Tel Aviv, the « rebellious » city that was discovered vulnerable. Keret: « We are on the front line »

By our correspondent
Tel Aviv – When I came for the first time a Tel Aviv centerat the intersection of the roads that cannot be named now because they are secreted on military maps, where the rubble of the bombing seem to be fallen from another reality, Etgar Keret came to us as a kid with a few shekel in your pocketstuck by hunger and attracted by the smell of fried aubergines, hard -boiled eggs, tahini and above all from the aroma of the mango chutney sauce. « At Ramat Gan everyone ate and eat the sandwich of Mr. Sabih: It costs little, fills a lot. They took it to offices or apartments and for me the elevators smell of the Chutney. When I came to Tel Aviv for the first time and I entered an elevator, I thought it was broken because I did not sniff that perfume ».

Ramat Gan’s suburb

In the most sleepy and less -looped suburb of the metropolis with which it borders – in fact the skyscrapers of one side are stuck in the palace of the other – The writer grew up. And in these months of war that does not end, we have returned to protest against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. « Another building that was hit on Friday night was the meeting point For the events in which we show the faces of the Palestinian children killed in Gaza and recite their names ».

Iranian missiles

He admits that Ramat Gan is « provincial » compared to the city where he now liveswho is older than Israel but the rebellious girl remains. The peripheral spirit – « less ambition, you go to bed early » – has not protected the area from Iranian missiles, the overwhelming houses, passers -by who can scan the lives inside, the armchairs dusty by the rubble, the screen of the gray TV as had been tuned on a dead channel. « He will be the suburbs of Tel Aviv – says Keret – but he is at the center of the town. And this is where the Iranians want to inflict damage and victims. We became the first line after so many conflicts – even those of the last few months – in which the North and South of the country were under attack ».

« We are not immune to everything »

Instead with his wife Shira he found himself sitting on the floor of the landing – «Because we don’t have an armored room in the house» – To listen to the roar for almost all night, to try to understand how close the explosion had fallen. Habuah (the bubble) as the rest of the Israelis calls with Sarcasm the existence to Tel Aviv has dissolved. Comment on the human rights activist Orly Noy: «The skeletons of the buildings in Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv, the craters and clouds of dust, are the same ones we see in Gazadespite a scale of comparable destruction. These images must awaken us from the delusional imagination of being immune to everything, of being able to survive in this region only thanks to the brute force, our armaments ».

The useless and cruel war

Keret writes about it for his newsletter: «These Iranian missiles remind me that parallel to the useless and cruel war in which Bibi continues to drag Gazathere are also other wars against real and powerful enemies that threaten our existence. And while we are tightening in front of the door of the house, which trembles for the sound of the explosions, we hope that as we have always been able to win the wars that we must win perhaps we will finally learn to end those that, apart from the killings and suffering, do not make us progress in anything ».

The first time the writer was brought to a refuge by his parents was the 1973 conflictthat of Yom Kippur, in which the nation fears for survival. Eighteen years after the anti-gas masks worn for fear of the chemical weapons with which the dictator Saddam Hussein could have raised the newspapers. « Everything seemed simpler, I brought myself behind the mask to lend her to the girls who had forgotten her and so having an excuse to get to know them. »

The restlessness of waiting

Young punk put it as a fashion accessory to pogare at the Penguin disco. « Now the war is letters. The restlessness of waiting, the different alarms that mark one after the other the approach of missiles or drones. The Iranians know that destroying one of these skyscrapers, turning off the lights of the city always on would guarantee them an image of victory. Tel Aviv has never been innocent but under these bombs it is losing the innocence of the swagger ».