For the smallest of my neighbors, the semiregular trips to our apartment building’s bomb shelter began almost a lifetime ago, on Oct. 7, 2023.
That Saturday morning, a 7:30 a.m. siren, backed up by blaring apps on my family’s phones and punctuated by our dog’s barks, took us all by surprise.
“Bomb shelter” is a rather grand name for what’s really a dusty, 300-square-foot, reinforced-concrete storage space packed with bicycles and strollers and sealed by a steel door so heavy it takes two hands to pull it shut.
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In this “Letter from a bomb shelter” (really just a dusty storage space under a Tel Aviv apartment building), correspondent Dina Kraft tells of a community that has formed over the course of the Israel-Hamas war, and of the young lives growing with it.
But along with our neighbors who knew the drill from previous wars, my family clattered down the stairs to the shelter, just barely entering when we heard a massive boom. We had no idea until we emerged that the sound was from a Hamas rocket that landed in a small park just about 30 feet away.
It was a fortunate near miss, but there was no time to think much about it. We would soon learn that the barrage of missiles fired that morning was merely the opening salvo of what would become the bloodiest day in Israeli history. That was nearly 19 months ago.
Now, at night before I go to sleep, I’m back to lining up my family’s shoes by the door in case we are awoken by the unmistakable wail of a siren and have to bolt down the stairs.
Though I’ve been doing it on autopilot in the two weeks since the second ceasefire deal shattered, plunging Israel and Gaza back to war, my heart drops a little each time.
Children’s growing awareness
In the course of the war, I’ve watched my neighbors’ children grow, some from babies to preschoolers, during our impromptu gatherings, which often take place pajama-clad in the dead of night.
By now everyone has a de facto assigned spot amid the beanbags, folding chairs, and floor mat we have set up, the bikes long pushed aside to make room for everyone.
Fathers balance children on their knees and read them stories, mothers rock still sleeping babies. Some are still too young to think of the gatherings with any fear.
But as they grow, some are becoming more aware of the danger that sends us to this stuffy, dusty space for about 10 minutes at a time. It’s the length of time Israel’s Home Front Command instructs to wait until venturing out, long enough for the “all clear” after Israel’s Iron Dome defense system can shoot down incoming missiles.
This past Oct. 1 we hunkered down for a longer stretch – about an hour – as we heard and felt booms that seemed terrifyingly close. At least twice, our entire building shook from the impact of missile or intercepting-rocket fragments that, we found out later, fell about a 10-minute drive north.
That was the night Iran fired about 200 missiles toward Israel. The adults and teens scanned their phones, updating one another with information. My son held up his phone to reveal a map of Israel, lit up almost entirely in red location dots, showing where missiles were potentially headed.
A premium on togetherness
Despite the fear, jokes were exchanged; the older kids tried to entertain the younger ones with smiles and games. It felt like we were all holding on tight, riding the same boat through a storm.
When, a few months earlier, Iran attacked the first time, we had decamped ahead of time to a friend’s empty home where there was a shelter inside the apartment itself. But my daughter, then 16, said she preferred being back in the shelter with all our neighbors. The togetherness, she said, gave her a sense of comfort.
Everyone is keenly aware that while Israelis are largely protected by the Iron Dome and shelters (although there are many, notably among the Bedouin and Arab populations, who often do not have shelters), Palestinian families in Gaza have no such “luxury.” Hamas militants keep themselves safe in their underground tunnels, but civilians have no safe shelter from Israeli airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands.
Last week, my daughter sent a text while babysitting for our neighbors’ young children upstairs.
“If there’s an azaka [Hebrew for “air-raid siren”] can one of you come help bring them down to the shelter?” Within an hour sirens sounded. My husband raced up to help her, and then they came down, each with a toddler in their arms.
Our shelter community was joined recently by a newborn named Nuri. On the trip home from the hospital, on what was only his second day in this world, he experienced his first siren. It was yet another missile from Yemen, in what the Houthis describe as a show of solidarity with Hamas.
Nuri, whose name means “my light” in both Hebrew and Arabic, stares chubby cheeked and bewildered at our impromptu gatherings, so many of them in the middle of the night, including one recently at 4 a.m.
I wonder what he makes of our pajama-clad bunch, and the barking dogs who don’t always get along. And the neighbors who do.
