Do not send postcards to enemies

Know your enemy, know yourself, Sun Tzu famously say.

However, this is not imperial China.

It is not a lecture in ‘Leadership strategies’ either.

I am on the beach in Tel Aviv on August 7, 2022 and everything appears to be normal.

Surfers in the sea.

Swimmers popping out of the water, or so I think.

But once again I do not quite understand myself.

If I knew myself better, it would have dawned on me sooner that I need more practice to identify the sound of war in this city.

For example, this intermittent whine I hear from afar is definitely not a sluggish fire alarm. No French lady has called it back to duty by taking a few cigarette drags after waking up in her Hilton Hotel room.

The realization hits me like a ticking time bomb: this concrete behemoth is unlikely to catch fire with such ease. Taking a closer look, swimmers are not clearly leaving the water en masse because they are tired of the scorching midday waves. They are rather rushing to the shore, escaping the jaws of the evilest shark in history, Spielberg’s first and unparalleled creature. Actually not, they are all heading for the bar, and I need to get a move on if I want to secure my spot.

I start running, like them.

I am still on the street, in front of the beach bar, but the venue is just a stone’s throw away. I enter through the back, managing to get a decent advantage over the beachgoers. It is not exactly a bunker, the bar is referred to as a “safety place”, and apparently, we should be safe under this reinforced concrete roof. Kind of cramped, though. Shall I take my mask out of the pocket? Well, I am only dressed in a bikini. I almost forgot.

A young American woman beside me is overwhelmed by a hysterical crisis that seems to stretch on for an eternity, yet lasts only ten seconds. She succumbs to embarrassment as she realizes she is the sole person producing human sounds here, or rather “out there” — we find ourselves in a limbo between beach life and bunker life, with just a strip of concrete overhead, a shield that leaves us vulnerable to attacks from both the front and the sides. I remain quiet, listening and observing the scene, like the rest of the people around me.

I understand now that I need to sharpen my senses if I want to survive this trip to Israel. “Did you hear the sirens?” the hotel receptionist asks me later. I am tempted to respond that they sounded lo-fi, but I don’t want to appear overly negative to someone who looks concerned. I reassure her, “It’s all good,” and it is indeed true. I am not particularly afraid of the sirens and the muffled roar that temporarily silence the ever-bustling streets of Tel Aviv. However, the noise does unsettle me because it seems to originate from an underground amplifier, reminiscent of the sound described by speleologist Hannibal West in Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Dim Rumble.”

Read the full story (bilingual version, IT/EN) on Hook Magazine