Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-11-28
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. Here we go...
In a nearby town, people line the streets, waving flags and cheering. A relative drives by and wonders what they're protesting. There aren't any signs.
A tweet tells us: It isn't a protest. A family of hostages is coming home.1
The freed hostage from my own town is still in the hospital. She has needed surgery. She was shot when she was kidnapped. We believe that her brother is still a hostage. The terrorists claim that they can't find him.
Other freed hostages speak to relatives and to the press about how they were treated. The information is shocking but not surprising. There wasn't enough food or places to sleep. Some of the children are now afraid to speak above a whisper. No one got needed medication. The Red Cross should have been seeing the hostages but never did.
The truce is supposed to last a couple of more days. Each side is reporting that the other has violated it, as well as the agreement that they're supposed to be following, which the public hasn't seen.
No one seems quite sure what will happen when the truce ends. Everyone seems to be taking the time to shift people into new positions and revise their propaganda. Where the people are going and what they're doing is, like so much else, couched in rumors. What will happen will happen. More people will die. More people will be freed. Governments will change, officially or not, and new leaders will improvise what they imagine to be solutions.
Meanwhile, the rest of us go on to the extent that we can. I pick up a freshly fallen grapefruit from the yard and bring it with me to work. I don't get around to eating it.
Leaving work, I ride the elevator down with a couple of grey-bearded men in uniform, with the standard guns.
On the way home, I stop at a supermarket that I rarely visit. I have to squeeze my way through a cluster of scooters and teenagers by the entrance.
No one seems to work there. I wander through the aisles trying to find what I need. The staples that I think would be easy to find (bread, rice, cheese) are stashed in odd corners and behind obscure doorways. The eggs, once I find them, are in a stack of cardboard boxes that no one has bothered to unpack.
I come up to the register when I'm ready to check out. No one is there.
Eventually, one of the teenagers puts his phone in his pocket and sullenly wanders to his workstation. He rings me up without saying a word. I bag the items myself, pay, and leave.
On the way home, I see a couple of flyers still posted about our city's hostages, both the brother who is missing and the wounded sister who has been returned. Flags fly from fences and yards. I step through their shifting shadows as if through flowing water as I walk those last few blocks down the silent pedestrian street.
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You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
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L'hitraot.