This piece is one of an ongo­ing series that we will be shar­ing in the com­ing days from Israeli authors and authors in Israel. 

At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of fic­tion and sto­ries to share indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

This is a work of fic­tion and the views and opin­ions expressed below are those of the author.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, JBI is record­ing writ­ers’ first-hand accounts, as shared with and pub­lished by JBC, to increase the acces­si­bil­i­ty of these accounts for indi­vid­u­als who are blind, have low vision or are print disabled. 

Ruth Mutzafi turns on the light but the room remains murky. She maneu­vers the wheely bag that holds her swim­ming things through the door­way, then shuts and locks the door behind her. Her feet ache and she’s exhaust­ed. Not from swim­ming, she’d bare­ly done that, but from walk­ing home all the way from the YMCA because she’d been afraid to take the bus.

When she turns to open the shades that cov­er the large liv­ing room win­dow she sees Ezra sit­ting on the couch. He has a pen­cil in his right hand and the Israel Hay­om sudoku open on the cof­fee table. She holds in the hiss that wants to come out and sur­veys him slow­ly, from bald pate to rum­pled slacks. She freezes. 

“I let myself in.”

The cumu­la­tive agony of years of pain wells up from deep with­in her body. Hadn’t they reached a way of man­ag­ing this since their sep­a­ra­tion? Why this violation?

“I knocked and there was no answer. You reject­ed my call.”

“You should leave.”

He exam­ines the sudoku, pon­ders, and inverts his pen­cil to erase a number.

“Don’t you think we should be togeth­er at a time like this? With chil­dren and grand­chil­dren at war?” he asks, star­ing down at the puz­zle page.

“No.”

“Remem­ber what I whis­pered to you in bed, on the night you cast me out?” He looks up at her. “‘I remem­ber your devo­tion when you were young; how, as a bride, you loved me; how you fol­lowed me through the desert, through a land not sown.’ I still do.”

“And how did you repay that?” Ruth trem­bles. ​“You raised your hand against me! You tried to turn my chil­dren into my enemies.”

The first split sec­ond sounds faint and dis­tant, like the horn of a car way out on Ben-Zakkai Street. But the wail grows loud­er as it ris­es up the scale and seems to be sound­ing from all direc­tions. Ezra grabs her hand, she shakes it off. ​“No time for that,” he com­mands as he opens the door. His fin­ger­nails dig into her fore­arm as he pulls her out and down the stairs from the sec­ond floor and through the daz­zling light of the yard and down into the gloom of the shel­ter on the oth­er side. He releas­es her arm only when a fig­ure envelops him in a bear hug.

“Ezra!” the bear rum­bles. ​“Blessed is he who revives the dead!”

It’s Yizhar, Etti Badihi’s son, the one who’d turned into a Hare­di rab­bi, dark suit and hom­burg and the works. While he was in high school he’d worked for Ezra at the shawar­ma stand.

An explo­sion, mut­ed by the shelter’s thick walls, then another.

“Inter­cep­tion,” Ezra says.

“Where’s your moth­er?” Ruth asks. The siren is still sounding.

“You know Ema. Fear­less. She refus­es to come, just went on ironing.”

“I’ll go get her.” Ezra grabs her arm again. She tries to shake it off. ​“Also, I need to hang up my swim­suit and tow­el or they’ll get smelly.”

“Sit down,” Ezra directs, pro­pelling her through the dusk toward a plas­tic chair. And to Yizhar: ​“We were just updat­ing each oth­er about the grand­kids in the army. You know how it is. Some call her, some call me.”

The siren fades out. The mur­mur of the oth­er neigh­bors in the shel­ter becomes audi­ble. They’re talk­ing about her, she knows.

“How many?” Yizhar asks.

“Four of the boys, two of the girls,” Ezra replies. ​“And Amram …”

“That pip­squeak?” Yizhar laughs.

“Not such a pip­squeak, he’ll be forty in Novem­ber. Any­way, he packed up his kit­bag and want­ed to go but Miri­am blocked the door and said no way.”

“Forty? No way.”

Ezra is so absorbed in the con­ver­sa­tion that it gives Ruth an open­ing. She slips off the chair and, mov­ing silent­ly through the perime­ter of dark­ness along the shelter’s walls, reach­es the heavy met­al door, which remains half-open, and sneaks out. She heads for the next entrance over, not even wait­ing for her eyes to adjust to the sun, up three flights. The door to the Badihi’s is half open. She knocks and calls out, ​“It’s Ruth.”

“Come on in.” Etti’s raspy voice is bare­ly audi­ble over the radio, which is on very loud. Non-stop cov­er­age of the war. She’s at the iron­ing board in the kitchen, a cig­a­rette stick­ing out of the side of her mouth. A breeze, and a ray of sun­light, shine through the win­dow over the sink. A young woman sits at the kitchen table, her back to Ruth, her hands clasp­ing a glass of tea and her eyes direct­ed at the win­dow. She seems not to notice Ruth at all.

Ruth thinks that Etti is telling her that the girl’s name is Naa­ma, but two broad­cast voic­es are ana­lyz­ing the bomb­ing raids in Gaza. Etti points with her cig­a­rette. Ash­es fall off, some on the shirt she’s pressing.

“She’s a friend of my Hadas’s. Her boyfriend lives in Kfar Aza,” Etti says, rais­ing her voice. ​“Or lived. Miss­ing. No sign. Apart­ment burned.” Naa­ma, if that is her name, seems not to hear, and con­tin­ues to gaze at the sun­ray. ​“Can you imagine.”

Etti goes back to her chore, but looks Ruth up and down. ​“What is it?”

“Ezra. I came home from the pool and he was sit­ting in the liv­ing room.”

“I told you to change the lock.”

“He grabbed me and dragged me to the bomb shelter.”

Etti looks away. ​“I’m so fix­at­ed on the news that I haven’t offered you any­thing.” She puts her iron down and reach­es over to switch on the elec­tric kettle.

“Yizhar says you refuse to come down.”

“I have too much to do.” Etti puts tea bags and mint leaves in three glass mugs, stirs in sug­ar, and pours. She glances at Naa­ma. ​“Too much to do. What are you going to do about Ezra?”

“I don’t know. He scares me. Even at home I’m in dan­ger.” Ruth watch­es Etti take the still full tea glass from Naama’s hand and replace it with a fresh one. Naa­ma accepts it pas­sive­ly, not even look­ing at it. The glint of the sun off the glass star­tles Ruth. The door opens and Yizhar walks in. Ruth sees Ezra in the shad­ows behind, wait­ing. Etti sees him, too. 

“Ema …” As Ruth looks des­per­ate­ly for a place to hide, the siren sounds again, both from out­side and from the radio. Yizhar steps for­ward and reach­es out to his moth­er. Ezra slides into the light and extends his hand. Etti slaps Ezra, and the sound of it rever­ber­ates over the siren. He recoils. Yizhar pleads: ​“Ema, we should go to the shelter.”

“Go, go, you and your friend.”

“Ema, I’m just try­ing to pro­tect you.”

“The world’s a dan­ger­ous place, Yizhari. Noth­ing you can do about that.”

“Ema.”

She push­es the two men out the door. ​“Ruth and me, we’re safe here.”

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