Nice Life You Have There

Shame if something were to happen to it.

Day 285 of The October 7 War. It’s too quiet. Soldiers haven’t died in the past couple of days. There is more talk of hostages, less talk at funerals.

All quiet on the home front. Life is normal. It’s too normal. The emergency power banks, batteries, radio, water, torches, and cookies we were storing in the bomb shelter are in place, but some batteries have been used and the cookies are gone.

It’s hot. Too hot. A professor on the radio says its only going to get hotter, and if we don’t do something about it soon, it will get much hotter. That’s good news for air conditioning stocks, an expert says. I’m relieved there’s an item on the radio that’s not about immediate death.

Life is routine. Picking up the little one from school. It’s late afternoon and the armed guard sits on a bench outside the school’s front gate, smoking a cigarette, hunched over his phone. Not the body language I was hoping for. The gate is open. It’s so hot. He doesn’t have a bottle of water.

I ask the guard how he’s doing, you know, from one guardian of children to another.

“Exhausted,” he replies. I was hoping he would say: “all good, quiet, everything under control.” His eyes are tired. His face is drawn, a long face, like a horse.

I ask why he doesn’t sit in the air conditioned guard booth. “Not allowed,” he says. I think he’s lying. Or there was a miscommunication with his employer.

Either way I don’t like the look of this guy. I would prefer Tony Soprano guard my daughter’s school.

It wasn’t always like this. Not long ago the guard’s body language was different, more dynamic. If he wasn’t in his guard booth, he was at the front gate or on patrol. In the really early days, there was backup, with 3 uniformed Homefront Command conscripts armed with standard M-16s at the gates.

Even they had backup. Civilians with combat experience— essentially local dads drafted on emergency call-up as reservists to guard their own kids’ schools— took up discrete positions opposite the front gate in the mornings and afternoons. These dads were given newer “short” M-16s, with shorter barrels, easier to handle, less of a hassle around corners, better for urban fighting around schools and commercial centers, supermarkets, pizza and ice cream shops, bakeries, and computer repair shops that close between 2-4pm.

The dads would guard the guardians for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the late afternoon. In between they’d go to work.

Since Day 3 of the war, and until around Day 200, while fetching or dropping off the kids, the same thought would come to me: the enemy is actually trying to kill our kids. At least twice a day, every day. And not “just” kill them, slaughter them like they slaughter animals; mutilate their bodies, mass rape them, drag and parade them through the streets as carrion for the masses. Slit our boys’ throats, and turn our Jewish daughters into Jihadi brides, and carry this nightmare on to new generations.

But it’s easy to forget all that in the heavy heat and twilight zone we’re in now. Day 285. We’re at war and we’re not at war. We’re conducting hostage negotiations and we're not conducting hostage negotiations. We’re about to enter a full-blown regional war unlike anything the world has ever seen, and also we’re probably not. Iran may nuke us and we may nuke them, or nobody’s gonna nuke anyone. In any case— in all cases— it’s both things at the same time. Either and or. We’re on war footing and we’re not on war footing.

Is Day 285 closer to the beginning or to the end? Will the end be worse than the beginning? Should we be counting down instead of up? Should we stop counting?

Leaving the exhausted guard in the rearview mirror, I drive Little Miss Daisy to the community center. She has a rhythmic gymnastics recital. A dozen giggly seven-year-old girls in pony tails and sparkly leotards perform a mix of floor gymnastics and pole dancing.

It’s easy to forget for a moment what the enemy would do to them if he got past our exhausted guard.

After the show we get pizza and ice cream.