Secretly, I’ve always been envious of those who maintain composure in the face of unbearable sorrow. I’ve never been that kind of woman - rather I’m prone to crying easily. News of a scholarship I’d been awarded; a quarrel with a close friend; a gut-wrenching love affair that ended badly; my father’s death…all these events (and so many more) have left me, over the years, with tears streaming down my face, shoulders heaving, body shaking.
That hasn’t happened in the last two months. On the contrary - as hard as I try, I simply cannot weep. This isn’t to say that I’m not experiencing a maelstrom of emotions - shock, bewilderment, rage, despair, emptiness, fury, avengement. But these feelings are not accompanied by tears.
After fifteen years living in Israel, it seems that either I’ve toughened up massively or something so horrific, so barbaric, so devastating, has happened in my country that I’m the emotional equivalent of ‘struck dumb.’
I’m not a stranger to funerals of lone soldiers, shivas of those killed in terror attacks, and taking shelter in my stairwell when rockets are flying over Tel Aviv. Nor am I the kind of person who avoids the subject of death. I’ve read my Freud and Kierkegaard, spearheaded holocaust education projects for teenagers in the diaspora and even once, a long time ago, volunteered at a Chevra Kadisha in New York City, where I spent four hours sitting next to a woman who had died that morning, not turning my back on her once, as I ‘accompanied’ her on her final journey.
And yet now, in the face of unspeakable horror, I’m incapable of letting a solitary tear roll down my cheek. It’s as if I’m stumbling through an emotional frozen tundra.
By night, however, it’s a different story. No surprise there - after all, are dreams not the royal road to the unconscious? Not that you need a psychoanalyst to unpack mine.
In one, I’m being chased with men who hold semi-automatics. In another, my oldest friend turns his back on me. In the third, I’m travelling in Italy but - on checking out of the hotel - I realise I am devoid of possessions. I run from floor to floor, searching in vain for room 27 (where I am sure I had slept) but to no avail. The panic that ensues in my dream, when I realise I am without my passport and my trusty Macbook, engulfs me.
I wake up each morning, unrested, and drag myself to the kitchen, where there, like a zombie, I make strong coffee, then sit down and work up the courage to check my newsfeed. Like most Israelis, I have not been unaffected by the slaughter. A woman I’d worked with on her MA thesis at Ben Gurion University was murdered in her home, along with the husband and three young children. My colleague’s daughter is in shock after several of her friends were gunned down at the Peace Festival.
And then there’s Yulia and Natalie. They’re the sister and niece of one of my closest friends here in Israel - someone who’s been at my side through thick and thin in the last fifteen years. That fateful morning, his mother woke to chaos, and, along with her partner, locked herself in the safe room in the kibbutz at which they live.
There she spent hours on end, listening to Arabic commands, rapid gunfire and screams of horror from her neighbours. After the IDF finally released her, she begged them to take her to the home of her daughter and granddaughter. But they were not there. They had, like so many others, ‘disappeared’.
We now know that they were not injured, or murdered. They were taken hostage, held captive in the Gaza Strip by blood-thirsty Jihadists who, with not a moment’s hesitation, tortured, shot, decapitated and burned hundreds of humans, before dragging more than 200 of their ‘prizes’ off, across the border.
We can only imagine what these captives are experiencing.
What we do know is they have minimal access to food, water and medicine. They are hold up in concrete-reinforced tunnels, deep underground, far from fresh air and sunlight
Some are with their families, but others have been deliberately separated from their partners, children and friends. Some, I am sure, are being they threatened, beaten raped and tortured.
The feelings that engulf me when I consider this are so unbearable, so what relatives are going through is something I can’t even begin to fathom.
With all this knowledge, still, I cannot cry. But I will have to - I believe - at some point.
Eventually, it will be impossible not to break down and, when I finally do, I believe it will be like a damn bursting and I will weep for hours, unconsolable, distraught and still unable to comprehend the enormity of what has happened.
For now, here I sit. Just waiting for the tears to flow.
Postscript: Yulia and Natalie were released after two weeks, followed by 50 more under a Prisoner Exchange deal. Alas, more than one hundred hostages currently remain in captivity.