On living with mortal danger and the inexplicable joy of belonging to this people

A personal essay from Israel

I do not know if I will still be here next week. This is not a metaphor. If a one-ton missile falls on my house, no shelter, however solid, will be enough. I know this. I live with this. And still, every minute I remain alive, I find myself struck by something I can only call admiration: for the people I belong to, for the country that holds us all.

The fear is real. It lives in the body, not just the mind. Yesterday, when the sirens sounded and I moved to the shelter with my manicurist, a woman I see often, whose hands are steady and whose smile is warm, I watched something happen to her. A heaviness settled in her chest. Her breathing changed. Standing beside her, I didn’t need words to understand what was happening. This was not a single moment of fear. This was the weight of accumulated years: wars, terrorist attacks, the chronic, grinding knowledge that........

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