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This story examines the nature of love, survival and trauma in the context of the October 7 attacks.
What I have to remind myself is: it is okay, the sun is rising. Because it comes to me most clearly in the mornings, because I wake up these days before she does.
My first thought, and one I have repeated many times since, even in the safest of moments, was: we need to get to the motorcycle. It was our escape route, and therefore the only possible object of our focus. It was the way out and it could, just, hold the both of us. So, we needed to get to the motorcycle. I am not sure I have been so wholly concentrated on any object or destination since, except on the occasions I have just mentioned, when my focus would divert itself back to the image of that rusty two-seater and refuse to return to my control.
I had always been quite an excellent runner, but Shira had not. This was no fault of her own. She was simply considerably smaller than myself and dressed, at the moment of the attack, much less practically. I still remember the flat shoes she had been wearing: simple, patterned, and bought just two days before in the mall at Rafah. They were really quite nice shoes; modest, but designed in a way that revealed Shira’s true personality, the pattern I had fallen so deeply in love with. They were nevertheless not suited to running, and certainly not running through sand. I was wearing trainers.
We made it to the motorcycle at the same time. But we soon realised that we had missed our chance. Now I would need to start the thing, and it was not a new vehicle. It especially struggled to ignite during the heat of the afternoon. As I turned and turned and turned the key, Shira’s grip around my ribcage grew tighter. She was repeating something to me out loud, but I could not hear. Cars in the road ahead had swerved strangely off to the side. People seemed to be falling, although I was also aware of lots of people overtaking us on foot. I kept turning the key. That was when the soldiers arrived.
They should have killed me. To this day, I am not sure why they did not. Perhaps it was a bout of conscience on behalf of my attacker. Perhaps it was a moment’s hesitation, seeing Shira holding against me. Perhaps it was chance. In any case I remember being hit, hard, by something metal, and suddenly I was on my side in the sand, and Shira’s arms were no longer around me.
The rest is a blur, or rather, black. I was trapped underneath my motorcycle for seven and a half hours before rescuers found me and managed to dig me out of my pit. I had inhaled a significant amount of sand and, after the operation on my leg, was hospitalised for some weeks. I learned in this time that Shira had been taken away and that her family were involved in negotiations to bring her back. I must admit, I was not often conscious during this time, and when I was, I struggled to formulate coherent thoughts and sentences.
The relief I felt when I saw her again, some four and a half years later, was muted. We both, in a way, were muted. She had run to me immediately, and thrown her arms around my body, only for us both to remember, and begin sobbing uncontrollably in the middle of the hotel lobby. I held her as closely as I could without letting go of my stick, although I eventually lost my balance and we sunk to the floor, oblivious to our surroundings and the versions of ourselves we had once known. There would, now, be much work to do, although we did not think of this at the time. We were, probably, both thinking about that motorcycle.
So it comes to me most clearly in the mornings, when I step onto the balcony for my morning prayers. She remains asleep, and leaving her still gives me some difficulty, even now, to the point where certain images and sensations return, like a pulley that anchors me to the past. But it has been this way for some time. I have learned to live in her presence and, I am happy to say, I have learned to live outside of it. I am perhaps not the runner I used to be, I perhaps do not possess quite the same strength and energy. But there is little more to it. There is a way to explain, and there is a way to move on. And each morning, I turn my focus towards practicing the latter. And there is little more to it.
It is okay; the sun is rising.
read the original story (BBC News):
'Like a horror movie' - Israel music festival-goers fled in hail of bullets - BBC News
The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Very moving.