/ Fiction /
“… papers that Israeli officials say were recovered from Hamas command centers show advanced planning for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots — though several plans were ill-formed and highly impractical, terrorism experts said. The plans anticipate drawing in allied militant groups for a combined assault against Israel from the north, south and east.”
—The Washington Post, October 12, 2024
The war broke out on a Saturday, and by Sunday she had a dog. The surprising thing wasn’t the timing: The dog was a war casualty. Rather, it’s that Mira was not a dog person. She balked at hair-covered cushions, fumed at neat mounds of poop on the street. Yet absurdly, the day after the massacre, she was forced to hunt down a leash.
The call came as she finished breakfast, her usual toast and strawberry jam. She scrolled the news as she ate: photos of wreckage, floors smeared with blood. After a moment’s deliberation, she pushed her toast aside. She stole furtive glances at the plate until her phone startled her with its buzz.
“Mira, are you okay? Oh, thank God.” It was Anita, the upstairs neighbor from whom she rented a small ground-floor apartment on a quiet Jerusalem street. Mira wasn’t stupid. She could tell false concern from real. Anita had to have known she was fine, given her distance from the attack. No husband or grown children, either, no relatives who may have lived down South and been butchered in the killing spree. Her only relation was a younger brother who lived in New Jersey with his family, whom she saw once a year on a photo postcard with a dismaying Christmas theme. Perhaps he’d call to check on her. The odds were fifty-fifty.
“Listen, I need a big favor,” said Anita. Not a question. A statement. “My flight back home was cancelled, and now Lucia’s alone in my place. Would you take care of her for a bit? Just until I can find a way back. Of course she’s completely house-trained, and she basically sleeps all day. All she needs are her meals and some walks. And maybe some brushing so she doesn’t shed.”
Anita had mentioned a trip overseas, something about a son who sold real estate in the suburbs of L.A. Lucia was the German shepherd whose snout poked out from Anita’s hip when she opened the door to one of Mira’s reminders about the iffy plumbing. In the summer, Lucia slept on the balcony above Mira’s bedroom window. Between the barking and the clang of the windchimes from the Brazilian to Anita’s right, Mira could hardly fall asleep as it was. And now, with the world on fire—she had to deal with this.
Anita explained that her married daughter in Rehovot had watched Lucia these last few weeks. But now her husband had been called up, and God knows how long he’d be gone. They were terrified he’d be sent into Gaza. Terrified he wouldn’t come home.
“She has two small children and a baby on the way. The last thing she needs now is a dog,” said Anita. The implication being that Mira could be justifiably inconvenienced. The usual brash Israeli, Anita didn’t worry about giving offense. Even her thinning curls testified to her diffidence. Dyed a garish shade of red, they emphasized her white scalp beneath. “Her husband dropped Lucia off early this morning on his way down to his base. They thought I was coming back today. But obviously I can’t.” She added that her daughter had mentioned they’d forgotten to pack the leash.
“Do me favor and buy one,” she said. “We’ll deduct it from the rent.”
And so, an hour later, Mira trudged up the building’s stairwell. In his rush to answer the call of duty, or else to rid himself of the dog, the son-in-law had left the key half-exposed under Anita’s welcome mat. Mira gingerly opened the door and was instantly pinned by Lucia’s weight. A line of saliva that hung from her mouth broke into a wet circle on Mira’s blouse. “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mira said, sighing. “Alright, here we go.”
With Lucia as a live hula hoop, she walked to the pantry in starts and fits. Mira dragged out the bag of dog food, wrinkled her nose at the pungent smell. She cursed when Lucia bumped her arm as she poured and kibble spilled on the floor. Where on earth were the broom and dustpan? God forbid Anita would leave them out, lest they ruin the fancy décor. The difference between their apartments was admittedly dispiriting. The French-door fridge in the kitchen, the restaurant-style faucet in the sink. (Apparently Anita did not suffer from plumbing issues.) Her sofas, too, were modern affairs, stark white modular sectionals arranged like a Scrabble game. The giveaway was the flooring, the ugly ’50s terrazzo tile. Scratch the surface of every bourgeois Israeli, and you find the same flecks of rust brown and gray.
Downstairs, Mira paused as she started to turn the key in her lock. The leash. The blasted leash—how would she take the dog out? She’d have to walk to town to buy one, since the buses were all diverted to moving soldiers and evacuees. At least she had no boss to whom to report, just her freelance editing. Her new job was an article on grape cultivation in Israel in the first century. “Some people think the Jews were the region’s first vintners,” the author, a university scholar, explained when they’d spoken on the phone. He’d returned this summer from a fellowship at one of the Ivy Leagues. “But that was a myth pushed by the early Zionists to stir up nationalist sentiment.” He said this matter-of-factly. As if obviously, she agreed.
Her route took her through Shaarei Hesed, whose buildings squatted on pillars, flamingos on stick-thin legs. A lush greenness covered their shabbiness like a housewife’s terry-cloth robe—lemon trees hid full laundry lines, geraniums tangled on storage sheds. Jerusalem tried to be beautiful, but beauty is a luxury.
Finally, the neighborhood opened onto a wide thoroughfare, delightedly empty of the usual traffic and cacophony of car horns. Light-rail construction had torn up the sidewalk, and pedestrians were rerouted through an aluminum corridor. Mira walked straight for several meters. Turned, then a few meters more. Turned, straight again—where the hell was the exit? What a fool to be alone here. She ran in her flimsy sandals, their dumb clop-clop sound in her ears. She was back in the house of mirrors she’d tried as a girl at the county fair. She’d had to be rescued, crying, by the pot-bellied ticket-taker at the door.
By the time she emerged back onto the road, Mira’s forehead was wet with sweat. She smoothed the hair at her temples. Cleaned her fogged-up glasses on her shirt.
That night, after Lucia’s walk—the one for which Mira was pulled along, despite the fancy new leash—Mira watched the news until the mention of a pile of beheaded babies. She switched the television off and froze in the sudden silence. Surely the ground-floor apartment would be the easiest to attack. She checked the front door to be certain and left the key in the lock—a survivor from one of the kibbutzim swore that had bought her house more time. Finally, she lowered the window’s blinds, damning Anita for the lack of bars. In bed, she stared up at the ceiling and listened out for Lucia’s barking. For the first time, the sudden, jarring noises felt like a lullaby.
* * *
Mira woke to a text from Anita that she still couldn’t find a flight. She took Lucia out for her morning walk past the neighborhood synagogue. Inside, a small army of skirt-wearing women collected food for soldiers at the front. Trays of lasagna and casseroles, containers of schnitzels and rice. Silver ziggurats of foil-covered cookies. Mummy-like English cakes. Even Mira had almost joined in the frenzy: Last night, she’d opened a Google spreadsheet from her local library. They wanted to organize places to stay for seniors within rocket range. She’d gone back and forth for hours—should she give up her bed for the couch? But that would wreak havoc on her back, never mind just the one bathroom—until, relieved, she checked back to find that all the blanks were filled in.
They’d almost reached her building when Lucia lunged toward an older man, yanking Mira forward. Stupid, useless leash. The dog poked at something the man was holding, a ubiquitous aluminum tray. It was half-filled with pieces of meat, the remains of an earlier meal. He indicated that it was alright, Lucia was welcome to eat.
“My wife hates when I feed the cats leftovers, but they’re great at controlling the mice,” he said. Though his back now hunched with age, clearly, he’d once been quite strong. He moved on bowed legs in a spry, crab-like fashion that hinted at years of physical work. With his fitted T-shirt and sandals, he looked like an aging pioneer. All he needed was one of those kova tembels, the hats Jews wore in Mandatory Palestine.
He cocked his head toward Lucia, who was licking the tray bottom clean. “She should be following your lead, you know. Not the other way around.”
Mira expected this from old-timers. Always ready with unsolicited advice. “She’s not mine,” Mira answered, more abruptly than she’d intended. “I’m watching her for my neighbor, until she can fly back to Israel.”
“That might take a while,” he replied, rolling back on the balls of his feet. He gazed out at the street, as if it held some secret wisdom. “I live there,” he thumbed the structure behind him, two down from where she lived. “Ari Lahav,” he added, and reached out to shake her hand. Mira envied Israelis with comic-book hero names—blade, thunder, torch. Son of this man or that place. Her own belied her ancestral roots in some damp Polish village.
“Mira Abramsohn,” she answered. “I live down there.” When Ari didn’t speak, she continued, “I take it that you like dogs?”
“No, can’t say that I do. My grandson does, though. He’s a soldier in Oketz. You know what they do?”
Mira nodded. Oketz was the unit that trained dogs for counter-terrorism operations.
“He always loved dogs, for some reason. Used to beg his parents to get one, but his mom had allergies. He volunteered at a shelter all through high school. He was dead set on working with them in the army.” Here he stopped and turned to Mira, a smile playing on his lips. “Narishkeit. You know Yiddish, young lady?”
“I know a few words, yes. The important ones, anyway.” Her grandmother had used the word narishkeit to describe most things the young Mira had liked, from the pop songs on her prized cassette tapes to a boy named Kyle in her Hebrew class.
“My father was a musician. Violin. Right before he escaped Germany he’d been accepted to an orchestra in Berlin. When he came here, they put him to work in the fields near Beit Shean. It’s hot as balls out there.” He looked at Mira sideways, making sure she got his point.
“He never played professionally again, but he made me learn piano, anyway. Every day for an hour. God, how I hated that thing.” He shook his head in disbelief that he’d suffered such abuse. “He was a man from a different world. If you told him his grandson would one day train dogs, he’d think you were crazy, that’s for sure.”
Mira pretended to move Lucia back from a jogger, though she was anyway nowhere nearby. She’d never been good with sudden confidences, an unexpected baring of the soul. “I’ve heard it’s a very elite unit,” she said. “I’m sure you’re proud of him.”
He nodded thoughtfully and gave Lucia a pat on the head. In return Lucia sniffed Ari’s crotch.
“Lots of the students whose papers I edit go traveling when they finish the army,” Mira suddenly said before silence could descend. The words somersaulted out as if sensing their chance slip away. “It used to be India or Peru, but now it’s Cambodia and Vietnam. I didn’t understand it at first. When I hear Cambodia, I think ‘killing fields.’ It’s instinctive—what I learned in school. I can’t imagine why anyone would actually want to go there.”
Ari nodded as he listened, though his gaze was back out on the street.
“But I’m glad that people don’t think that way now. I’m glad they’re not weighed down by history.”
“You’re a smart lady,” he said at last. “You’re married? Kids?”
“No, it’s just me,” Mira answered. That usually shut people up.
“Come visit us sometime. Have dinner with me and my wife,” Ari said, waving away her protests. “At a time like this, it’s good to be together. It makes it easier to get through.”
In what she hoped was vague fashion, Mira insisted she would. As she walked away, Ari called out, almost as an afterthought.
“So long as you’re watching the dog,” he said, “maybe keep it untied in your place. It’s not a bad time to have some extra protection around.” He said this while looking at the sky, as if the answers were somewhere above.
* * *
She was ordering an apple Danish when they learned of the second attack. The announcer cut into “The NeverEnding Story,” the theme from that ‘80s movie. Surely this was the only country where that song was still played.
The ground incursion had begun the day before, three weeks after the Hamas attack. Dozens of tanks rolled into Gaza like short stacks of poker chips. This morning, however, couples sat outside talking, sharing big square croissants. With the start of this new phase of war, people could finally release their breath. “Now we’ll take care of business,” said all the sidewalk pundits. “Soon it will all be over. We’ll have our hostages back.” Even the scholar of ancient wine presses had called Mira for an update. He’d sounded annoyed when she told him that she hadn’t progressed very much.
But now, as Mira pointed toward the column of pastries she liked, the announcer declared that Hezbollah had breached the border with Lebanon. Hundreds were dead, many more injured. Soldiers scrambled in defense. The bakery fell silent, save for a toddler’s oblivious cry. Should she decline the Danish? What was the etiquette at times like these? For a second, she considered buying a dozen, maybe some chocolate ones, too. She’d freeze them for when things got dire and she was trapped in her safe room.
Later, too distracted to work, Mira took Lucia out for a walk. So regular had their journeys become over the last few weeks that Mira’s feet had begun to ache. She’d dug into the back of her closet to find an old pair of training shoes. “Now look what you’ve done,” she chided Lucia. “I’m one of those people who exercise.” Once, when they passed Ari’s building, he was lifting six packs of water from his car trunk. “Stocking up,” he’d said when she called out hello. “Wife wants to be prepared.”
On his advice, she’d moved Lucia down to her place, a surprisingly enjoyable change. She found herself sharing the scraps from her meals, her thoughts on the nightly news. “Now the truth rears its ugly head,” she said, moving her fingers up the gully between Lucia’s eyes and toward her flattened-down ears. An international court had issued warrants for Israeli leaders’ arrests. “We’ve got no one but ourselves to count on. In the end, it’s me and you.”
When her phone rang the following week, Mira seized up at Anita’s name. But it turns out she needn’t have worried, as Anita rushed to explain.
“Oh Mira, I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “We’re glued to the news, we’re so upset.”
Mira said something noncommittal. Yes, things were certainly bad.
“It finally looked as though I could get a flight, but now with the war up North, as well, I’m right back to where I began.”
Behind her there was a familiar sound, though Mira couldn’t place it at first. Could it be an upset driver? Suddenly it hit her: seagulls.
“Anita, are you at the beach?”
“What?” Anita asked distractedly. “Yes, I’m watching my granddaughter here. Why do you ask?” She sounded somewhat defensive.
“No reason,” Mira said.
* * *
Two weeks later, she and Lucia returned from a trip to the shuk. A few dozen stalwart sellers were hawking wilted produce. Thin-skinned oranges, soft apples, bunches of spotted grapes. It was the war, they all said with a shrug, there was no importing of produce. No one to work in the fields. The biblical prophets had warned of this: all the fruit trees going dry.
She was rooting in her bag for her keys when her eye caught a flash of white. A death notice, the first on her block, though soldiers were dying by the dozens each day. With a start, Mira read the name Lahav. It must be Ari’s grandson. Survived by a wife and three children. They had to be quite young.
She started to make dinner, her usual Israeli salad. She chopped a cucumber and tomato and squeezed half a lemon on top. It would take more than the end of days to ruin a lifetime’s healthy habits. Outside her kitchen window stood a thick, gnarled olive tree, whose roots—a worker had told her—were likely the cause of the bad plumbing. A tree that size could easily have been there for hundreds of years or more. You didn’t hack away at these things, he’d said, you tried to let them be. Maybe the tree would see the state come and go. It seemed altogether likely.
Mira gave her crusts to Lucia and did the washing up. She considered the TV from across the room, as if sizing up the enemy. “Alright,” she said finally to Lucia. “Let’s just go on out.”
They walked as the light left the sky and the only sound were fighter jets. On their way back to Mira’s street, they passed the Islamic Museum. The streetlamps lit up tall banners for a recent exhibition, a show on ancient Christian mosaics in the Holy Land. A closeup of Jesus’ face showed a diamond-shaped tear on one cheek. As Mira stared at the image, a hot flush rose in her chest. What, in the end, had her people’s embrace of universalism achieved? What had been their reward for their distaste for power and might? Tortured bodies and kidnapped children, that’s what. Just pain and more pain, then more. Tears dried on her cheeks like tiny pinpricks of ice.
She was startled out of her reverie when Lucia licked her hand. “That’s enough of that now,” she reproved, wiping her fingers on her pants. Only later did she consider that Lucia was trying to offer comfort.
* * *
The phone rang at five in the morning, triggering Lucia’s frenzied barks. It was Mira’s brother in New Jersey, checking that she was alright.
“It’s five in the morning,” she told him.
“I thought you were nine hours ahead,” he said sheepishly. “I figured I’d catch you before work.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I work from home, anyway.”
“I knew that, I think,” he said, though he sounded unconvinced. He’d had to buy a pre-paid calling card, that’s why it took him so long. “But I’ve had all of you in mind. We’re praying this blows over soon.”
When he was little, Mira had watched him after school while their mother was still at work. She’d helped him with his homework, rewriting his scribbles in math. She’d arrange Mallomars on two matching plates, pour them two cups of milk. For God’s sake, Mira muttered, wiping at her eyes. You’d think youthful solidarity would end up worth something.
“At least I have you,” she said to Lucia, who now slept at the corner of her bed. In answer, the dog let out a snore. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
* * *
Mira spent half the seven-day mourning period wondering whether to pay Ari a call. They’d conversed just that one time, after all, and since then only pleasantries. Hardly reason to sit in some living room like a witness on the stand, the family arranged around her, listening expectantly.
Anyhow, Mira was busy: She was planning for the worst. Once the Home Front Command had required that people outfit their safe rooms, naturally everyone rushed to the stores and emptied all of the shelves. Mira snagged the last bag of dog food in her local grocery—“Looks like it’ll be tuna flavor,” she said, as Lucia breathed noisily. “Everyone has to be flexible in these difficult times”—and ordered a spare pair of glasses on the phone from a confused optometrist. “How the frames look doesn’t matter, so long as they’re extra strong. Haven’t you seen the Twilight Zone?” she asked him. He had not. She considered describing the episode in which a bespectacled bank clerk becomes the lone survivor of an H-bomb attack. Thrilled to have all the time in the world to read, he accidentally breaks his lenses.
After lunch she washed her dishes and scrubbed her sink till it shone. There was some laundry in her hamper. Perhaps she could do a load? Her laptop sat in the corner, the sleek black elephant in the room. She could work on the wine-press paper, but really, what was the point? No one would publish his essay now; it was all ancient history. With the hours stretched out before her, she decided to pay her respects.
Ari’s grandson’s home was in the hills near Ramat Rahel. Once, the kibbutz had fought off the Jordanians who invaded in ’48. Now it made a killing off entry to its outdoor swimming pool. Mira tied Lucia to a tree in the yard and headed into the crowded house. Though she’d expected to feel uncomfortable, she found that she fit right in. For once, everyone was a stranger to almost everyone else. She was a stranger who belonged, like in the old Hebrew folk song: A man awakens and realizes he’s part of a nation—the People of Israel. She hummed the tune in her head as she arranged her face somberly.
The grandson smiled out from photos arranged on a table in the dining room. Mira swallowed at his boyish features, his mass of tight, kinky curls. The only hint of his soldier persona was the bulge of his upper arms, which filled out the sleeves of his T-shirt and stretched the thin fabric tight. He probably looked like a much younger Ari, back in the days when he’d worked in the fields and done battle with the piano keys.
Mira headed back outside to wait for a living-room seat to open up. In the yard, two girls laughed and jumped on their heels. They must be the grandson’s daughters—they had his kinky hair. They were playing with a resigned Lucia, who stoically accepted their pokes and taps. Each time the younger girl made contact she’d squeal with triumphant glee.
“Your dad must have passed on his love of dogs,” said Mira, to which both girls looked up confusedly. She tried again: “I see you like dogs, like your dad.” As they nodded, she said, “She’s mine. Well, I’m watching her, anyway. Her name is Lucia, and you can pet her. You don’t have a dog of your own?”
The older girl shook her head, which made her ponytails swing.
“No, but I want one. My dad said we would get his dog. Someone brought it to see us the other day. It looked like this but with a vest.”
“That’s right, they’re probably the same breed.” When the silence stretched on for more than a moment, Mira stood up to leave. She’d never been great at speaking with children, not having had much opportunity.
“Mommy cried when she saw it,” the girl said now, causing Mira to turn back. “When they brought it to where she was sitting, it put its paw on her knee.” Her younger sister poked a finger near Lucia’s eye, generating a painful yelp. “They told us that it still had work to do, but one day it can come live with us.” Mira nodded quickly and turned away from the little girl’s earnest face.
Back inside the living room, Ari looked her way. His face was pale and strained, but not just from lack of sleep. He seemed tired from a life’s worth of work to prevent this kind of loss. He hadn’t done what his generation had promised. Did that mean it was all for naught? Stupidly, she gave him a nod—what on earth was she nodding for?—but he gave her a nod in return, as if to say that he approved. He turned to his wife and whispered something, and his wife sought out Mira’s face. She offered her a smile, grateful despite her grief.
That night, the plan came to Mira as she was lying in bed. Now it seemed so obvious, what this whole interlude was about. Anita had left her a message, saying she was staying in L.A. She would look for a new home for Lucia, unless Mira would take her in? (She’d be happy to lower the rent to account for the cost of dog food.) She’d be sad, of course, and lonely, but now she could do something, too. It was a feeling as strange as it was surprising. It filled her with something new.
Something like—could it be? Something almost like hope.
Mira got up to collect Lucia’s things from the living room. The chew-toy she’d bought in a moment’s indulgence, though the price was exorbitant. The brush she’d used to stave off shedding (which of course Lucia did, anyway). The deflated ball she’d found at Anita’s that Lucia gnawed at when she was bored. Mira wrapped them lovingly in the hair-matted blanket she’d placed next to her front door. Then she stuffed it into her backpack and tried to push the food dish in. Maybe it could be a memento, a reminder of the time they’d shared? Or perhaps that would make her too sad—best to extract from the root. It was funny how life worked. Timing was everything. Now that she’d tasted companionship, her impulse was to give it away.
“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Mira said, dabbing at her eyes. Lucia pressed against her leg, her weight crushing the top of her foot. “Let’s handle this like grownups.”
But still, Mira had to steel herself when she knocked on the door the next day.
“Oh, Ari’s not here,” his grandson’s widow said. “He’s gone back to his place.”
“Actually, it’s you I came for,” said Mira, and explained her proposition. To override the protests that she’d been sure she’d face, Mira insisted that surely, the woman’s husband would have agreed. “She’ll be a comfort to your little girls,” argued Mira. “And I’m not a dog person, anyway.”
Mira showed her how Lucia liked to be rubbed in the space between her eyes. She started to say Lucia needed her walks, then stopped herself (would walking be safe?). She’d deliver dog food, too, when the buses were running again. She’d take that rent cut, after all—only fair, for what she’d been through.
The young woman cried and hugged her. Then she reached for the leash.
* * *
After several tense days, a third front opened in the East. Some neighbors chose to flee, packing as for a road trip. Where would they manage to go? To a hotel in Tel Aviv? Once the Jews had made their last stand in a desert fortress. Now they checked into one made of concrete, replete with a mini-bar and a fridge.
On the fourth night, the radio told her to lock her doors and windows. There was fighting throughout the West Bank; soon it would come to Jerusalem, too. Perhaps she should stay in Anita’s apartment—wasn’t it better to be higher up? But surely one floor wouldn’t matter. Nothing would, if it came to that. Anyway, what a shame to bleed on those sofas. All that pristine white.
In her mind, she heard a deep-throated growl in Ari’s grandson’s front yard. She hoped they’d left Lucia untied. That was the one thing she’d asked.
She gathered a long-life milk and a box of unopened cookies. She put them in a bag with the grapes from the shuk: an offering of sorts. She’d decided to take Ari up on his generous invitation. The circumstances weren’t ideal, of course, but then, that was the point. Surely, they’d understand her not wanting to face the unknown alone. He’d said it himself when they’d first spoken, out there on the street.
At a time like this, it’s good to be together. It makes it easier to get through.