This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

The jack­als are back.

That’s the good news. It’s day four­teen of this ​“new,” ​“renewed,” ​“con­tin­ued,” ​“fill-in-the-exple­tive,” Iran­ian War. I woke up at 3 a.m. with the real­iza­tion that I’d been in bed for more than five hours — hor­i­zon­tal, still tucked tight­ly under the blan­kets, sur­round­ed by all my fuzzy house­mates. There had been no siren since 9:30 p.m. Out­side, the jack­als were howl­ing. I sighed, eyes still closed. The sounds that had sent shiv­ers through me every night of Feb­ru­ary were almost com­fort­ing now. These noc­tur­nal crea­tures were also appre­cia­tive of the respite, maybe even antic­i­pat­ing a détente.

For weeks lead­ing up to the war, these unnat­ur­al, wild city dwellers, who had moved into the near­by Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv dur­ing COVID, had ser­e­nad­ed us in the ear­ly hours with their mourn­ful cries. My hus­band insist­ed that they were nice ani­mals, but I was con­cerned; I kept our new pup­py close to me dur­ing our 5 a.m. walk, just in case. When one bold­ly ran right down the path near our front door, the three of us froze. This wasn’t any old street cat. Our dogs stood at atten­tion, rec­og­niz­ing a threat. 

At the time, the jack­als were my biggest fear. Now I real­ize that they were no more than a ​“con­cern;” some­thing that could be man­aged, even con­trolled, to some degree. The jack­als’ pres­ence hadn’t accel­er­at­ed my nat­ur­al heart­beat to a gal­lop like those nine­ty-sec­ond-sec­ond alerts. 

With the out­break of the war, the jack­als dis­ap­peared. I imag­ine that they were prob­a­bly scared off by the lack of night’s nat­ur­al cov­er, the skies now burst­ing in light, deep booms break­ing the silence, hordes of peo­ple rush­ing through the streets to seek cov­er. Their peace and qui­et was destroyed, turn­ing their world — like ours — upside down.

We are deep into the war — maybe the same one, maybe a new one. The fog that has set­tled in my sleep-deprived brain makes assess­ments fuzzy and uncertain.

It was such a relief to see Tel Aviv shak­ing off the dust of a two year war, flour­ish­ing in its unique, life-embrac­ing man­ner: the cafes burst­ing with peo­ple, the streets bustling with activ­i­ty, laugh­ter, and smiles. 

Purim was on the hori­zon, and what a won­der­ful one it would be. At least, that was the plan. The sober cel­e­bra­tions of the pre­vi­ous two years were final­ly a thing of the past. It was time to dress up, bask in the sun­shine, and embrace the future. It was going to be so much fun. 

But that was not to be. Life has become a mad dash at all hours of the day and night. One day, we had sev­en sirens in Tel Aviv between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. — we could only lie down long enough to be once again bru­tal­ly blast­ed from our slum­ber. We meet our neigh­bors again and again in the dim­ly lit safe­ty of our near­by shel­ter— faces rent with exhaus­tion, propped up on plas­tic chairs hasti­ly deliv­ered the day after the war began, grip­ping the leash­es of our dogs to keep them still. Par­ents engage their young chil­dren with puz­zles and col­or­ing books, which were pro­vid­ed by the munic­i­pal­i­ty along with water, cups, and rotat­ing fans in an effort to make this whole expe­ri­ence a lit­tle bit eas­i­er to bear. Young adults with drinks in hand wan­der in from local bars that dare to remain open in wartime. Walk­ers and motor­ized wheel­chairs crowd the ele­va­tors. The elder­ly are forced to stay home and hope it’s not their turn to leave this world. 

We ner­vous­ly glance at our cell­phones, check for mis­sile dam­age updates, ques­tion whether or not it is safe to climb the stairs that lead up to street lev­el. We force smiles to indi­cate that we’re okay, that this is all okay. But of course, it isn’t.

The scenes are far too famil­iar. Rinse and repeat. How many times have I uttered this phrase in the last two and a half years? We’ve bare­ly had a chance to catch our breath, and now we’re back at square one. But along­side what remains the same — every­thing we think we know— are the dif­fer­ences that this new war brings. I call my broth­er, con­cerned about the bal­lis­tic debris falling from clus­ter bombs. ​“Isn’t it a war crime to use them?” I ask. ​“Yes,” he con­firms. ​“But so is tar­get­ing citizens.”

There’s no time to brush our teeth, comb our hair, or even put on glass­es, because who knows when the next mis­sile will strike? Last sum­mer, a mis­sile flew just over our build­ing with a ter­ri­fy­ing, deaf­en­ing screech before smash­ing into a build­ing about five blocks away. This time one pass­es so close by that the impact sends shock­waves strong enough to force the win­dows and doors of our apart­ment open. It shat­ters glass in a wide radius, and destroys a gor­geous Bauhaus build­ing where two of my friends live — a place I’ve attend­ed writ­ing work­shops and par­ties for years. 

Despite the dark and threat­en­ing clouds that sim­ply refuse to budge from our skies, this is Israel and life — bet­ter yet, ​“liv­ing” — some­how goes on. When we return to our apart­ment after an ​“all clear,” we let our dogs run wild, liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly through their des­per­ate grasp at nor­mal­cy. Dur­ing Purim, the shel­ters are filled with col­or­ful cos­tumes, danc­ing, and cel­e­bra­tion, adults and chil­dren alike refus­ing to yield to the sober­ing real­i­ty of the world out­side. There was a wild par­ty with a DJ on Lev­el Four of the park­ing lot, and karaoke on Lev­el Three. All that shim­mered at this fes­tive time of year was forced deeply into the earth, but refused to be extinguished. 

After the ini­tial shock of the first few days of the war, the nat­ur­al life force of the local pop­u­la­tion scram­bled out of the rub­ble and into the light. Cafes are full again, restau­rants and busi­ness­es open. Even though the war rages on, the jack­als are back. Their return for­mal­izes the exis­tence of an altered, albeit unde­sired, real­i­ty. Their night­ly howls are less fright­en­ing to me now — in fact, they almost offer hope. Some­how, the show must go on.