The Longest Twelve Days

It’s an adrenaline rush. Or perhaps a heart-attack panic.

When the Red-Alert siren blares a rising and falling wail to signal incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, typically in the middle of the night—but really anytime at all, even just after the ceasefire— I wake up rattled and thrashed. My cellphone roars like it’s possessed, and then so am I, the sound of sheer terror slicing through my sleep and slithering inside. Somewhere between heart and stomach, I catch my breath, shriek, call out to my husband, Yonatan, and rustle awake our three dead-to-the-world teenage sons and race down to the bomb shelter as I unsuccessfully tell myself to relax. From a bird’s eye view, our apartment in southern Jerusalem is approximately 1.25 miles from Al-Aqsa. Would the Islamic Republic of Iran forces really direct these imprecise missiles that close to the third holiest site in Islam?

Still. Though it’s just fifty steps from our second-floor apartment to our building’s shelter, the siren stops me in my tracks—because the threat is real.

Operation Rising Lion is probably the most dangerous and consequential confrontation our region has seen in a long while. And it’s not just about the number of casualties. Explosive warheads destroyed a surgical ward in Soroka hospital in Beer Sheva (that was moved underground the night before). They also decimated the cancer research center at the Weizmann Institute of Science and a newly constructed chemistry building.  Decades of scientific work was pulverized, 45 laboratories destroyed, and more than 90 percent of all buildings on the Weizmann campus sustaining damage of some sort. A missile also struck a densely populated neighborhood of Ramat Aviv in northern Tel Aviv, not far from where my brother-in-law was raised. (In fact, it fell right on the route where he walked to school.) Yesterday morning, two young people were killed in Beer Sheva as they sustained a direct hit while sheltering in their protective room. I can’t bank on my internal monologue about our proximity-to-Al-Aqsa to be correct.  

When we get alerts, they come in two stages. The first shrill Home Front Command warning, the one that smashes my slumber to smithereens, is only a preview of possible coming events. It’s not a sure thing. The message we receive on our phones, “Emergency alert: Extreme,” signals that we have ten minutes to be near a protected space in case a barrage of ballistic missiles lands in our ‘hood. It’s like the tornado warnings I grew up with in Michigan, but then not at all like them. 

These missile attacks aren’t acts of Mother Nature, and I cannot hide from them in my suburban basement. If it turns out that our particular location is targeted, a second rising-and-falling Red Alert wail sounds, leaving us with 90 seconds to get down to the bomb shelter and shut its heavy door. Each siren echoes in the quiet space, a polyphone of anxiety. Then we stay put until the Home Front Command releases an all-clear, a green light for us to return to our homes. 

Apartments and homes built after 1991 have a mamad dirati, merkhav mugan, Hebrew for protected space—a special room with thick walls and shuttered windows—that safeguards against shrapnel and blast from conventional weapons as well as biological and chemical weapons. The Mamad room has reinforced concrete walls and ceilings, 20–30 cm thick floors, and airtight steel doors and windows. Our apartment building was built in the 1970s. To call it flimsy might be an offense the word flimsy. While we don’t have a mamad, we are fortunate to have a bomb shelter next to our driveway. 

As we race down three flights of stairs to safety, we thwack on the front doors of elderly neighbors, telling them to hurry, “Time is nearly up”. I bring my emergency charcoal-gray “just-in-case” backpack filled with unread New Yorkers, birth certificates, American passports, wallets, and prescription sunglasses. 

You think I’d be used to war by now. But I’m not. This is my family’s first Iranian rocket barrage rodeo. In April 2024, during the previous attack, we were vacationing in my brother-in-law’s home in Assisi overlooking an olive grove, luxuriating in the quiet and starless dark when Iran struck Israel. Energetically speaking it was the furthest you can get from a war zone. The other two mini-attacks caught me swimming freestyle in the glorious Jerusalem Pool, and then sheltering in the women’s locker room, a safe room. Muhammed and Jihad, the lifeguards, protected me, and brought me my glasses and other belongings. Each of these incidents was a one-off. 

But these twelve days were a war. A real war. A scary war. 

Our bomb shelter bustles. Circumstantial togetherness brings together 20-25 neighbors from two building entrances and passersby from the street. On the first night of alerts, a Friday evening, a mother nurses her firstborn baby, just six days old, as a family member sings Shabbat songs. People stare at their cell phones with dedicated focus, willing phone reception in a reception-deprived location. We mouth the names of cities and towns where rockets have fallen, so as not to scare the kids. Or ourselves. 

One corner is covered with mattresses and a bundle of first cousins, cuddling in confusion, trying to get back to sleep.  They’re staying at their grandparents. Shared sheltering. Social glue. My heart pinches, thinking of Yitzhak, our oldest neighbor, wheelchair bound, trapped in his apartment. And any thought of anyone trapped reminds me of our hostages, whom I’ve been praying for 627 days, who don’t have the privilege of knowing this shelter. Thinking of them makes my spirits flag even more. To alleviate the stress, my husband cracks jokes. Laughter reverberates across the bomb shelter. Our neighbor, Meir, quips, “Make the miklat (bomb shelter) great again!” 

The bomb shelter is stuffy and airless. But it also tastes like a godsend. We are safe. So many others are not. In Israel, Gaza, and Iran. And little people are the most blessed distraction. Ezra and Annael, nine-month-old twins we’ve just met who live in the next entrance, smell like baby detergent and themselves. Ezra claps his hands, lips parted in a delighted smile. I marvel at his tiny feet as he scrabbles around. Annael sports corrective glasses and wispy hair. Locking pinkies, they scarf down formula in their respective Avent bottles. Hands fisted around toys. A small fan oscillates, giving much-needed circulation. 

Post-siren, I crawl back into bed. Cuddle with my husband. Sleep fitfully. Grateful for silent skies. Sometimes I wake up to the keening of an ambulance siren, birds chirping, or the dull sound of planes. Sometimes I wake to another siren, and it starts all over again. It feels like a year of wartime in just 12 days, and we can only hope that the peace that comes at the end will be real and lasting. 

-Photo taken by the author, with permission from the subjects