Israeli poet Diti Ronen, writing from her home in Neve Monosson, is the next in our series of ‘Urgent Voices’
I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes, I see the beautiful face of the girl with the blue eyes who was kidnapped. Or the Kutz family from Kfar Aza: the mother, the father and their three grown up children standing proudly, smiling straight to the camera. Or their bodies, five of them, one next to the other, lying in thick white plastic bags, right after they were found murdered in their home. I think of them clinging to each other, knowing this is their last minute of life.
Instead of sleeping, I listen carefully to sounds I’ve never noticed before. Every sound is suspicious. I check the gate and the doors again, to see if they are all double locked. My stomach is a knot. My muscles are tight. My skin is suffering from the eczema that appears only when I’m stressed.
*
The alarm sounds at strange times and screams very loudly. Scarily so. I’ve entered an alert for the area where I live in the special app that we have, but I’ve also set alerts for the areas where my mother-in-law, my daughter, and my son live so the alarm goes off often.
You never know where you’ll be when the rockets fire. An alarm sounds when I’m visiting my daughter, who has a big safe room. We huddle there with my grandchildren, hear the explosions then, when they finish, go out and continue drinking our coffee. Another sounds on my way home. I leave the car in the middle of the road with the keys inside, lie on the ground and cover my head with my hands. After a few explosions, the birds sing again. Then I stand up, dust off my dress, return to the car, and continue as if nothing has happened.
One sounds when I’m making soup for Shabbat, just as I’m putting the carrots into the pot.I turn off the gas calmly, as if I’m used to missile alerts in the middle of Shabbat cooking, and then hurry to the shelter. It’s only then, I notice my hands are trembling.
I want to take a shower and wash my hair. But what if the alert sounds then? I make sure I have a big towel handy to cover myself in case. We have exactly one and a half minutes to get into the shelter and lock it. It’s not always enough, because we must wait for our upstairs neighbours who have three kids. By the time they reach the shelter we can already hear the explosions overhead. Sometimes my neighbour texts me: “I’ve gone to the supermarket, the children are sleeping alone at home”. I don’t know what to do when that happens. What should I do if there’s an alarm and the kids don’t wake up in time?
*
In our neighbourhood, there are several funerals a day. We go out with our flags and stand alongside the roads that lead from the house of mourning to the graveyard with our heads bowed. We’ve organized a hall near the school where we collect everything that the soldiers and the people that have left their homes need. We get sent lists and in no time we have everything, including a landed truck and a volunteer driver to deliver the packed boxes.
There are no longer workers to pick the fruits and the vegetables in the Gaza Envelope [the densely populated area of Israel within 7km from the border which is being bombarded by rockets]. My friend, Ziva, volunteered to help pick tomatoes at a nearby farm whose owner was murdered by Hamas. But today a rocket fell in the farm, very close to her. Thank goodness no-one was hurt but the organisers asked everyone to leave immediately: it’s too dangerous, not worth the risk. The farm will be left abandoned, and all the crops will go down the drain.
*
I set myself a rule not to watch the news or go on Facebook. But when I can’t help myself, I log on to find each time that the circle of victims I know personally has widened.
I lived for two years in Kibbutz Erez, one of the settlements attacked. I know the kibbutznicks, they are my friends and relatives. And then the circle widens again to their friends, their relatives. I see the photos. I read their testimonies. I can’t help looking at the faces. I want to know every one of those who were slaughtered, burned, killed, murdered, or kidnapped. I want to know.
I want to know all the stories of the survivors of the Nova Festival. I want to know all the stories of those who saved them. All the stories of those who saved the babies, the mothers, the old people, the families. All those who are still alive from the Kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope.
I try to write, but I can’t. I write: How terrible. Awful. Unbelievable. Such horror. I’m shocked. I’m so sad. My condolences. Yehi Zichro Baruch. May their memory be a blessing.
How many times can one use these words? Can you repeat them one thousand and four hundred times, and still mean it honestly from the depths of your heart? Words are my main means of expression, yet I feel that they are losing their meaning. My words are lacking words. There are no words to describe the hurt. The pain. The grief. It turns out that the truth is harder than all the words that should describe it.
*
On Saturday 7th October, I woke up to alarms and missiles explosions from afar. I jumped from my bed, running to empty the shelter, which is our tiny laundry room. My daughter-in-law stood frozen, holding her two-year-old son in one hand, and her mobile phone in the other. She looked horrified, said something about the news. I barely heard her, emptying the shelter while still in pyjamas, running back and forth, removing everything I could carry in my hands to the backyard. Five minutes later, we heard the first alarm in our own neighbourhood.
My hurriedness reminded me of fleeing during the Gulf War. In those days the house didn’t have a shelter. With five kids at home, surrounded by endless terrifying explosions, we were a sitting target. In less than an hour I packed all the necessary items a family needs for its survival: a few bottles of water, a pan, a pot, a bottle of oil, flour, coffee, sugar, salt, blankets, pillows, a few clothes, coats, underwear, and socks. That’s it. In the middle of the night, we drove with our kids to the North of Israel without knowing where we’d spend the night. We returned to our home only after our small shelter was built.
It’s thanks to my great grandmother, Rachel Rosa Rosenzweig Goldstein, I have the knowledge and capacity to survive. She saved most of her family when she decided to leave Europe just before WW2. Unfortunately, two of her daughters stayed behind with their families. One of those daughters was my grandmother, who was murdered in Auschwitz when she was forty-two years old, together with my grandfather and more members of my family. My mother survived labour and death camps before joining her grandmother and aunts in Israel. I was born here, carrying deeply this lesson, this knowledge of survival, of taking care of my family, of fleeing when needed, of being on alert, of being the responsible adult.
*
I can’t complain. I’m still alive. No one in my close family was hurt. I have running water and enough food stored in my kitchen. And my home still stands. I’m worried about those who don’t have all this, in Israel and in Gaza. I’m worried about the children, girls, especially girls, boys and mothers, the innocent hostages, the innocent civilians living in Gaza.
I’m worried about the soldiers. The poor soldiers that are going to be killed in a battle no-one really wants. I can’t cry. It’s only my soul and my heart that are weeping endlessly. The big cry is hiding deep in my muscles, locked deep in my stomach.
I tell myself it’s a time of survival. It’s a time of war. I’m the responsible adult. I take care of my grandchildren. I keep on being very busy. I know now I’m in trauma. Like everyone else here. I’ll have enough time to cry later.
By Diti Ronen
Dr Diti Ronen is a scholar and multi award-winning poet. She has published twelve full-length poetry collections, and her poems have been translated into more than ten language. The Book of Chronicles (Afik, in Hebrew), The Mulberry Tree (Shearsman Books, in English), Ukraine (Corvinus Presse, in German) are all forthcoming in 2024.