Voice from Shlomi

August 6, 2006 - 8:25 PM by Sarah

I just discovered this relatively new blog, by “ES,” a Reform Jew living with her family in Shlomi, Israel. Shlomi is so close to the Lebanese border, you can touch it – literally. I once visited Shlomi, and a taxi driver there expressed the frustration of residents that the only way they could ever go was southward. To the north, all the continuing beauty of the Mediterranean and the Galilee hills beckoned to the would-be Israeli tourists, but they were backed up against Lebanon, and could only look and watch and dream that someday there would be peace. My driver said “Someday, we’ll be able to drive from Shomi all the way to Turkey!”

That day has obviously not come, and ES has written several posts about life with constant sirens and sounds of rockets and artillery fire. Her posts are riveting and somewhat chilling in their very simplicity. She doesn’t comment about the war. She just writes what she did that day.

From Friday’s post:

This morning was pretty uneventful, a siren, a lot artillery fire and too much TV . . . .

During the afternoon the wailing of the sirens became more frequent each time followed by a loud bang. The news reports make no mention of Shlomi but auditory evidence and the inevitable gossip of a small town informs me otherwise.

I try to take a shower all afternoon but every time I get ready the siren goes off again. The children have given up on TV and are playing in the security room with my son’s train track. He is bored with a level track so lays in across my daughter’s recumbent body – to create hills. She has nothing better to do so she finds it amusing.

About 4pm the sirens start wailing yet again and there is an almighty crack overhead. Everything shuts down – the blast must have taken out a transformer so we have no electricity.

In the security room the windows are closed for safety and with no ventilator if is too hot even to read. I play a game of rummicub with the children between answering phone calls . . . .

After more than an hour the electricity came back and we have finally managed to shower.

This tidbit from an earlier post made me laugh:

A little frontline humour from the news:

A reporter in Zefat said a man had come up to him complaining that all the dealers and left town: “?I can’?t even find anything decent to smoke.”

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