Gimme Shelter

Tomorrow should be fun. The whole country is doing a defense drill. I can’t remember another like it, at least not in recent years. Our government happily assures us that nothing ominous is on the horizon and cautions us not to read anything into this. It’s just an exercise, the lack of which would be irresponsible. I am reassured. It’s not as if there’s a maniac in some not-too-far-off country trying to develop nuclear bombs and threatening to wipe us off the map or something.

As a humble civilian not too much is expected of me. At the sound of the siren one is supposed to sprint to the nearest bomb shelter within 2 minutes – I have visions of my grammar school gym teacher standing by with a stopwatch – and stay there until the all-clear. Luckily for both me and my gym teacher, I don’t have far to run. Like all new houses, mine comes equipped with its own bomb shelter. It’s just behind my back as I write this, the entrance being maybe a meter away. So I’m confident I can make it by the deadline.

The thing is, it’s my walk-in closet. I can spend 10 minutes in there if I have to, so I’m ok for the drill. But would I really want to stay there for hours in a real emergency? I don’t think so. Salient point: there’s no bathroom. That means after two, three hours tops I’m out of there. Way back when Saddam was lobbing scuds at us and we had to have a sealed room, we sealed the bedroom and bathroom so we could wait it out in comfort. Those were the good old days.

I have no one to blame but myself, of course. When I was planning this house, a shelter didn’t seem like such an issue. I thought it was a waste. Kibbutz houses are small and everyone uses this space for something else, be it bedrooms or offices. Then a few months after I moved in, Hizbullah started shooting missiles at us from Lebanon and I wondered whether I should be sleeping in there. That’s out of the question. I’m too old to sleep on the floor and the bed’s too heavy to move. But there’s no need to worry about that now. Tomorrow is just a drill and I can stay there for a few minutes. I may even get some cleaning done.