At approximately 9:00 in the morning of October 19, 1994, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded No. 5 bus during rush hour as it pulled up to a stop just north of Dizengoff Square, less than a block from my apartment. I had been getting ready for work when I heard the boom, and almost immediately, sirens and then helicopters. This was during the initial stages of the wave of suicide attacks going on against the backdrop of the recently consummated Oslo “Peace” Accords.
Today’s attack (January 1, 2016), only one block away from that one, brings those memories back to me. On that morning 21 years ago, I eventually did get to the office, but on the way home I walked by the site.
You read about the visuals of such events, you read about the sounds, but you know what the aftermath of a suicide attack smells like?
It smells like a butcher’s shop.
Dogs being walked kept their noses to the pavement; their people had to pull them away to continue on their walk. For weeks my neighbors found body parts on their balconies. This is the stuff you don’t read about in diaspora newspapers. You just can’t know.
And so I, now over here, while I have a pretty good idea, I don’t know the details either. There’s only one thing I do know: Prayers for my beautiful White City of Spring.
Written January 1, 2016, when a shooting in Tel-Aviv took the lives of two people and injured many others.