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I don’t want to go. I really, really don’t want to go. Whenever I tell any of my friends that I’ll be going to Israel in a week, they look at me like I said I was deliberating jumping out of a London high-rise.
“Do you want to die?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Get a job already.”
The news reports in those days are all about a potential full-scale war in the Middle East. Two days before my scheduled flight, Israel attacks Iran, killing a senior leader of Hamas. In turn, Iran promises to retaliate with a direct strike that, according to Jerusalem Post, could last “3-4 days.”
But more important than the war in the Middle East is my dad’s family, which will be there, which means my stepmother, which means her parents, which means awkwardness, manipulation, bullshit.
As I said, I really, really don’t want to go.
But I must. It’s my father’s 47th birthday.
“You know they’ll hate you forever if you don’t go?” my sister Kate says one day on FaceTime when I tell her I’m thinking of not going. “Also, please, please don’t leave me there alone. I won’t be able to stand them without you.”
I think about this for the next few days and realize: Kate is right.
“If she dies there,” I tell my girlfriend Masha, recalling a conversation with Kate, “there would be no point in me staying alive.”
She gives me a worried look and shakes her head.
On August 5th, I take the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport on my way to Israel.
***
Five. That’s how many times I’m searched and interrogated by men in military uniforms on my way to Tel Aviv. Twice at Heathrow, at the El Al check-in. Twice more at the gate before boarding. And once upon arrival. If the TSA is a joke and a “performance of security,” then Israel’s approach is the Real Thing. Getting there is harder than breaking into Pentagon.
“Why are you flying to Israel?” the bearded man asks me in English after being disappointed that I don’t speak Hebrew.
“To visit my grandma, who lives there,” I reply. “And my father, whose birthday it is.”
“What are their names?”
I give him their names. He flicks through my passport pages.
“I can see you’ve been to Egypt, the UAE, and Turkey. When? Why? Who were you with?”
The man has a gun sticking out from his belt, so I give him all the information he needs, even though I find the whole thing quite annoying.
“What were you doing there? Were you in contact with anyone local there? Are you in contact with anyone from these countries now? Do you know anyone in Israel besides your family? What’s your plan for the trip, day by day?”
When I give him all the answers he needs, the officer is about to hand me back my passport when he thinks of something else to ask.
“Didn’t you want to cancel your trip because of the, let’s call it ‘the war’?”
“Let’s say that I did,” I say.
“Then why did you decide to come?”
Fair question, I think.
“I didn’t want to be the only family member who didn’t,” I reply, startled by my own honesty.
So is the interrogator because he hands me back my passport, smiles, and says, “Have a nice flight.”
After checking in my bag, receiving five stamps for my belongings and one more for my passport, going through security, waiting in the Duty Free section, and drinking an overpriced coffee, I meet the same man again at the gate.
“Please come with me,” he says. We enter a small room with no windows.
“Why are you flying to Israel?”
“But you asked me that an hour ago!” I exclaim. “Remember?”
“Yes,” he smiles, blinking. “Again, please. Also, we’ll search your bag one more time.”
***
I spend the next five hours in a metal box 40,000 feet above the ground, my knees covering my ears. I’m writing in my notebook when I feel a teenage boy sitting next to me stare at me.
“What are you writing?” he asks when I look up at him inquisitively.
“Uh, personal stuff?”
He gives me a thumbs up and goes back to playing his Nintendo.
I try to sleep and read but can’t. Only after I drown a glass of cheap red wine from the flight attendant do I manage to somewhat relax.
“I am Serge,” I say, giving my hand to the boy, who is still playing a game.
He gives me his name, which I don’t remember. “You play any games?”
“No,” I confess.
We then talk about families, education, jobs. I realize, grimly, that I have almost a decade of age difference with this boy, but we’re somewhat similar. Neither of us has jobs. Both are students. Both have our options open. Both are visiting Israel to see our families.
He tells me his brother is in the Israeli army and was upgraded, free of charge, to sit in the business class. He points to a bald man sitting in front of him and says, “That’s my dad.” I hear a distinct Boston accent.
The boy asks me about my plans for the trip. I am somewhat tired of repeating the same thing over again but this is a casual conversation, so I tell the truth. “I’ll be probably staying in Netanya for the whole trip,” I say.
The boy smirks. “There are way better places to see than Netanya.” He gives me a few pointers and tourist suggestions which I instantly forget.
I turn to the girl on my left, who was reading a book about the Tudors the whole time, and ask her whether it was her first time in London. “Yeah,” she says. “I love all things royal.”
“So do I,” says the boy, jealous of my conversation with the girl. “It’s also my first time!”
I arrive at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv just after 2 AM. The airport is filled with photos of missing people from the October 7th attack and a slogan: BRING THEM HOME. People queue at mysterious Soviet-looking machines, scanning their passports and faces. I make my way to the All Passports queue and am relieved to find I’m the only one there. Sometimes being a citizen of a shitty country pays off.
“This is your visa. Congratulations. And be careful,” says the border officer, handing me a green piece of paper.
“Thanks,” I say.
I don’t like that “be careful” bit at all.
***
A half hour later, I meet Kate in the baggage claim. It’s nice to see her. I missed her. We embrace and I realized she’s lost a lot of weight since the last time we saw each other. She flew in from Moscow, after the operation on her tonsils, and had to fly around Ukraine, so her flight took longer than expected. Both of us were spent.
“Hello, darling,” I say, embracing her. “You know what Dad texted me when I said I landed?” I ask.
“What?”
“He said, ‘I know.’ That’s it.”
“For me too!”
Dad meets us at the airport. He looks tired. He is wearing a blue linen shirt, shorts, sandals, and looks as if both 16 and 56 at once. I point to the man holding flowers for someone at the Arrivals terminal and joke, “Where are our flowers, dad?”
He doesn’t respond.
We get inside his rented Kia and drive to my grandmother’s place in Netanya. On the way there, we’re mostly quiet, apart from one comment from him.
“I have a request for both of you. Kate, you asleep?” dad says.
Kate unwillingly opens her eyes in the back seat. “Not anymore.”
“I need you to be careful with Emily,” he continues. “Both of you.”
I turn my head around, and Kate and I exchange puzzled looks.
“When have we not?” I ask. Then I add, “But of course.”
After we’re quiet for some time, I try to change the subject by asking, “Are you worried about the whole situation?”
“What situation?”
“Well, the war and all.”
“Oh, no. Not worried at all.”
“What will you do if shit hits the fan and Iran attacks?”
“Nothing,” he says without skipping a beat.
***
The next morning, I get stung by a jellyfish in the eye. At first, I think it’s just salt water irritating my eyebrow, but when it turns blue, I realize it’s a proper sting.
“Oh, those are sea fleas,” my teenage stepbrother Rafik says when he overhears me complaining about it to my grandmother.
“Sea what?” I ask.
“Sea fleas. There are many of those. It’ll pass.”
I instantly remember my recent battle with bed bugs in my apartment in London. I paid $1,000 for them to be exterminated, even though I didn’t live in the place anymore. My girlfriend and I have this joke where we call bed bugs “Le Bed Bug” because, according to the media, they come “from Paris.”
“I guess then the sea fleas would be “Le Bed Bug De Mare.”,” I text my girlfriend Masha after I told her about my conversation with Rafik.
She sends me a string of three laughing emojis with tears coming out of their eyes.
On the second day, we’re hanging out on the beach, drying ourselves under the scorching Middle Eastern sun, when I hear a strange noise in the distance. It sounds like a plane engine, but no planes are in sight.
“You hear that?” I ask Kate.
She turns to me, worriedly. “Yeah, what the—”
Later that night, I read in the news about an Israeli psychological warfare tactic called “sonic booms.” Israeli warplanes fly over neighboring Lebanon, about 30-40 kilometers north, and terrify its citizens with loud noises, shattered glass, and bleeding eardrums.
***
My grandmother lives in Netanya, which is a small coastal town about an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv. It reminds me of Egypt and Dubai, mixed with a little of Sochi, a Russian town on the Black Sea.
“That’s exactly right,” my father says when I remark on it. “An old coastal town.”
Strangely, I feel proud for making the right comment. Even at 26, receiving validation from my father feels like warm oil on the chest.
On the third day, we go to IKEA to buy a frame for the painting I’m giving my dad for his birthday. It’s an inside joke from a movie we both like. Our driver is a 70-year-old Russian Jew named Sergei with leukemia whom I call “my grandmother’s boyfriend.” He is not really my grandmother’s boyfriend but because he is the only man I know she’s hanging out here, the joke works. Sergei has a propensity to talk a lot about Israel and its history, and when he remarks that certain buildings are more than 100 years old, I remark, “But isn’t the whole country, like, 70 years old?” He doesn’t reply, nor does he speak to me for the rest of the trip.
“This country, Serezha, is full of intellectuals,” my grandmother says as we’re driving through what looks like the slums. “People here are extremely nice and polite—”
Just then, a car swerves into our lane without flashing an indicator, and “my grandmother’s boyfriend” makes a sharp turn and stop.
“—in most parts, anyway,” she finishes as Sergei presses the accelerator.
***
Every day, the beach is packed. And every day, I see several helicopters fly above the sea, patrolling. If you look closely enough, using a phone camera, you can make out a turret sticking out from its bottom.
When I ask people who have lived in Israel for many years about the war, they brush it off as something they’re used to.
“It’s the same story all over again,” one of my father’s friends tells me when I comment that I read in the news that all Israelis received a text, “You’ll be buried this time next week,” from Iran.
“It’s all games and politics,” my grandmother says. “You just don’t get it, that’s all.”
On the streets, some people carry firearms.
“They are soldiers on leave, and they are supposed to carry their weapons at all times,” my father explains. “It’s especially cute on the ladies,” he adds.
I once see a woman in a skirt with an M-16 rifle behind her back. It looks cute, sure, but also a little unsettling.
One day, I am swimming, when I hear a girl ask her mother, in Russian, “What would happen if Iran attacked us?”
“I don’t know,” the mother replies. “We’ll probably have to leave.”
Once, at the beach bar, I’m asked, “Soldier or student?”
“Russian,” I want to reply. But in the end, I stick with “student.”
***
Every night, I lie in bed and read the news. I know it’s not the best thing to do for my mental health, but I feel like I’m supposed to stay on top of the situation if my family is so relaxed about it. In case of an impending catastrophe, I will be the one to save us. I will yell, “It’s time to leave, NOW!” and nobody will follow me.
Twice, I go down to the building basement to inspect the bomb shelter. Every building in Israel has one and it’s supposed to be built so that even if the entire building collapses, the people inside the shelter will stay safe. It looks horrifying with its open sinks and three bathroom stalls and no furniture.
“But where’s the TV? The food? The treadmill?” my sister Kate asks.
“It’s not a nuclear bunker,” I tell her. “People aren’t supposed to live here, they just stay here until the bombing is over.”
I wonder what I’d feel like if I had to stay here for several hours, while the rockets fly above our heads.
In the news, Iran makes promises to retaliate. The US sends more warships to show support for Israel. Israel’s PM says it will defend its country at all costs, doing “whatever it takes.”
Remembering stories from my Ukrainian friends, I download an air radar app and set up alerts for Netanya and nearby cities in case rockets hit. In the main dashboard, the app shows a log of all strikes for the day. Every day, there are about three or four alerts of “HOSTILE AIRCRAFT INTRUSION” or “ROCKET MISSILE STRIKE” or “DRONE ATTACK.” Every alert has comments, which I read for entertainment before falling asleep.
“When can we nuke Iran? After that, we can hunt all the Muslims on Earth and deliver them to their pedophile prophet,” one comment says.
I really, really want to go back to London.
***
On the fourth day, my uncle, my mother’s brother, arrives.
“I say, let’s go to Palestine,” he says when we speak about his plans for the trip.
“No,” I say, “it’s not safe and simply immoral.”
He laughs and calls me “soft” and “too ethical,” like he always used to do. The older you get, the more you realize that family doesn’t change. If anything, they calcify in their madness.
“Well, we have to visit Jerusalem and the Dead Sea for sure,” my mother’s mother says.
That night, I meet a woman from South Africa who teaches law in Jerusalem and commutes there once every week. She is my father’s landlord and I invite her in for a glass of wine.
“Which parts of the country are safe to visit now?” I ask, once we settle in at the table.
“Oh, as long as you don’t go too north or too south, you should be alright.”
“What about the Dead Sea and Jerusalem?” I ask.
She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, it should be fine. I mean, just be careful.”
That doesn’t sound fine to me at all.
***
The next day, I wake up at 7 AM and meet my uncle at the car rental company office. We plan to get a large car and go together, the seven of us—me, my sister, three cousins, my grandmother, my uncle, and his wife. But none of the companies have a large car for rental, so we end up getting a scooter on four wheels, a Kia Picanto. We divide into two cars: the adults with my youngest cousin, who is two, take the large car, and I, as the eldest of the kids, drive the Children’s Car.
“Which parts are safe for visiting?” I ask the nice manager of the rental company, who speaks Russian. I am determined to get a second opinion.
“Oh, it’s pretty safe. Just don’t go near the West Bank or enter any of the Zones.”
“Zones?”
“Yeah, there are three zones: A, B, and C. If you enter Zone A, they’ll just shoot you. Jew? Bam!” he says, making a pistol gesture with his hand.
***
Forty-five minutes in, I realize we’ve missed the turn to Jerusalem. I call up my uncle.
“Just follow me,” he says. “We’ll go to the Dead Sea first and then to Jerusalem on our way back.”
As we drive out of Jerusalem, the buildings suddenly disappear. There is nothing but a few slums on both sides with ship containers for houses and no windows.
“Look, that’s a huge dumpster pile!” my 15-year-old cousin yells from the back seat.
I look to the right, my hands on the steering wheel. “It’s not a dumpster,” I say. “It’s a village.”
We stop at a gas station with no name or branding in the middle of nowhere.
“Well, according to my map, we’re now officially in Palestine!” my uncle says eagerly. There are no checkpoints or signs, just the desert and a lonely road.
Kate searches for a toilet, and when no toilet is on the premises, we all take turns peeing behind a bush.
“I peed in Palestine!” my uncle exclaims.
“So did I!” Kate joins in.
It seems hotter here, the air drier. In the distance, I can see a man riding a donkey.
I remember my grandmother’s words about Palestine when we got into an argument. I said that Israel is behaving barbarically, displacing people from their land. She said, “But they do nothing! They just want money and to do nothing!”
I look around me and think, if that’s true, maybe the reason they do nothing is that they have nothing?
***
The Dead Sea beach is empty, apart from a few Israeli tourists. The parking lot is a patch of gravel by the sign “P.” Behind it is an abandoned waterslide. I take a picture of it and send it to my girlfriend Masha. “Seems like we’re in Palestine,” I text her.
She replies, “Why the fuck did you go there? Are you insane?”
“My uncle tricked me,” I say, looking at the white-blue starry Israeli flags above the entrance to the beach, which says THE LOWEST POINT ON EARTH, -430M. “But it seems to be alright.”
She sends me a rolling-eye emoji.
“Excuse me,” I ask the lady who sold us entrance tickets. “Is this Israel or Palestine?”
“Well, I am Jewish. And there are Israeli flags. So what do you think it is?”
***
After a dip in the Dead Sea, I feel exhausted, like after a sauna. The salt water holds you up, turning you into a human buoy. Even entering the water is a struggle, which is why the beach—desolate in most parts—has handle bars to help people enter the water. It’s so hot, I dry instantaneously and have to take a cold shower every five minutes or so.
My uncle, always trying to bypass rules, takes his youngest daughter into the sea. “You are not allowed to have kids here, it’s dangerous,” I say.
“Oh, don’t be so stuck up!” he says, dipping his daughter into the salt water that has the texture of gasoline. She starts crying. “It hurts! Hurts!” she yells.
My uncle passes his daughter over to his wife and submerges himself in the water. “What are you doing!” I yell. “It’s going to sting your eyes!”
He takes a few plunges in the water and comes out, with his eyes closed, frowning. “Shit!” he yells. “Shit! Shit!”
“Go rinse them in the shower,” I yell.
I lower my head and look under my feet. There are patches of salt crystals, where the water has dried up. I take a small rock and break one off. It’s solid, hard, and tastes like salt. I put it inside my backpack front pocket, to bring back to London.
***
“There’s a place where Christ was baptized,” I say, looking at my Google Maps after we come up from the water, “just a few miles from here. Should we check it out?”
“It’s in Jordan,” he replies. “But we can try going to the border and see what happens.”
I drive behind my uncle, constantly checking the map in case we enter forbidden territory. On both sides of us, there is desert. Up ahead are the light brown mountains of Jordan, which surround the Dead Sea. We drive for a few minutes until we face the closed gates and a sign that says, MILITARY ZONE, PHOTOGRAPHY FORBIDDEN. I take a picture of the sign. There are no people, just a closed gate with Israeli and Jordan flags.
“Well, that settles it,” I say, rolling my window down to speak to my uncle. “Let’s go to Jerusalem now. I’m getting tired.”
“Yup, good plan,” he says.
At that point, a large white SUV pulls in, and the driver rolls down his window. Music is blasting from the car. “Is it closed?” he asks.
“Seems so,” I say. The guy rolls up his window, makes a sharp turn, and drives away. I wait for a few minutes and follow them.
We drive for a couple of minutes on the highway until I see a large yellow sign that says, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ZONE A. ENTRY FORBIDDEN FOR ISRAELI CITIZENS. DANGER TO YOUR LIFE. Apart from our two cars, there’s nobody around.
“Fuck!” I exclaim and begin flashing my lights and honking my horn behind my uncle. “Call him, call him now!” I yell to my sister, who is sitting in the front passenger seat.
“What the fuck are you doing? Did you see the sign?!” I yell into the receiver once she passes me the phone.
There’s my uncle’s laughter on the other end. I see him making a sharp U-turn at the second sign that says something in Hebrew alongside a skeleton symbol.
He flashes his right indicator and stops on the highway border, motioning for me to do the same.
“Please, let’s go to Jerusalem! Now!” I say once we pull close.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re going. But did you see the sign?”
“I did,” I say, remembering the words of the rental car manager about people shooting Jews in Zone A. “Let’s go.”
“My grandpa and I once entered Zone A by mistake!” my stepbrother says from the backseat. “It was really scary! And at night!”
As I’m pulling out, one car behind me honks and drives past me at high speed. I put Jerusalem into the navigator and push down on the accelerator. My uncle follows behind me.
When we arrive in Jerusalem, it looks like the hallmark of civilization compared to what we saw near the Dead Sea. It’s Friday, Shabbat, so the streets are filled with men dressed in black, with their large hats and strange haircuts. They seem determined to get somewhere, walking alone or in large groups.
After an hour of looking for parking, we have lunch at a cafe in the old town. My other grandmother, on my mother’s side, reflects on the trip. “They have nothing! They live like savages! As one smart person said, if we don’t eradicate the disease from the get-go, the war will never stop. I say, bomb them all, kids included!”
“Stop it,” I snap at her. “That’s disgusting.”
My uncle laughs. “Your grandmother is a true fascist,” he says.
Later that evening, when we arrive home at night, I’m exhausted. I go for a walk by the beach. In the distance, I can see something flashing in red and white. Probably the American warships that they’ve sent to Israel to demonstrate their force to Iran. Or maybe just ordinary ships. Who knows. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.
***
For his birthday, my father rents a large table at a restaurant by his apartment in Netanya. My stepmother Emily takes a seat next to my dad and Kate and I take the farthest seats, so that to speak to my dad, I’d have to yell. There are a few teenagers sitting in front of me, kids of my father’s friend, with their headphones on, staring into screens.
We dance, sing, and talk with the entire family. It’s nice seeing my uncle, my two grandmothers, and my sisters and cousins in one place. I haven’t experienced anything like it in more than a decade, since my parents got divorced.
Nobody talks about the war. My father and I exchange a few phrases, I give him his gift, and he embraces me with a curt “Thanks.” That’s all. I feel like I don’t belong here.
I order wine bottle after wine bottle and before I know it, I am pretty drunk. My head starts spinning and I feel energized, absolutely oblivious to any worries.
High on wine, I walk up to Emily and say, “How are you doing? In general.”
She looks at me with undisguised contempt. “How are you doing? Maybe you need a napkin? Are you going to puke? Let me bring you a bowl so you can puke there.”
I roll my eyes and walk away to find Kate. She looks at me, as if to ask, ‘So how did it go?’ and I quote our favourite TV show.
“Honestly,” I say, “She is not a bad stepmother. She is just a fucking cunt.”
Then we burst out laughing, in recognition.
***
On the way back, I’m interrogated and searched three times. After I check in my bag and make my way to security, a woman tells me to open my bag and begins going through it, taking out everything inside, my iPad, my Moleskines, and my Joan Didion book. She doesn’t like the book, so she flips through the pages and puts it inside the scanner. Sorry, Joan.
Then he seizes my passport and shows it to five other people, who stand in a circle, passing it over, discussing. I realize that I’m helpless and all I can do is stand and wait.
“Why did you come to Israel?” the woman asks me.
I tell her I was here to visit my grandma and attend my dad’s birthday.
“Did you go to the West Bank or any parts of Palestine?” she asks me.
“No,” I lie and think about my crystal of salt, which I placed in the front pocket of my backpack. I pray they don’t open it. They don’t.
When I’m let go, I sit in the waiting area of the terminal, watching as people queue to the toilet near a sign with an arrow that says PROTECTED SPACE.
I think to a story my father told me recently about hearing an air strike that happened 500 meters from his home. The air sirens went on and he ran to the basement with the kids, pushing them down on the floor. When he told me that story, he seemed proud. He experienced war.
Israel is a strange, strange place, I decide. The country behaves like a giant teenager, switching between hatred and victimhood. If you support them, you don’t support them enough. If you don’t support them, you’re anti-Semitic. I wonder what I would be like if I lived here. Would I start to hate the Arab countries? Or would my disapproval of this country’s politics only intensify? It’s hard living in a place whose values you don’t agree with. That’s why I moved away from Russia. Some people can compartmentalize, but not me. I need a place where I can be myself. Not that London is perfect but it’s close enough.
***
Kate buys me a seat by the window, 25K, but there is no window. In fact, my seat is the only seat on the entire plane with no window.
I sit with my knees pressing into the seat in front of me and watch as the couple next to me solves crossword puzzles.
There’s a thirty minute delay and I doze off, waking up only when we gain speed on the tarmac.
As we gain altitude and the passengers begin their farting orchestra, the cabin filling with scent of rotten eggs, the seat belt sign turns off. I peer into the window of the passenger in front of me, watching the ships in the sea. They don’t look like war ships. The more altitude we gain, the more I feel my muscles relaxed. Only then I realize how tense I might have been during the past several days.
I order tomato juice. I read. I listen to music. I am alive. I am going home.
