bomb shelter | Red Boots

Last year, we spent an unforgettable summer in Israel. Unforgettable because Israel is the place where my heart and my breath are one. Unforgettable because it was the first time we showed our kids the land, the history, the life of our people. Unforgettable because my children met aunts, uncles, cousins they had never met before, and the love and connection transcended all distance, time and language. Unforgettable because on a beautiful, hot summer morning we celebrated my oldest son’s bar mitzvah at the Kotel in Jerusalem in the midst of a war.

The summer of 2014 was the summer of Operation Protective Edge. It was the summer of intense conflict between Israel and Gaza. It was the summer my children and I learnt words in Hebrew we didn’t know existed, and some we’d never even heard in English: Iron Dome (Kipat Barzel), alert/siren (azakah), protected room (mamad).

It was the summer my children learnt more about the country of my dreams and desires than I could ever have taught them.

My kids appeared unfazed by the relentless sirens and rocket attacks. We spent time in a bomb shelter somewhere almost every day, and they seemed to accept this as part of life in a complicated country.

Since we returned, I have wondered what they absorbed from that unforgettable summer. What they remembered, and would remember as time goes by. How the experience would color their imaginings, views, hopes of the world, that country, their own lives.

My fifth grade boy, Zak, wrote a memoir essay for school last week:

Unfair by Zak Gilbert, age 11

What does fair mean? Is it fair if you get two cookies and your sister gets one? Is it fair that your brother gets $20 for cleaning his room and you get $7 for doing the same? Is it fair to do an activity that your sibling really wants to do without them? Is it fair that there is a very nice, unfortunate old lady down the road?

Is it fair that in some places in the world there are children who are stuck in a bomb shelter for half their summer break?

We finished dinner and went to play at the park near the restaurant. Suddenly out of nowhere the siren went off! I heard that annoying loud sound that signals a near coming bomb.

Again? I thought. I tried to pick up my baby cousin. I grabbed her from behind but she felt like a crate of baseballs. I put the cute little crate of baseballs down and yelled to my big brother, “Take Stella!”

I ran but looked back to make sure Daniel had her. I continued running and soon jumped over the plants and dashed down the shelter stairs and looked around for my mom and aunt, who was sobbing. “Where’s Stella?!” she screamed. “STELLA!”

I knew where they were. I needed to get this information to this freaked out, 30-something-year-old, first time mom who was on a different continent in a bomb shelter without her three-year-old. “She’s fine. She’s with Daniel, don’t worry,” I said calmly.

“Are you sure, Zak?”

No, Mom. I thought sarcastically. I gave her to some random shop keeper. Out loud, I said, “Yeah.”

I looked around and thought, This is not fair. Maybe someone was about to propose, or maybe someone was going to meet their mom whom they haven’t seen, but are instead in this crowded shelter. It’s not fair that I’m in a bomb shelter in Israel when my dad is in California working at his office, safe from bombs. Or how I’m only here for 2 months, but people have to live here all the time. My cousins who live here may not even start school until September, maybe even October because of the bombing, who knows. It’s not fair for my brother, who’s not even 13 years old yet, and he’s looking after three kids in a bomb shelter.

What I’ve come to realize is, whether I like it or not, life is sometimes not fair.

Eventually, the sirens stopped and we reunited with the others in the park. We took about several minutes to recount the recent events and catch everyone up.

Now I know. Now I can relate. Now I understand that sometimes life will be unfair. Sometimes you’ll get two cookies and your sister will get one and that isn’t fair but, hey, at least you got a cookie so in a way it is fair. If your parents only let you watch TV after you’ve done your chores, and then don’t let you watch TV then that’s not fair because they change the rules and that’s not fair. Life is unfair.

I don’t like that things are unfair, and before the bomb shelter experience, I knew life was unfair. But now I really know. Things will be unfair and sometimes you just have to accept life the way it is.

This essay has been published with the permission of the author.

My favorite Hebrew word is melafefon. It means cucumber. An exotic-sounding, complicated, delicious mouthful of a word for such a plain and greenly simple vegetable. I try to say it as often as I can when I’m in Israel – my kids love cucumbers, so that helps. Where are the melafefonim? at the supermarket. Do you have melafefonim? at the restaurant. And today, we were supposed to pick melafefonim at the fields near Rehovot.

source: leket.org.il

But there are no bomb shelters in open fields. No protected rooms, or walls to crouch against. The best you can do is lie down flat and cover your head with your hands. That way if the shrapnel falls it’ll hurt your hands and not your head.

Too risky. So we didn’t go.

Actually, I’m not sure if it was cucumbers we were going to pick. Perhaps it was bright tomatoes. Or green peas. Or plumply purple eggplants. We were going to pick vegetables in the hot Israeli sun as part of my son’s bar mitzvah. To give back. To do a mitzvah. We wanted to be outside, together, kids and grown-ups, littles and bigs, and harvest x number of pounds of veggies to be distributed to families in need in Israel.

But I couldn’t do it.

And I’ve been doing it all: camel riding in the desert, kayaking on the Jordan, the markets in Jaffa and Jerusalem. Not knowing if the sirens would wail in Tel Aviv or further north. They are relentless in the south. Some mornings have found us in the bomb shelter in various states of dress (or undress), and some have been eerily quiet – or maybe we just don’t hear the sirens when we’re in the sea. A week has become 20 days and 43 fallen soldiers. Terrifying cries of anti-Semitism and the most blatant anti-Israel rhetoric I thought I’d never read or watch from countries I feel scared to call home.

I’ve seen the smoke trail from Iron Dome interceptions, heard the booms as rockets hit the ground, cried for the beautifully brave soldiers we’ve lost. I’ve dragged my children to the beach – where there are no shelters, and even when they’ve had enough sun and sand, because there are too many children stuck all day in bomb shelters in areas near Gaza, where the rockets fly too frequently and the risks are not just possible, they are likely.

I’ve learnt Hebrew words I didn’t even know existed: azakah (alert), mamad (protected room), Kipat Barzel (Iron Dome).

I’ve noticed a change – subtle but definite – in the very air around me. On the beach. In the restaurants. Walking outside. The usually noisy, argumentative, full-of-life-and-love Israelis are quiet, preoccupied. Their smiles are tense and their eyes are sad. But determined. They are resolute. Strong.

I’ve been hanging on to that strength. That resolve. So happy to be here – any time and with anyone, but especially now and with my children. I’ve been determined to show them the country I love, no matter what. Determined to celebrate my son’s bar mitzvah mostly the way we imagined. I’ve been hugged in an aura of love and appreciation and even slight bewilderment by Israeli family and friends who can’t believe we’re still here, but are so delighted we are. As if we’d be anywhere else.

I’ve been determined that nothing will stop us. Life continues. This is how it is here. We will celebrate, and be together, and pick cucumbers.

But I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t ask 23 people to meet us in an open field, with no shelter nearby. I couldn’t take my own four children into a situation so obviously unsafe, where the best they could do if they heard a siren would be to lie on the earth with their hands on their heads. And pray.

I couldn’t do it, and I felt worn down. Beaten. That tenacious determination slowly draining ounce by painful ounce out of my fingertips, my mouth, my heart as I canceled our field trip with a sigh of resignation, deep disappointment, sadness. This is how it is.

“What are we doing today, Mom?” they chirped in anticipation. Big eyes, bright voices, adventurous spirits.

I lifted my chin. Took a breath. Inflated my heart.

We did not go to the fields today – but I am determined, before we return to California in August, to pick melafefonim. With my children. In Israel.