The war with Iran: Part 1

On Tuesday, June 10th, I was given a class assignment to observe a scene and write down details. I chose to describe a scene from the Thursday bus ride up to my parents' house for the weekend.

My notes described a calm, peaceful scene, of a bus full of passengers, tired after several hours of travel. The sun was setting, and the light of the golden hour helped reinforce the unspoken optimism of the scene; after a destructive war with Hezbollah, and thousands of residents of the north being evacuated, the relatively full bus was a sign that the north was returning to life. While almost half of the evacuated citizens hadn't yet returned, the populated bus was a positive sign that people were starting to return.

That evening, on the other hand, was less golden and optimistic. In light of the increasing tensions between Israel and Iran, I happened to see a report that the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq might resume sending attack drones towards Israel - drones which had in the past caused sirens by my parents' house. The little spot we used as a safe spot had, since the ceasefire with Hezbollah, somewhat become a storage space, and so that evening I cleared it out a bit, just to be on the safe side.

The unfortunately familiar sound of the air raid woke me up at 3:00AM, and everyone in the house scrambled out of bed, trying to go from sound asleep to huddling in the safe spot in fifteen seconds. The war had begun.

The ballistic missiles started arriving; for those first few days, pretty much exclusively in the middle of the night. Predictably, the center of the country was the main target, which meant that for once it was actually probably safer up north. My uni classes had been moved to Zoom anyway, so I made the decision to stay for a while; at the very least, it was a wired internet connection and someone else paying for the stress-based snacking.

I had only been planning on being by my parents for the weekend, which meant I hadn't come prepared for an extended stay. I'd also be notified that there was a possibility I'd be called back into reserve service (which did not, in the end, wind up happening), and so I needed to prepared for that eventuality. And so, on Sunday, I hopped a bus to the center of the country, and picked up the supplies I needed from my apartment. Oh, and my little sister. Of course, along the way back, the pattern of missiles only being launched at night was broken and we got caught by a siren while on the road, but such is life; the bus driver stopped and we all huddled under a bridge (which I later discovered is a bad idea - don't do that, kids). All's well that ends well, and we made it back up to my parents' house without further incident. And thus began the new daily routine of war with Iran.

It's hard to describe how mundane historic events feel.

Perhaps it has to do with just how many historic events we've lived through in the past few years, but I don't think so; it's just that while at the same time as history is being made, people are living their lives. Even though we were routinely getting alerts for incoming missiles, and the news was reporting impacts and deaths and injuries every day, life still went on; food needs to be made, dishes need to be washed, laundry needs to be cleaned, and classes need to be attended... even though it really should be illegal to have classes at 8AM after a night full of air raid sirens.

On the other hand, family members outside of the country were freaking out. They were constantly sending messages asking us to check in and trying to convince us to figure out a better bomb shelter solution. The people not living through it seemed more disturbed by the situation than those of us under ballistic missile fire. Perhaps the difference between historic events and daily life is distance, both physical and temporal. These certainly were historic days, but life keeps going on. Somehow life tends to do that.