Friday 13th, 2025:

Today Israel attacked Iran. But the laundry still needed folding.

I would love to say that my day, Friday, June 13th begins at some palatable hour this morning, after the sun has gently risen on another June day, when the heat can be felt beneath my skin. My day, however, probably begins sometime around 1am, as I blearily check my glowing watch during my third nocturnal visit to the bathroom. Damn you, perimenopause.

After what seems like eons, I finally sink into a deep slumber when Avi’s phone goes off with an alert notification. Our sealed room happens to be my daughter’s bedroom. Sometimes she’s here and sometimes she’s at uni. Going to a protected space has begrudgingly become part of a twisted routine here in Israel. Alert goes off, siren wails, we hear the upstairs thick reinforced door slam above us, we roll the reinforced window shut and try to avoid tipping the plant over, and then we sit and wait 10 minutes. Usually, we grab our phones, enter, wait. Avi sits on the rug and I sit on the bed. We check our smartphones, as if somehow knowledge will save us. The air feels silent. Sometimes my heart races. Sometimes I’m just irritated because I was in the middle of something.

A year and a half ago, the rockets were coming from Gaza, then they arrived from Yemen, then from Iran, then from Yemen again. Not every day, but with enough frequency to be annoying. I have been in many different locations for sirens – in a park, next to my car, in our school auditorium and, the scariest of all, lying on my stomach with 200 other guests at the funeral of my student’s brother on October 8th, 2023.

Back to the morning alert, which was a ‘pre alert’. 

“Do we have to go into the mamad (sealed room)?” I mutter sleepily.

“Nah,” Avi responds and rolls over.

And that was that until my bladder decided to wake me up at 7am. I hate glancing at my phone as soon as I wake up. It is an omen for a really bad day. But curiosity drove me to it. Was my sleep really as bad as it felt? Today, my younger daughter is due to be landing at Ben Gurion at 10am. I have planned a swim and then a drive to the airport to pick her up. Before I can access my health app, I notice several WhatsApp notifications from both daughters.

“Are you guys OK?” my older daughter is demanding. She’s in the US too.

There are two messages from Rachel. One saying her flight is delayed. The next, several hours later, telling me the plane is turning back. Turning back?

Slowly, my sleep-deprived brain is starting to piece something together. The next step is to check the news.

“Avi! Wake up!” I yelled. “We attacked Iran!”

The story is coming out in pieces. A little broken but the narrative is crystal clear. I see names of nuclear facilities that have been reduced to rubble, Tehran and other large cities attacked, military leaders taken out with pinpoint precision. Unreality is beginning to set in. And it is only 7am. I have a whole day to get through.

I tried to imagine our airforce flying overhead and shooting bombs at grey concrete installations. My imagination is no clearer than the blurry shots featured on the news channels.

Then my thoughts drift to something more tangible: my daughter. That’s easier. She gets on a plane. She’s wearing her comfy tights and hoodie, and making small talk with the family sitting next to her. She’s got her earphones in and is watching a series on Netflix, playing chess and making plans for the weekend with her uni friends on WhatsApp. And then- a cough, a tinny voice, a ‘This is your captain speaking-‘, an apology, a sigh, uproar, a brush of fear, an echo of concern.

But I’ve got to function. For God’s sake, they’ve declared a state of emergency here. We’ve been told to make sure we have supplies. Schools have been closed, no gatherings of more than 50 people, only essential stores open. It’s like the worst combination of Covid, October 8th and Yom Kippur.

And my daughter is stuck in New York. I tell myself ‘Ella, Rachel is in one piece. She is being taken care of by family in New York. It’s irritating, it’s annoying but, in the wider scheme of things, this is a hiccup.’ I will repeat these words ad nauseam until my anxiety quietens down from a deafening pitch to a slow hum.

What isn’t a hiccup is the fact that thousands of other Israelis are stranded God knows where, that thousands more just received a call-up Tzav 8 and are saying goodbye to their loved ones yet again and that we just attacked a country ten times larger than us – an arch enemy who has dragged us into a multi-front war and swore our destruction. Our bold moves of today won’t be taken lightly.

The next issue to be dealt with is the fact that the gym closed for the day. I will not allow a potential world war 3 to stop me from getting my essential dose of exercise.

“C’mon Avi,” I say as I put my exercise gear on, “Let’s go for a walk.” He looks at me strangely. Why do I need to wear exercise wear for a walk, he wants to know. But today, the day we attacked Iran, I need structure, I need purpose, I need a mission.

I grab my hat, water bottle and sunglasses as the sun is already blazing mercilessly. We step outside and do our regular ping pong of ‘Which direction do you want to go?’ and the response of ‘I don’t know, you decide.’ – when both of us know it makes no difference. Legs forward, arms swinging, walk, elevate heart rate, talk about stuff, about turn, and then, home.

The streets are practically deserted. For Jerusalem on a Friday, that is. The regular honks and squawks of people in a hurry to get everything done before sundown are strangely absent. The Arab kids with their backpacks on their way to school are nowhere to be seen. The gan and parks are empty. A few solitary exercisers run past, one of whom I recognize from the pool.

We walk through the leafy streets, observing the changes – which buildings are under construction, which have been finished, where the city hall has placed signs announcing yet more construction. It’s part of our walking ritual. We talk about Iran and Israel, of course. We speculate. As if any of it helps.

I think of my mum. I’d planned to meet my parents, who live in Drorim near Netanya, somewhere nearby for lunch tomorrow. That’s off, of course. I wonder if the restaurant is going to be open at all. Probably not. After all, ‘gathering’ includes restaurants. What a shame. I was imagining us sitting at a shady table, chatting and enjoying the specials. Oh, well.

I make a mental note to call my mum when I get home. She’ll be back from her exercise by then. Whenever events such as these happen, I start to worry about my parents. I’m counting the days till they move to Jerusalem. I just can’t handle this distance anymore.

I get a sense of chapters closing and new chapters beginning. What I had previously imagined to be a continuation of the chapter of yesterday, when I sat with my grandson and daughter-in-law at a cafe, when we talked about work and apartments and sleep routines, has now become the previous chapter. And today, which probably started with the notification at 4 am, is the ‘after we attacked Iran’ chapter.

There are no outward signs of fear or war in the streets of Jerusalem. It feels more like ‘erev chag’ – the moments before a religious festival when traffic quietens down and public institutions close. We make our way along the Sherover Promenade, with its breathtaking view of the valley, Dome of the Rock, the Kotel, Mount of Olives Cemetery, and the sprawling mass of East Jerusalem. Nobody is on the path. I feel strangely calm.

An hour later we are home, feeling that pleasant feeling that’s a combination of endorphins and accomplishment you get after a workout. We’re going to enjoy our well-earned coffee on the balcony, enjoying the quiet, Armageddon be damned.

I can’t get my head around it. We are this tiny country. You can’t find us on the map, for God’s sake. We tricked them. They didn’t suspect a thing. And now, hours after it began, we’re still at it, taking out their key personnel and installations, one by one. No fanfare, no announcement. I will never know who the people were manning the situation room, sending coded signals to one another, passing on secrets, and signing the go-ahead. But they have changed life as we know it, and hopefully created security for millions.

All plans have been scrapped, so I can devote myself to finishing my matriculation marking. 50 papers to go, hanging like an albatross around my neck. There is nothing remotely interesting about it. But now I’ve got time to kill. I also don’t want to be far away from our sealed room.

What we don’t do is switch on the TV. We find the constant stream of chatter, video clips on repeat, the updates, the concerned faces of newscasters and the dreadful speculation unnerving and unproductive. We will be the ones to decide when to search for information and news.

Nonetheless, as I mark my fifth essay, I find my hand unconsciously creeping towards my WhatsApp messages, an anxious habit and a signal that I might be able to carve out a routine, of sorts, but my mind is elsewhere.

Avi is in the kitchen preparing the meat for shabbat. As usual, he is much less perturbed than me. As a man of deep faith, he doesn’t live in ‘what-ifs’ at all. He’s also not frightened of the Iranians.

I speak to my mum. She’s pretty okay about all of this. War and disruption are a reality she and Dad have become accustomed to during their 15 years in this country.

“I guess we aren’t meeting up for lunch,” she says sadly. She remarks that everything was closed by her in Drorim. Topics drift to Rachel. How will she be able to revise for her uni exams whilst in the US, my mum wants to know. I hadn’t thought of that. She also wanted to know if she had her Ritalin. She can’t study without it. I hadn’t thought of that, either.

So Trump declares he knew ahead of time. This thing was planned out years ago. This was an operation of mind-boggling proportion with underground bunkers, secret drone installations, and a large dose of spying.

Talking of drones, despite the lack of sirens it turns out that we were attacked by a hundred Iranian ones, which we managed to down before they got here. My thoughts again turn to the anonymous soldiers who are coordinating defense systems. They are kids one year older than my students. Our lives are in their hands.

I mark, I eat. I finish marking and now it’s time to clean the house before shabbat. I tune into my favorite YouTube channel where the guy, an Iranian, is somehow able to give information that other news channels don’t give. He also does it in a light hearted way. I think I need light hearted right now. Otherwise I might just feel a teensy bit scared.

It turns out we’ve done a lot of damage. Some leaders have fled. We had set up an underground drone facility in Iran right under their noses. We had enough insider information to know when the head of the IRGC Air Force was going to use the bathroom next. It’s a David/Goliath story of epic proportions. And it’s not over yet.

The prince of Iran is looking forward to returning and leading the country into democracy and prosperity. The people of Iran are whispering support and love of Israel. And the IRGC is scared.

But so am I.

I feel a sense of relief when I finally hear Rachel’s voice on the phone. She is coping. She’s back at her grandparents – both of them elderly and crotchety. She’s broke which limits her options. Small problems on the grand scale of things.

Meanwhile, the laundry is washed and folded. The rooms are clean. The food is prepared. The house is quiet. The streets are quiet. We are all expectantly waiting. There’s talk of a ground invasion in Iran to make sure that the nuclear installations are completely disabled. I don’t want to think about that right now.

Avi talks to his sisters. Many of their kids have been called up. To where it isn’t quite clear.

I dress for shabbat and sense the shifting sands of history. I feel hope, unease and fear. I feel how tiny we are, how giant the world is. I wonder if there will ever be a reality when our soldiers go home for good. I wonder if, maybe in my lifetime, I’ll be able to visit Iran. I’ve heard it’s quite a nice country. I wonder when I’ll see Rachel.

Avi and I sit down for dinner. As we are scraping our plates for the last morsel of meat and roasted vegetables, the all-too familiar wail of a siren goes off. Dessert will have to wait. We grab our phones and head for Rachel’s bedroom. I’m sure the Iranians and Houthis know it’s shabbat, our day of rest, our day of peace. They pick their timing well.

Another siren goes off twenty minutes later. This time it’s 100 missiles from Iran. The first time the missiles arrived in a show of force and bluster I was scared. I saw one in the desert. It was much bigger than I’d imagined.

This time there are 100 but I react more calmly. I’m uneasy. But I’m tapping on my keyboard and there’s something soothing in that. Is this the great Octopus, the heart of the tentacles whose names might change but whose goal is the same, the puppet master of Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis, who is in his death throes, ejecting noisy bubbles and inky blood?

It is now ten to ten. Not worth going to bed just yet. Or maybe we’ll sleep in Rachel’s room. She isn’t here, anyway.

I know that today isn’t yesterday. And doubt and fear have become my reluctant bedfellows. I know that this discomfort that occupies my belly and my soul is something I’m just going to have to shift around until I find the right spot.

After all, there’s always tomorrow.