The Best Place on Earth by Ayelet Tsabari Page B

afar; it had been one of the worst hits so far, many injured and two dead. The road was blocked and emergency teams were picking through the rubble, their vehicles blinking red. All along the street, apartment windows yawned, shutters were scattered on the ground, car windows were smashed and doors ripped open. They walked all the way to the cordons. Two burnt cars were parked in front and a plucked tree lay blackened, its roots pointing up like fingers. Yasmin and Uri stood and watched without speaking. The missile had destroyed an aging apartment building, now a pile of concrete next to a deep crater. The front wall of another building had collapsed, offering the interior views of the three front suites like a dollhouse: a corduroy couch facing the street, a skewed frame on the wall. The sun shone into the houses, illuminating the dust that rose from the wreckage. Uri felt like an intruder, staring into these people’s homes. He looked at the debris at his feet, things people had once owned, written notes and coins and shattered china and broken glass, legs of furniture, a computer keyboard, a pizza box. The smell of gas and bonfire smoke stung his nostrils. “Can you imagine if it was our apartment? On the seventh floor?” Yasmin said. “We’d be toast.” Uri pictured the missile hitting their building, the impact, in slow motion, the blinding cloud of dust, the walls of their safe room bursting like they were made of Styrofoam.
    That day the family decided to forgo the safe room in favour ofthe bleak concrete bomb shelter in the basement of their building. They weren’t the only ones. The issue was debated in the papers, discussed at length on TV and on the radio, military experts invited to weigh in. Saddam may have threatened to use chemical warfare, but so far the missile heads were all conventional, people argued, so while being in the sealed room was safer against chemical attack, it clearly didn’t protect those whose homes were reduced to rubble. Now, whenever the siren wailed, the family ran down seven floors to the shelter, where many other tenants had already gathered, more joining them every day. For an hour or two they sat in their pyjamas and gas masks (just in case, the IDF spokesman advised), speaking in soft voices, listening to the sound of falling missiles and sirens, and the announcements on someone’s transistor radio.
    As time passed, Uri grew accustomed to the war, his initial fear giving way to uneasiness. Ramat Gan had been hit the hardest, making people joke that Saddam was targeting the city because it was where most Iraqi Jews lived, that the missiles must have been drawn to the pungent smell of amba, that tangy mango pickle condiment Iraqis were so fond of. The war had settled into a rhythm, the sirens becoming an inconvenience, hijacking their dreams. People gradually began going back to work, getting on with their lives. Patriot missiles were imported from the States to intercept the Scuds; American soldiers in funny-looking camouflage uniforms smiled next to them in newspaper photos. At night, when the sirens woke them up, Uri had to shake Yasmin from her sleep, get her to shuffle to the shelter, where she would often fall asleep again, sprawled on a blanket in the corner, not bothering toput on her mask. She already seemed bored by the war. Uri started to wonder why his sister had really come home, if she was there for the experience, seeking thrills, the same way she had travelled from country to country, jumped out of airplanes and went scuba diving, as though she was checking off a list. From her restless energy and dimmed eyes, he could sense that she was ready to leave again.
    One evening the phone rang and a polite man on the other end asked to speak to Tanmayo. “Tanmayo?” Uri repeated in wonder, marvelling at the exotic blend of syllables in his mouth, and Yasmin burst out of her room and grabbed the phone, dragging the cord and closing the door behind her. Uri could hear