Friday, July 14, 2006

Boker Tov

I happily woke up to find my city still here. Thinks got a little hairy here last night when a Katyusha rocket landed in Haifa. We may have heard the boom, after I got home from work around 20:00. But I looked at Adi wide-eyed and he shook his head, "No, no." It can be hard to tell. The night before there were fireworks from a wedding, cars can backfire, things happen.
I was at my friend\neighbor\colleague Esti's house getting cat feeding instructions and admiring new window seat cushions when Adi called my cell phone to tell me Haifa had been hit. He knew because Katus had called from New York after seeing it on CNN.
"Come home," Adi urged. "They're telling Haifa residents to stay close to home." I promised to wrap up and come over.
Esti walked me home, taking her dog Shoudu out for a walk. I was more afraid of Shoudu's forceful jumping paws punching at Cholent than of any Hezbollah rockets, but Esti kept him under control.

At home Adi hugged me tight and we watched the news as the phones started ringing with concerned callers. We learned that the rocket fell at Stella Maris, along the ancient Roman road now best known for the Carmelite Monastary and being the top stop on Haifa's famous orange balls cable cars. We saw big flames in the Lebanese night, the IDF response.

The funniest thing was that Hezbolla was initially denying that they'd fired the rocket on Haifa. Who then? Our enemies in Cyprus? Israel had promised to bomb Beirut and "set Lebanon back 20 years" if they hit us here, so I guess that was what they were trying to avoid.

We had generous offers to come stay in Zichron Yaakov and in Ein HaEmek. The most tempting offer came from Ben, "Hey guys, I'm still here in Cyprus for 3 more weeks. I have an extra bedroom and you guys are more than welcome if you want to come chill at the beach for a couple of weeks." Sounds good to me! Not that I feel afraid, just that a vacation at the beach hangin' with Ben sounds fun.

After an hour of phone calls and news, I told Adi it wasn't doing me any good. My belly hurt from the stress. Watching the same clips over and over wasn't helping. He relented and we watched an old episode of the BBC series "Coupling". It was a good one too, about solo whistling and parents who are too open about sex.

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