There is a very specific sound to déjà vu in Israel.

It is not memory. It is not trauma. It is not even fear, exactly.

Yesterday morning, Iran was attacking Israel in retaliation for our attack, which is how these things are now phrased, as if missiles have feelings and require narrative symmetry. This was the official context. The lived context was simpler: my phone screamed, the Home Front Command lost its mind, and the stairwell filled like a fire drill designed by Kafka.

By lunchtime, I had completed what can only be described as an elite athletic training programme. Up. Down. Up. Down. Shelter. Apartment. Shelter. Apartment. If Peloton doesn’t steal this concept, they’re idiots. “Welcome back, team. Today, we’re doing reactive cardio under existential threat.”

It is disruptive to routine, which sounds like a grotesquely privileged complaint while missiles are being lobbed overhead. But routine is not a luxury. Routine is scaffolding. Routine is the only thing stopping the brain from unplugging itself and wandering into traffic.

Routine is how you remember that you are a person, not just a target.

I was supposed to finish Sheba’s Children yesterday. I had been dragging it around for weeks, waiting for that mythical uninterrupted quiet that never arrives unless you are either wealthy or dead. Turns out bomb shelters are outstanding reading spaces. Concrete walls. Fluorescent lighting. The gentle hum of collective dread.

Really sharpens the focus.

Perfect book club vibes, minus the wine and the will to live.

My cats, bless their small furry delusions, believe me when I say calmly, “Okay, babies, mom’s going out, I’ll be right back.” They believe this because I say it like a statement of fact, not a desperate lie. They do not panic. They do not riot. They do not require processing circles.

They are coping better than several adults with mortgages.

The first siren packed the shelter. Everyone came. Babies. Dogs. People who had not yet worn shoes. We were united in the democracy of concrete and bad lighting.

By the fourth siren, attendance dropped.

By the sixth, it was basically a subscription service.

The same faces. The regulars. The ones who looked at each other with the exhausted intimacy of people who have decided they cannot sprint anymore without screaming.

Another siren. Another alert. Another internal negotiation between civic duty and bodily rebellion.

I took my night meds because apparently I still believe in sleep. The plan was to be unconscious within the hour, regardless of geopolitics. This is not denial. This is triage. A body that doesn’t sleep will betray you faster than any intelligence leak.

Hovering over all of this was the most aggressively Israeli question imaginable:

Are we expected to go to work tomorrow or not?

Are we taking buses? Are offices open? Is “non-essential” a legal classification or a vibe? Does “protected space accessible” include glass offices named after abstract values like Innovation?

The missiles get headlines. The retaliation gets panels. The fear gets poetry.

The logistics get WhatsApp voice notes from someone’s cousin’s neighbour who “heard something.”

Do we show up unless told otherwise? Do we wait for an email that will arrive precisely three minutes after we’ve already left the house? Do we risk public transport during an active escalation because no one has clarified policy?

Israeli resilience looks heroic on television.

In real life, it looks like bureaucratic shrugging under fire.

We are very good at surviving. We are spectacularly bad at instructions.

Last night ended in a collage of sirens and spiteful normalcy. Books read underground. Cats left at home. Pills taken on schedule. People choose which alarms to obey and which to ignore, not because we don’t care, but because the human nervous system is not designed for infinite compliance.

Déjà vu is not comforting. It is exhausting.

Still, between alerts, people carried on anyway. Read anyway. Slept anyway. Sat one out anyway.

This was not bravery. This was not apathy. This was inertia with a backbone.

This morning removed any lingering delusion that yesterday was a one-off.

It was a siren marathon. Four or five in quick succession, barely enough time between them to recalibrate your heartbeat or finish being annoyed.

Yes, the analysts explained it. We struck. They retaliated. We retaliated against the retaliation. Arrows on maps. Calm men in studios.

On the ground, it sounded like heavy metal doors slamming shut and people muttering under their breath.

The bomb shelter in daylight is even uglier. It looks like a Soviet-era bunker designed by someone who actively disliked joy. Concrete. Cold. Cement floors. Doors that feel less “protective” and more “we may never reopen this.”

It smells like damp resignation.

And again, the people.

Yesterday morning, the shelter was full. This morning, it was the same small group going underground again and again.

Where did everyone else go?

Do they have intelligence we don’t? Have they done the maths and accepted the odds? Have they decided they’d rather die upright than sweating underground?

At one point, my brain wondered if someone had simply resumed smoking. I rolled my eyes at myself. What a stupid thought. And yet. This is what a prolonged threat does. It sends the mind skittering into dark, idiotic corners in search of control.

I do not want to die from a missile.

This should not be controversial.

I am not asking for eternal youth or moral clarity. I would like a long, lucrative, joyful life. With nieces and nephews. With friends and family. The ones who still speak to me, at least. And ideally, at some point, a partner to share this long, lucrative, joyful life with, too.

This feels baseline. Not ambitious. Not greedy.

Instead, I am mentally tracking siren patterns and developing an unwanted expertise in acoustic trajectory.

The most obscene part is how ordinary the wish is. Not heroic. Not ideological. Just painfully normal.

To make plans without footnotes. To argue about nothing important. To complain about routine for boring reasons. To finish books without associating them with blast-resistant doors.

Life keeps insisting on itself, even now. Especially now.

And somewhere underground, yet again, someone decides they’re not running this time either.

Not because they don’t care.

Because they’re human.

Another siren… do I go or do I stay???

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)