few days after my arrival:

“A funny (and short) note-just a few minutes ago I was sitting here in the computer room, sending out resumes, when I started to hear a series of booms. I immediately assumed “gunfire/bombs”. I didn't panic; just kept on typing. I thought of going out to look and then thought better of it. I actually started feeling more like an Israeli: now I know what it sounds like to be in a quasi-war zone.

Some other people passed the computer room door, saw me, and said hello. I decided to confirm my suspicions.

"Is that gunfire?"

"No! Fireworks".

I went out to look, and—lo and behold—they were indeed fireworks.

Funny, how in the States it would never occur to me to assume that the sounds were gunfire, and here it didn't occur to me to assume that the sounds were fireworks.”

Today, I live in a Jewish neighborhood which abuts an Arab one. They use fireworks all the time as part of weddings and other celebrations. During the summer months I hear fireworks several times per week. In fact, in all of my years in my “quasi warzone”, I haven’t heard gunfire once. I have no idea what real gunfire sounds like. I think it’s safe to presume it’s a bit like fireworks.

***

The shift between knowing and KNOWING happened gradually. The average Israeli is connected to Israel by a thousand human threads: family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, classmates, the men and women from their army unit or volunteer corps. There are fewer degrees of separation between themselves any given victim of any given attack and better odds that said victim will be somehow connected to them, and perhaps even close.

Save for my Israeli cousins, I was largely disconnected; my only connection to a bombing or a terror attack a tenuous one. My year at Ben Gurion University of the Negev corresponded with the series of terrorist attacks which (somewhat ironically) accompanied the Oslo peace process. One of the victims of these bombings, Sarah Duker, was the sister of one of my fellow program participants. But those connections were years old. I hadn’t, for instance, maintained contact with my classmate who in any event was back in the States.

But here and there, slowly slowly, as we say here, I accumulated connections. I was being woven into Israel’s fabric. I made friends. I rented an apartment and had neighbors. I started classes and had classmates. I found a job and had co-workers. With each thread, the matzav came closer. It was part of the assimilation process, like learning to appreciate cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast, learning how to argue Israeli style or getting used to Israeli news programs in which panels of journalists and experts discuss issues by shouting at and over one another.

There was the woman in my class who had witnessed a bombing. A kinda-sorta victim of terror. But one who, unlike me, was great at wringing a Dramatic Arc and Ending out of a trauma. She, previously secular, Found God and Meaning in the Bloody Devastation of a Brutal Terrorist Attack! I did nothing of the sort.

There was the car bomb that blew up in my neighborhood! By the bank! And I was planning on going to the bank at that exact time! Well, give or take a few hours. But still….

There was learning how to differentiate between normal loud noises and normal siren activity and bombing loud noises and terror attack siren activity. Here’s how it works. If you hear a loud noise, and don't know if it is a bombing, listen for sirens afterwards. If you don't hear a lot of sirens, it isn't a bomb. If you do, it probably is. Check the news updates to confirm. If you don’t hear a loud noise but you do hear a lot of siren activity, it could be a non-bomb terror attack. Or a bombing you didn’t hear. Or, if you are in Jerusalem, the prime minister being transported somewhere.

This isn’t an exact science.

There was the first Jerusalem terror attack after I made aliyah. One of my cousins called me afterwards to check that I was okay. They continued to call after each subsequent Jerusalem attack, which were happening constantly. As I made friends and classmates and co-workers, I had more and more people calling me.

There was the first attack that happened in a city in which I had someone to call. I joined in the wave of Israelis obsessively calling each other after every event. Are you okay? I felt super Israeli doing so. I called everyone I knew. Anyone who, in this or an alternate reality, might have been in the city in which the incident occurred. I was making my good-citizen contribution to the crash of the cell phone network which in those days happened like clockwork after every major attack.

There was learning the phrase hefetz hashud, a suspicious object. There was learning to never, ever leave my bag unattended as the police would blow it up. There was the absorption of the local lore of “things which have been used as bombs”. I didn’t know which ones were true and which were urban legends, so I believed them all. There was the watermelon. An old refrigerator. A radio. I learned to view each lonesome abandoned item, no matter how seemingly benign, with suspicion and as something which could conceal a bomb. There was the first visit to the States after my aliyah and finding myself in a state of mild panic from the sheer volume of unattended objects. I tried to convince myself that it was okay. Hefetz hashud’s are rak b’yisrael!

There was getting used to security guards everywhere. At every entrance to every mall, supermarket, restaurant or event. I learned to automatically present my bag for inspection. My friends and I laughed at them a little. Seriously, those kangaroo cops are going to stop a terrorist? As my Hebrew improved, I read stories about them doing just that, frequently dying in the process. Guard after guard after guard. I heard that they made minimum wage.

There was the replacement of my initial fake bravado with real acceptance, real knowledge, that this could happen to me. I thought about the risk every time I got on a bus. I tried to figure out what part of the bus was safest—the front or the back. I could never decide and in a sort of mental paralysis fueled by my confusion, would end up in the middle, where I would be screwed either way. I would be on edge the entire ride. As I had no idea what to expect from a terrorist, I defaulted to viewing everyone getting on the bus with suspicion. Simultaneously, out of some exhaustion, because I was on two, four, six, eight buses per day, I recognized the futility of this. I told myself: mah la’asot? What else is there to do? I have to take the bus. God will protect me or he won't, and if that maybe sketchy-looking guy over there is a terrorist, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

I would continue to watch him, just the same.

There was the adoption of the critical mental math required for decision-making about things I thought I needed to do but maybe I didn’t need to do. Maybe I could do something else? Maybe I could do without? It was a constant calculation in my brain. Sometimes in the background. Sometimes in the foreground. Attacks happened everywhere. Including places I went to and places I had been recently. Places I had been to the very same day of the attack, a few hours before. Places I went to several hours after. Attacks tended to happen in crowded places, the types of crowded places I frequented or might choose or need to frequent. The questions, arguments and counterarguments would swirl in my brain. Is it worth the risk to go to this crowded place? Is it worth the risk to go downtown? Do I even have a choice? I mean, I have to eat, right? I have to buy groceries, right? I have to go to class, right? I have to get from point A to point B, right?

I have to live, right?

I learned –or tried to learn—to balance between two often diametrically opposed concepts.

Living.

Staying alive.

You would think this would be simple. You would be wrong. It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.

I found myself having serious internal debates about whether the sale at a store downtown on clothing was worth risking my life for. I really needed clothes for work, I was dead broke—really scraping by—and the sale was really good. In the end, I went and bought some clothing without incident. I found myself having an earnest discussion with two friends after leaving a movie. While we were enjoying the movie, other people were being killed and wounded at Café Moment. The question arose: do we go downtown for coffee and brownies?

Friend A: Isn’t it inappropriate, given how many people were just killed and injured?

Friend B: Tomorrow it could be us.

Me:

I said nothing, even though I thought that Friend A had a good point and even though I could have added “and what if this is the day the terrorists decide to go for a double feature?” Friend B, you see, was a guy, and not just any guy but The Guy, a guy I was crazy about, a guy I thought might be The One. This was a week before I learned that the attraction was one-sided; he had actually flipped over my best friend. As of that moment, outside the movie theater, I thought I might have a chance.  I wanted to spend more time with him. My silence tipped the scale in The Guy’s favor. He persuaded Friend A.

You see how not simple it is? You want to stay alive but living keeps on getting in the way.

***

Now that I think about it, what I said earlier about all of the approaches making sense to me isn’t entirely accurate. Some of them do. For example, having a gun and knowing how to use it really might help you defend yourself against a reasonably close-range assailant with a knife or a gun. There have been cases in which attacks have been stopped by armed citizens. But not all of the approaches can withstand scrutiny. Specifically: “it can’t happen to me because I stay away from obvious targets”. Sorry, but that’s impossible. Everywhere and everything is a target. There is no safe here. Previous targets have included such ordinary, benign, and nearly unavoidable sites as supermarkets, public transportation and sidewalks. Shopping malls. Family restaurants. Falafel stands. Universities. A pool hall. A Purim parade. An elementary school. A synagogue. A Passover Seder. People’s homes.

Or a shuk. Souq in Arabic. Roughly equivalent to a farmers’ market. Just more spectacular.

Can you imagine your local farmers’ market being blown up?

Here, they are. Over and over again.

***

The Guy, Friend A and I went to the café. Again, without incident. In the end I was bombed downtown, in an ordinary crowded place: a bus stop next to the shuk. I went to the shuk because I needed to buy food. I was at the bus stop because I needed to get home. Ordinary, benign, and unavoidable acts. And while it wasn’t like I was expecting it, when I did pull the proverbial short straw and got blown up, it also didn’t come as a surprise. I woke up. I looked around. I was surrounded by red. “Oh, I was in a suicide bombing”, I told myself. My mental tone was cool and observational.

Of course, that could also be shock deriving from the blow to the head.

This isn’t an exact science either.