Missiles fall on my house, snatching up my loved ones and shattering the fragile dreams of a peaceful future that we had. Dreams, dreams, dreams of missiles--every day and every night.
The early morning light breaks,"Waaawooo, waaawooo...70 missiles have fallen today, today, the closest missile to Tel Aviv yet. You're just twenty minutes away from shrapnel breakfast." Is that the sound of a siren? Am I hearing a siren? Do we have bottled water? I should have stocked our bedroom, I should have...but wait. Wait. This is just the alarm clock radio. My normal, every day of the year wake-up call. Relax, this is a day like every other day.
I start my day, flick on the television, drink my coffee, smoke my cigarette. "We have to go in, we have to do something, we can't just sit idly..." Yeah, I have to do the dishes, go to the grocery store, make dinner--I have to do something--do something to keep myself feeling like everything is normal--today is just another day in Tel Aviv.
Filling my grocery basket, the radio blares overhead,"There are massive food shortages, the last food in Gaza is running out." Suddenly my basket is empty, the shelves are bare, the shoppers are scavenging the aisles...I pinch myself. Wake-up, wake-up. Make your way to the check-out, buy your weeks groceries, carry the blessed food home.
As I walk home, the rain comes pouring down; the cold, hard, winter rain streaming down the streets. "100, 200, 300 dead--blood running through the streets," a man babbles into his cellphone. A car drives by, splashing me with thick, red blood, blood? blood! No, it's just rain, just cold, dark rain.
It's dinner time. Standing over my gas stove, I stir my thick, red tomato soup, slowly, slowly. The television badgers me, "There is no more gas in Gaza, people are short on food and they can't cook what little they have..." I reach to turn the heat up, the flame goes extinguishes. I reach for the lighter, the gas won't light. Why won't it catch? What am I going to do? Oh no. no, no, no. I pull my hand from the burner, it's hot, my hand is burning! No, no, no. I'm just cooking tomato soup for my lover on this cold, dark winter day.
The phone rings, my friend is calling me from a bar. "You're where?" I shout into the telephone. I think, "Are you nuts?" Such a wide open bar, a bar with streets on both sides? That's a perfect bar for a terrorist attack. "I'm coming (coming, to get you out of that bar, coming to take you home where it's safe)."
As I walk towards the bar, police lights flashing. No, no! Really? The police are gathered outside, gathered outside giving tickets to people who are smoking indoors. SMOKING INDOORS? That's what you're wasting your time with right now? Don't you have something better to do during a war? I go home.
Time for bed. I brush my teeth, turn out the lights and draw the soft, velvet curtains over the window. Lying in my bed, my dreams start to tangle with reality, "Go into your shelter, this is a RED ALERT." Hurry, pull the window shield shut (thank god my bedroom is also a bomb shelter), close the bomb shield door. We're safe right? We're safe in our bomb shelter bedroom, we're safe in Tel Aviv. Right? Right!
For me, unlike hundreds of thousands of my neighbors, Israelis and Gazans, these are only lucid dreams. Dreams that are growing out of the soil that is rich with fear. Fear which I can't escape, even if I try. A fear so real, that it shatters my dreams.
