Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-14
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. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
Day 100: Hostage Square
The buses that should be running directly to Hostage Square aren't. My transit apps tell me that I can go partway, but then have to transfer to a bunch of other lines that I've never taken before. I'm not pleased, but I hop a bus near my house and go as far as I can.
It's Day 100 of the war. A 24-hour protest is underway at the Square. I'm off work this week. I should be there, if just to report about it.
When we get to Judah Maccabee Street, I look down from my bus window. A long row of marchers, with placards and pictures of hostages, is moving parallel to us. I don't know where they came from, but I know where they're going. I hop off and join the march.
They're peaceful and well-organized. Several people with bullhorns lead chants. I understand most of what they're saying, and figure out a few words that I hadn't known. Hebrew doesn't have a lot of redundancy. If one letter in a word sounds blurry, the whole meaning changes. It takes me several blocks to figure out that one chant is "The time is now," not "Make the air conditioner."
We stop and start frequently. A police car rolls alongside us. Every few minutes, an amplified voice from inside says, very politely, "Hello. Please stay on the sidewalk. Thank you." When we reach intersections, the police car blocks the other street so we can cross.
Most of the chants are punctuated by the same word, "Akh-shav!": "Now!" Twice as we walk, the people with the bullhorns lead the group in counting from one to one hundred. The second time that they do it, people add "Akh-shav!" after each number. At one point, the front and back of the group get out of sync, but they pull the counting back together before it ends.
People walk at different speeds. The organization of people within the crowd keeps shifting. Partway down, people with yellow balloons appear in front of us. They end up distributed evenly among the group, front to back, before we get very far.
About halfway down, a triangle of snare drummers surrounds me. They're loud.
We proceed down the path that the buses usually take. I see why the schedules changed. The street where the Square is, surrounded by the art museum, a large library, the opera house, and Army headquarters, is temporarily blocked off. Only pedestrians can walk on it.
Near the end, a man with a bullhorn stops and recites the names and ages of the hostages, also mentioning if they have died. Each name is followed by "Akh-shav!" The battery on his bullhorn gradually fails as he goes through the list. After he keeps going for a while, unamplified, a woman walks up to him and smoothly swaps his bullhorn with her own.
It's only been about a mile and a half walk to the Square, but I'm tired. The march breaks up when we get there. We dissolve into the larger crowd.
The protest runs well. Large video screens show what's happening on the stage. They have the same feed as the online livestreams, with multiple camera angles, motion graphics, live subtitles, and a sign language interpreter. From where I am, I'm not sure where the actual stage is. The screens and sound are good enough that it doesn't matter.
I'm there for about the last three hours of the 24-hour event. Stuff proceeds the way that they usually do at these broadcast protests and telethons around the world, shifting among speakers and musical performances.1
Most of the speakers are relatives of the hostages. They give well-written and moving speeches.
Several diplomats and government leaders appear: the ambassadors from Germany and England, each speaking excellent Hebrew; the mayors of the capital and of the city where we are; and, close to the end, the president. A rowdy group in the back attempt to shout down the president.2 They fail.
I recognize the names of most of the musicians. The crowd sings along with most of their songs. All of the lyrics involve loneliness, wanting to come home, or wanting someone dear to them to come home.
One singer plays in a duo. Both of them play something almost but not quite like guitars. At one point, the singer's instrument gets badly out of tune. He plays a repetitive pattern to keep the music going as the other player turns the pegs on his instrument to get him back in tune.
The sign language interpreter signs along with the songs, swaying with the music. One singer steps next to her and echoes her body movement as he sings and play, creating a sort of danced duet.
A few times each hour, a text screen appears. The voice of authority, the same one we hear announcing stops on the bus, tells us that in case of rocket sirens, we should all just sit on the ground wherever we are, and wait for either ten minutes or until we hear them announce "All clear."
It rains off and on during the event, often quite hard. I'm pretty well prepared with my baseball cap and my good raincoat. The emcee mentions at one point that they have umbrellas for whoever needs one. He points to his left. Since I don't know where the stage is, I don't know where he's pointing.
A young man comes up to me with a white umbrella and hands it to me. I tell him that I'm ok with just my coat and hat. He's not convinced. "You will take the umbrella." I take the umbrella.
After standing in one spot for far too long, I wander through the crowd. There's enough space to move around. Late in the event, a man with a shopping cart comes through, hawking pretzel-like bread and water. I get some. It costs too much, but that's OK.
As the last of the mothers of the hostages finishes her speech, she says, "I'm going to scream. I want you to scream with me, for the hostages, for our family, for our children, for the nation. I'm going to step back from the microphone."
She does, and lets out a Yoko-like howl that last a long time. Many people in the crowd scream along with her.
At the end, the best-known singer, along with the president and his wife, comes back and leads us in the national anthem. The audience sings along. I try to join them. My voice won't work. I realize, to my surprise, that I'm crying.
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L'hitraot.