I once wrote a doctorate. It was a long time ago - just after our last "official" war in Israel (our local version of the "Gulf War"). I was always too lazy to publish it. Eventually I came to my senses and engaged an editor, who's doing a fine job of adapting it for publication.
Donna sent me chapter 4 today, with the following comment:
I wanted to send the material to you now in case all hell breaks loose here... The thought of going into the smelly, dirty and disgusting miklat in our building that has probably never been used is very disconcerting to me. But we are sitting here between XXX and XXX, so who knows. What a world.
So I replied to her as follows:
Dear Donna
Thank you very much for being a beacon of sanity and stability...
Re the chapter and the bill: certainly, send and I shall pay. Can't have you down in the disgusting miklat [shelter] with no money to stock up on goodies and a chemical toilet...Reminds me of January 2001. My husband (then aged 44) had been called up under a Tsav 8 [emergency call-up order] and was somewhere outside on a hillside overlooking the Jordan. They were saying it was going to be non-chemical attacks and we'd have to go into the miklatim. Ours in our building was what you wrote. So I spent the first Motzei Shabbat of the war cleaning it out - just like playing "homes" when we were kids. I even borrowed some old rugs and curtains from neighbours, having first vacuumed the place out of all the cobwebs, peeling paint, and whatever. There was no light in the ceiling, so I used floor lamps. It was truly lovely. It was the time when the winter rains had decided Israel was not a place for them, and people were praying for rain down at the Kotel. On Sunday it started to rain. And it rained. So of course it started getting damp down there. Always a problem. But we'd had it fixed the previous year. Not. So I removed the soft furnishings before they became completely waterlogged. On Monday afternoon a client came to see me, and told me that the water was rising up the basement stairs. I had to go down and rescue a neighbour's invaluable tape recordings of Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia. She'd placed them on a baking tray, in a package triple wrapped in plastic. The baking tray was on an empty oil drum.Archimedes was right and as the water rose, the drum rose with it and - tipped over. The package of tapes floated in the water - just.I spend the rest of the afternoon unwrapping scores of tapes.My husband, on a brief leave, came home and spent the rest of the evening with me laying the tapes out in our neighbour's flat. That's largely what I remember of the Gulf War. What are we going to call this one? Milhemet Shalit? ("Shalit War") What a mess. And indeed, what a world. So if I were you, I'd get together with some neighbours (how many are you in your building?) and provide some cheer down there. And hopefully the "umbrella principle" will work...
