Countdown to Peace
by Caroline Igra
10
Riots on the Temple Mount. I’ve been there. Once. Before I was Israeli. My memories are hazy, blurred by the dust and glitter of that sparkly dome. There was a huge rock deep underground from which Muhammad was said to have leapt straight to heaven. Now my vision is clearer, but I can only see what’s broadcast: violent clashes between extremists determined to ruin any chance for coexistence and a police force doomed to overreact. The thousands who come to pray in the mosque are barely mentioned as politics supersede peace.
9
The conflict over Sheikh Jarrah has moved front and center. Israelis are discouraged from visiting this neighborhood of Jerusalem as it has become symbolic of the never-ending struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, our chicken and egg. I wonder if it will ever be possible to live together, sharing the same space without contests and claims. Everyone populating this land has a hearth and a family. The shouting faces, red and swollen with emotion, prove that’s not enough.
8
Outbreaks of violence from too many corners to count. Pockets of frustration and anger have boiled over into a conflagration fanned by the Jewish ultra-right and Hamas proxies harvested from the Israeli Arab community. The former, known as La Familia, a lame attempt to adopt the mystique of the Mafia, converges on a gas station ten minutes from my house, the one where my parents met my first baby. Then it was a quiet corner with a little hummus place. Now it’s the site of an angry mob. I pray that the blistering blaze will fizzle out but fear that we’re past that. I live in a land where tempers are high, and emotions are raw, yet the birds greet me peacefully each morning.
7
Hamas has launched rockets at Jerusalem, a place sacred to both Jews and Muslims. This changes everything. My son comes home midweek. We share a vegan pizza at a local dive and enjoy our privileged lives: his ability to opt for a diet with endless strictures, my right to be annoyed by it. Several bites in, he announces that he has come for his military gear. I freeze, midbite. He looks me straight in the eye and assures me he won’t need it. I don’t trust him. Seven years ago, he told me he was safely tucked into an army base nearby. He wasn’t.
6
The sky is falling. I imagine Chicken Little, hysterically trying to find shelter. It’s worse in the South. I couldn’t live there. Here in the middle of Israel, just a half hour north of Tel Aviv, it’s strangely quiet. My reality is completely different from that of most of the country.
5
My daughter spends a night of shelling in Tel Aviv crouching in her apartment’s stairwell. She is terrified, this experience replacing former horrific ones, like vomiting in front of friends and being groped while drunk. My son sits beside me, watching our world fall apart on TV, awaiting that call. I search for comfort and find it in simply knowing where they are.
4
Huge buildings in Gaza housing military installations are felled by the Israeli air force. The dramatic video becomes the footage du jour. I can’t look away, so grateful for the pilots. Because of them, there may not be a ground invasion. My son’s gear is poised by the door to his room. I stare at his jittery leg, proof of the nervous energy coiled up inside. He looks like a normal kid, but life has made him different. I want to hug him but restrain myself. It will only add to the tension.
3
Sirens. Rocket alerts flash across my telephone screen in an endless stream, a tickertape of horror. The news is replete with the damage: buildings punctured with holes, homes destroyed, lives lost. But the threat from outside doesn’t compare with that from within. Those who want to shake things up have resorted to local violence. My favorite restaurant in Akko, the one that serves raw tuna with a dribble of sweet balsamic, is burned down by an angry mob looking to punish. I know that this isn’t how most Israelis feel—Jews or Arabs—that there isn’t that much hatred. But that doesn’t make it less scary or hurt less.
2
Filled with despair, I call my housekeeper, the woman from the neighboring Arab town who has accompanied decades of my life, watching my children crawling around in diapers, strutting in jeans and army greens. She too is scared. We talk about wanting peace, wanting to enjoy our families, our simple lives. We bemoan the fact that the crazies get to call the shots. Fear segues to sadness.
1
Fewer sirens, less bombing. A new norm squeezes through the cracks of the muck, as welcome as the sunshine. My daughter grabs a meal at her favorite vegetarian restaurant between the rocket blasts, jumping into their shelter when the sirens sound then returning to finish her salad before heading to the beach. My son puts away his army gear and returns to Tel Aviv. There won’t be a ground incursion. But what comes next? The country exhales with relief, hope and weary hesitation. How does this story end when the countdown finishes?
“I wrote ‘Countdown to Peace’ in an effort to capture the personal strain of the periodic flare-ups in my ‘neighborhood.’ I wanted it to reflect the way abject fear is diluted to the mundane by the simple desire for calm and normalcy.” —Caroline Igra
Caroline Goldberg Igra is a freelance writer, an art historian, a triathlete, and a mother. She lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, but maintains close ties with her hometown, Philadelphia. She has published numerous academic art historical articles on 19th century European art, several exhibition catalogs connected with her work as a curator, and a monograph on J.D. Kirszenbaum (Somogy Editions d’art, 2013) chosen as one of Slate Magazine’s Best Books that year. Her nonfiction has been featured in several online journals, including Away Journal, Mothers Always Write, Pandemic Journal, and Another Chicago Magazine. She has published two novels, Count to a Thousand (Mandolin Publishing, Jerusalem, 2018) and From Where I Stand (Koehler Books, Virginia, 2022). She is presently working on her third.