Eilon, Saturday, July 29, 2006
Hello friends
I had hardly completed yesterday's letter when a new series of blasts rapped the window frames, sending me scurrying into the yard to view the otherwise placid and immobile surroundings. It had been a quick blow and not necessarily instigated by our artillery, its noise fused with these variable hillside sonorities. Seeing no apparent rise in hostilities, and an evident cessation of artillery fire, I returned to my desk. I paid little attention to another recurring exchange within the hour. David phoned and informed me that three to four rockets had fallen in the vicinity. At least one of these rockets exploded on the southern slopes. We speculated whether Hezbollah activists had viewed the Vause report on CNN yesterday, taken the matter to heart and researched its coordinates on their veritable firing charts.
There was sporadic fire throughout the night. I was in contact with.....everybody! Debby, who has been in Tel Aviv since Thursday night, attended a matinee of the Keshet Eilon violin master course, which was obliged to move south this year because of "hostilities." Afterward, she and Noam went for a beer at Molly Blooms in Tel Aviv, where Bracha was already jamming with the local Celtic celebrities. Bracha will return north during the weekend. Jane phoned and has taken temporary residence with the girls at Nes Amim. Its business could be better. Of course, with work at a standstill, the fruit in Adamit's orchards have not been picked. Avner with little else to do, has tried to salvage just a tiny portion of it and distribute it amongst friends.
As usual, few people utilize the shelters here. That is for sustained bombing, but these attacks, even at their severest, are too sporadic and too erratic to merit such precautions. When we are forewarned, as occasionally occurs, some may opt to wait out an unspecified period, even a period of calm in one of these shelters until overcome by boredom and discomfit. Usually, it's reasoned, that if an attack is so imminent, there is scarcely time to rush to the shelters anyway, descending unprepared into its stale and musty confines. From such shelters surface sounds are amplified and distorted. We become mindful of London in 1940, a pale comparison.
During the Gulf War, everyone at first took the threats seriously. They sealed their designated security rooms, donned the awkward gas masks, fussed over the more elaborate masking systems for infants. The men sheared their beards, or wore them defiantly. We wondered about the necessity of injecting the chemical antidote. Would it actually come to that? We sat huddled in our small security room, the five of us in the small space separated by the boys' beds, searching for information between local radio, the Voice of America and the BBC. Repeated nightly attacks inured Eilon to the unlikely prospect of an attack from H2 in western Iraq, and so when the alert sounded, many people rushed to their favorite vantage points where they could best observe the pyrotechnics above Haifa Bay, as Patriot missiles attempted to interdict. A local knot- wood gang formed, sort of a Patriot fan club, a bit like the folks perched above Sheffield Avenue at Wrigley, or even the old timers peering into the basin of the Polo Grounds from Coogan's Bluff.
Perhaps in Coogan's Brief History of the Shelter, more likely inhabited by catty waifs, shelters in times of trouble were scarcely inhabited. However, successive years of increasing rocket fire by the PLO, including those that whirled deep beyond our living room window into the gorge, convinced us that it was the best way to ensure our youth. As young parents, there were no other affordable options. The kibbutz children's dorms were directly linked to their shelters, but no matter how well executed their evacuation was there was always a palpitating sense of fear, uncertainty and drama. If the situation was prolonged, as it was in 1980 and 1981, it required an amazing fortitude and inventiveness to overcome languor and keep those children preoccupied.
In 1978 the PLO was thrust beyond a forty kilometer buffer zone. They acquired artillery to overcome this disadvantage. Fighting in the early '80s often occurred in the midst of the pear harvest. Until then, we managed shorthanded in the orchard. We eagerly awaited the first of larger organized volunteer groups from abroad to assist us in our harvesting. I recall one season [pears or Katyushas?} when such a group arrived, only to be immediately borne into a large shelter near the communal dining hall. This was their initial experience in Adamit, subsisting amongst the other subterraneans. I am still bemused recalling Naomi Broudo's address before an enthused throng of increasingly confused youth, who just hours before had left their families and homes on their summer vacations, only to find themselves in the midst of a border war in the damp climes of a clangorous shelter.
"We don't always live this way," smiling Naomi successfully communicated to her "captive" audience. Days later, with the success of the Habib mission, we emerged from our doldrums, imparting a new sense of optimism.
Love-Barry