Just Because You’re Paranoid

A totally ordinary Sunday. Day one of our working week. The sun glints off little puddles, chill shadows cling to the sidewalks. At ten o’clock in the morning foot traffic is low; workers already invisible in offices, huddled over team meetings, slow-sipping coffees, sharing photographs of nature trips and children’s birthday parties.

In restaurants and cafes, a pitter-patter of tourists. The breakfast waiter at a kosher restaurant leans over a table and intones, as if softening an anxiety, “A holy man once told me being religious is not about asking for things. It’s being thankful for what you’ve got.”

My shorts and scarf combo wins a few amused, raised eyebrows as I stroll through town. Most people are in coats. You can take the Englishman out of England, but Tel Aviv in January is my London springtime. Funny what you’ll put up with for a bit of sun.

On Dizengoff a window cleaner sings to himself, swiping foam over the sign GIFT SHOP. As he washes, switching from long brush to short scraper, a silver menorah becomes clearer, sharper, through the glass shopfront. The north side of the street is bathed in silken sunlight, the wooden public benches full with mothers and prams and old men in dark glasses cradling cigarettes.

All but one. The bench on the corner of Ben Gurion is occupied by a large pot of dried flowers, a memorial plaque, and two photographs of a young man, a close-up of his face beside a full-body portrait showing bare, muscular arms. I remember watching the video of his death, filmed from a nearby window. He sank to his knees, then arched backwards in a sharp jerk.

Some kid speeds by on an electric scooter, helmet straps hanging loose over his cheeks. Why even bother wearing it?

Ben Gurion boulevard buzzes with open laptops. Chic little huts sell coffee and cookies to youngsters curling yoga mats under their arms. I recognise someone well enough to nod, no need to say hi. Off to the side, a pensioner with wispy hair reads today’s newspaper, the red-and-black typography of Israel Hayom, images of Venezuela at night, orange flashes against a dark sky.

Do I detect a question on his lips, a tremble in his eyes as he leafs through pages of cheap, leaky ink that smudges his fingers: when will our skies burn again?

Tel Aviv holds its breath. It’s been six months since that foul June and the nightly bombardment from Iran, the rug of normality pulled from underneath, revealing the truth that we are rats, forced to hide in holes. Six months later the intersection at Allenby and Ben Yehuda stands gutted, two dozen buildings blanched and eyeless from a direct hit.

There has been no cleanup, a thin ribbon of red-and-white ticker tape seals off the unliveable rubble. At first you ask: what are they waiting for, how can they leave this thoroughfare so visibly, so hideously destroyed? Then answer your own question: why bother rebuilding, when there is surely more to come?

I step into the sun, try to calm down. A line of cars waits before a red light. The bookshop on Kikar Rabin is reassuringly busy. A waitress brings carrot cake to two friends tinkling with laughter at an outdoor table. The scene seems fairly solid. Pleasant, in fact. Am I the only one with jitters?

I study the faces of passersby, trying to catch a glimpse of discomfort. Am I searching for a fear that isn’t there? Is it just me, a lone Brit on the sidewalk, drenched in Ashkenazi angst? But then, wasn’t the Prime Minister assassinated just here, thirty years ago? That’s why they named the square for him.

The whole city, the whole country, pockmarked by unthinkable memories. Yes, I’m paranoid, and yes, you’ve heard it – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not trying to kill you.

When I was a teenager I pored over photographs of Warsaw in the 1930s. A devoted photographer had gone deep into the Jewish heart of the city, revealing in vivid black-and-white a universe of Yiddish shop signs, hearty women in sheytels, flat-capped youth cupping bowls of chicken soup with both hands. A whole resplendent, oddly-dressed, imperfect civilisation bustling with ideas, broyges, love affairs, untimely accidents, rumours, nights at the theatre, grandmother’s cholent, stern men whispering about events in Germany. A fully animated carousel on the eve of collapse.

For a moment I am that photographer. Today, in Tel Aviv, in the third year of this war, a multi-front struggle, a global war of ideas with enemies who don’t recognise the ground we stand on. How they flinch at the very name of our country. Show them this photograph, read them this story, they will say there is no such place as Tel Aviv.

So I mentally collect images of our blessed civilisation with the twin cameras of my eyes, here the swirl of chocolate sorbet at an ice cream parlour, there a wide-brimmed black cap over jeans and hanging tzitzit, a folded umbrella on a day without rain. A gaggle of women with cascading brown locks and long hooped earrings, branded tote bags, new iPhones and shiny sneakers. The city exhales waves of coffee and cannabis and laughter. When a motorbike starts up with a sudden bang, everyone inhales, freezes, the muscle memory of panic.

Because who knows what’s coming. Because we’ve learned that civilisation is a veneer, that under our proud ideas, shining weapons and glittering startups, we’re frail human animals. Because the mullahs in Tehran, cornered and raging, can strike their flailing hands on big red buttons that will rain down a storm of unholy fire.

Obliterating this library, this table, this hand that copies out the words: the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

It certainly weighs on mine.

Time for a cigarette break, and I’m no smoker. The city hums along without any notice of me and my catastrophising. It’s afternoon now. The sun hangs low between two towers, limbering up for his daily dive into the Mediterranean. A yellow school bus passes, children wave their hands, perhaps singing inside. And here’s a guy fresh from the gym, matching top and bottoms, striding by, sheltered from the world by over-the-ear headphones.

So I’m not the only schmuk in shorts.