I needed something to get me off Instagram reels.

The lid explodes from the pot. The dogs of war, slavering and loose. Reports of distant victories, thousands dead, distant denials of those same deaths.

How can we believe the evidence of our digitised eyes?

I find myself listening to the declaration from Washington. Wow, Donnie: tell me what you really think. The way he plants the word “Iran” makes me think of the scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four where Winston Smith finds a shred of newspaper, a sliver of impossible history, proof the story once ran otherwise. In the archives of the future, will “Iran” sound like “Oceania”? They were always our fiercest enemy.

Sirens and sirens and shelters and strangers. Bodies in flight. I snatch a glance at the sky, lurching towards a hotel, hoping to hide in the basement. I’ve seen these rockets before, but never in daylight. I wonder: is the top of the missile pointy, or round?

Inside the hotel, I am nodded through. Gentle acceptance at the gates of paradise, the butler becomes an archangel.

I Google Maps bomb shelters in my area. Some have ratings. Four stars. Nothing less than three. This old miklat is not up to much. It’s dusty. If my building takes a hit, the whole thing will sink in.

I should have got health insurance instead of watching hundreds of reels, a sort of hypnotic media paralysis as the war got closer and closer in high definition. Now they’ll put their rates up.

Every ten, twenty minutes, another shrieking siren. In the sleepless nights ahead, will we imagine them coming from a monstrous baby, throwing giant flaming toys out the pram.

In deep underground carparks you’ll find students scrolling on phones, kids with holy books under their arms, a man from London who just needed to be here and didn’t want to miss it. A woman from the synagogue with a PhD in something obscure and financial. Jittery dogs. Sweet couples leaning together. Someone sneezes. I wonder whether we’ll all get sleepless and sick.

How far will the centre spin out before a new balance?

The world inhales. Around me, the Israelis are steady. Cracking jokes. Lingering until the last possible moment at the shelter door to finish a cigarette, a joke, a text to mum. If I got a penny for every siren…

It’s relentless. Another. And Another.

When it dies down, I’ll chance a quick shower. Wars are won in clean underwear.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)