Sun, Oct 8, 2023
The supermarket is crowded at lunchtime. People are buying a lot. I get in line with my usual lunch (two small cucumbers, a red pepper, a persimmon, a single-serving container of hummus, a Coke Zero, and a week's worth of pita). The person in front of me has two giant Ikea bags, each overloaded and near collapsing. Fortunately, with four self-service registers, what the person directly in front of me is getting usually doesn't slow me down.
Before the afternoon prayers, the dentist asks me how long I've been here. I tell him it's been almost six years. "So you don't remember the last time. Of course, most people don't. They're too young."
A programmer asks if I had to go to a community shelter over the weekend. I didn't, since I have one in my apartment. "We didn't, either," another programmer says. "We just stood with a Torah scroll over our heads." He's kidding, I think.
We have ten men for the prayers. One usual guest isn't there, but I think he said last week that he'd be out. Two others, who have long commutes, are working from home. Our staff guitarist is just getting home from the US. I don't think any of us have been called up for Reserve duty. Almost everyone in our office either is too old for the Reserves or, like me, was too old when they came here to be drafted.
Later, from a cube near mine, I hear a worker mutter, "Six hundred. Six hundred. Six hundred." A notification pops up on my screen. The group dealing with casualties near the border has found more. The number of dead has doubled since the morning. More than 250 are young people, ambushed at an all-night desert rave. Later in the day, the death toll passes 700, plus those from across the border who have died.
The groups that had been organizing protests are now keeping us updated on social media with, among other things, locations where they're collecting items for families who have lost or fled from their homes in the south. One drop-off point is in the third basement level of a local mall. I hadn't known that it had more than one basement level. Come to think of it, though, the shops must have to put their storage and operations somewhere.
A couple of workers are leaving early. They have heard that the terrorists have announced that they will fire rockets at us at 6 PM. They want to get home. I don't hear other announcements of this. I'm just as safe at work.
On the way home, I see that our grocery stores are open. Schools and many malls are closed. Buses are limited, since the transit companies have sent many of the buses and their drivers to help the army. The burger joint where I go occasionally and the cafe where I get sachlav a couple of times a week are closed, but the Pizza Hut between them is open.
I hear voices from within the courtyard of an apartment building that I pass. Looking around the corner, I see children playing paddleball, with a grownup watching them. They'll know where to go if the sirens sound.