The Iranian missile attack on Israel last week caught me just as I’d finished a yoga class focused on relaxing the eyeballs. It was a great class, held entirely with eye masks on, and when it was over and I opened my eyes, the world looked a little different – just a bit lighter and softer. When I walked out of the yoga teacher’s home and tried to hail a cab, I noticed the streets were empty. I looked at the rideshare app, but it told me I was located in Riyadh (GPS signals in Israel have been intentionally scrambled by the military for some time, but this was a new wrinkle). When the first air-raid siren sounded, I found myself huddled in a nearby bomb shelter with a few dozen frightened, sweaty locals. That’s where I met Mohammed, a bus driver who told me he was claustrophobic. I said I wasn’t claustrophobic, but I also wasn’t keen on spending the evening in the crowded shelter. I suggested we hop on his bus and get out of there.
Mohammed’s plan was to drive to the central depot and drop me at home on the way. But the plan didn’t quite work, because a few minutes after we set off, another siren blared. Mohammed stopped the bus in the middle of the highway, and since we couldn’t find any cover, we sat down on a rock on the side of the road and watched the barrage of missiles being intercepted in the sky.
“This idea,” said Mohammed with a wink, “you know, to leave the shelter and drive the bus… I don’t want to be negative, bro’, but looking back, it was pretty dumb.”
“I know,” I said, nodding at Mohammed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. But what do we do now?”
I took a deep breath and, while trying to relax my eyeballs, I thought about my Mom. If she’d been there on the side of that highway with Mohammed and me, she would definitely have known exactly what to do.
Here's a piece I published on Saturday in The Guardian about how the recent events have been making me miss my parents even more than usual.
Whenever I read of your mother I think of mine. She too knew what to do. I wrote about it in her memoir, The Linden Still Bloom, amazon kindle amzn.to/3xRLaFM
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I love your emails. They’re so good: funny and honest and a useful insight into what’s happening. Thank you.