The Best Place on Earth by Ayelet Tsabari Page A

rolled her eyes at Uri. Then they heard the missiles hit their targets, and Yasmin froze, her eyes widening behind themask. She joined them on the bed and clutched Uri’s hand. “Wow, you can really hear them.”
    “Did you think they weren’t really shooting them?” their father said. “It’s not a joke. It’s a war. People get hurt.”
    “I thought no one had died,” Yasmin said.
    “Yet,” their father said.
    Yasmin glanced at Uri and mimicked their father’s stern face, whispering, “It’s a war, people get hurt.” Uri smiled and looked away, grateful to the war for bringing his sister back. She made being stuck in the safe room with his father a little less lonely.
    Within days, Yasmin’s touch transformed their house, wiping away months of neglect and disregard. Even before his mother’s hospitalization, the house had been in bad shape. First, his mother stopped tidying, then it was the laundry, piled up high on the floor by the washing machine, and finally she gave up showering, her hair growing an oily film, smelling sickly sweet, like wilted flowers. After she was gone his father hired a house cleaner who came every two weeks, but the rest of the time the apartment reeked of socks and sleep and ripe bananas. Uri didn’t mind. There was something about living with his dad that prepared him for later, for the army, where guys shared rooms and tents and bodily odours, bonding without ever talking about their feelings. He loved watching soccer with his dad: the living room TV-blue, the coffee table littered with glasses and dirty plates, the two of them rising from their seats, pounding the table, yelling at the screen, grateful for the chance to be angry at something.
    Now, with Yasmin back, rugs were shaken and windows were flung open, allowing in skies, suns and moons, flickering starsand distant city lights. The deep-fried stench that had clung to the kitchen cabinets was overtaken by the aroma of Indian spices, brewed chai and incense. In the washroom, Yasmin arranged candles with an earthy scent around the tub and lined little jars of coconut and lavender oil on the shelves, the foreign labels darkened with oil and smeared with fingerprints. A poster now hung on one wall of her bedroom: an old man who reminded Uri of his Yemeni grandfather, with brown skin, a long white beard and smiling eyes that followed Uri everywhere. His name was Osho, Yasmin said without elaborating. Even the soundtrack to their lives had been replaced. Before it was the hum of the fridge, the fake laughter on TV, the lonely echo of a phone ringing in an empty apartment. Now there was music and singing, the clinking bangles on Yasmin’s wrists, the bells on her anklets, which accompanied her footsteps as though she were a lost sheep.
    Uri noticed that his father had changed too. He seemed lighter with Yasmin around, the crease on his forehead smoothed, relaxed. Uri knew that he was pleased to be relieved of kitchen duty as well; his father approached cooking as if it were a battle where he was bound to be defeated—by ants on the kitchen counter, the smoke of burning lasagna, the piles of unwashed dishes, the memories of better meals.
    One afternoon, after missiles had fallen not far from their home the night before, Yasmin rapped on Uri’s door. “Want to go see where the missiles hit?” His father was visiting their mother at the hospital. Uri hopped off the bed and grabbed a sweatshirt.
    Ramat Gan was quiet, sedated, washed with the warm, sticky light of an early Shabbat morning. They walked to Monkey Park,the highest part of town, from where they could see the entire city unfold, brightly coloured after a rainy night, and even a blue hint of the sea, seeping into the sky. The park was abandoned, people still afraid to leave their homes for long periods, the swing set swaying in the breeze. They walked down the stone stairs and then a few more blocks until they reached Aba Hillel Street.
    They could see the spot from