Sound of Music, Fighter Jets, and a Bank Account

The Saturday before last, I was at my parents' house, the same house I grew up in and lived in till I was 22, when Moran and I moved to Berkeley, CA (two years before our move to NYC). That evening the family was gathering to celebrate my dad's birthday, which was actually a few days beforehand.
It was still around noon, and I had some time and went downstairs to my mom's office to practice the saxophone for a while.
This was a few days into this current war.

My parents' house is a few miles away from an air force base. Israel being as small as it is, it is very common to have army bases situated not far from civilian communities. So all my childhood, we were totally accustomed to having army planes fly overhead as they approach their landing or as they are ascending shortly after taking off. Our house being right under the flight route, these planes would fly so close above us that you could make out the pliot's helmet in the cockpit sometimes. I could even make out what jet is was by the sound of its engine. In our house and area, having to stop a conversation to allow the roar of a jet to pass was an everyday experience. We didn't even notice it happening, it was so commonplace.

But jets taking off on a Saturday (i.e. the weekend) was nearly never heard of. The flights were almost always training drills, or routine something or others that I know nothing about. So this particular Saturday, while I was practicing the sax, playing long tones, working on my posture, working on a Charlie Parker phrase, I was struck by the familiar sound of jet engines, which stopped me from my immersion in the music. I looked out the window and saw the familiar sight of 3-4 fighter jets circling one after the other. They assumed their direction southwards. I stood there, tenor sax hanging on my neck, and looked out. I was popped out of my bubble and reminded of what was going on so close by. Gaza is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwards from my parents' place.
For a jet, that's probably a few short minutes travel.

It was chilling to think that in a few short minutes, someone, who was not aware of it at the time, may be killed or wounded. Now, of course this is true for every moment in life (death comes without warning), but here it felt like I was witnessing the loaded gun, quite literally.

For a few moments I stood there, pretty frozen from the thought of someone in Gaza not aware of the fact that his or her life is about to end, and before my eyes and ears are the instruments about to make that happen. I realized that this could well be someone about to fire a rocket into Israel, but I was imagining more the other scenario, of it being a civilian, sitting at home, unaware. It was a very sharp feeling of fear and pain.

When I practice that sax, I often have this blank gaze since I'm listening to the sound (and of course to the chatter in my mind). So while I had been practicing, I was blankly gazing around my mom's office, at the bookshelves (always a favorite gazing object), desk, pictures on the wall. Now that I had been shaken up by the sound and sight of the jets overhead, I looked at the desk and notices a yellow piece of paper that I had gazed at before, but hadn't noticed at all what was written on it. Now I saw, it was a bank account number with the first, middle and last name of my parents' former gardner, Nazar. Nazar, who worked for my parents and other families in our community for many years, lives in Han Yuness, southern Gaza strip, with his wife and seven sons. Since about a year and a half ago (and sporadically before that for a couple of years), he hasn't been able to come to work. He hasn't been able to get a permit to cross into Israel.

So the few families in my parents' commnunity that used to hire Nazar (and his brother Rizi) just kept sending him- through bank transfers- his salary. It wasn't that much in Israeli terms, but it was more significant in Gaza- a tightly linked, but still seperate and much poorer economy, by far.

So there I was, with the sax hanging on my neck, jets flying above toward Gaza, and Nazar's bank account number ready for the next money transfer.

Since not being able to come to work, Nazar regularly calls my parents to stay in touch and ask how everyone is. He usually takes his cell phone out to an open field so as not to catch the ears of someone who wouldn't like that fact that he's in (friendly) touch with his Israeli employers. When his son was sick and needed a serious operation, my dad used his connections at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem (where he works as a hemotologist) and they got the teenage kid out of Gaza, and to Jerusalem for the operation, not an elementary thing to pull off at all. On the way back from the operation, the kid and his mom (Nazar wasn't allowed to join him, just his mother) passed by my parents' home and sat with them for a while. They didn't speak Hebrew (Nazar, from working in Israel for years, speaks it rather fluently), and my parents don't speak Arabic, so they just sat together, my dad checked the boy's scar from the operation while his mother held my mother's arm tightly in hers. After a while, my mom gave them Nazar's salary of that month (in cash, instead of transferring through the bank), and they got in the cab that would take them back to Han Yuness. My mother can still hardly tell this story without getting choked up.

So that evening after all the birthday guests had left, my parents, Moran and I sat around thinking of calling Nazar to see how he was doing. They hadn't heard from him since the war began. But we decided that it might not be a good idea to call him, in case he was not in a place where he could openly talk with them.

Meanwhile, last Saturday, again Moran and I happened to be at my parents' place. My sister and her family live right next door to my parents (in the house where my late grandparents- my mom's parents- used to live, and where I spent many many days in my childhood), and her daughters Mika and Romi were playing outside. Mika and Romi hadn't been going to school for a few days, since although they live 50 kilometers from Gaza, their school is only 40K away, which is in the range of rockets. So they had a few days off from school, but then were sent to a closer school for the time being.
While they were playing, Romi (6 years old) asked my mother whether their bomb shelter was clean and safe (every house in Israel, by law, needs to have a shelter, or a concrete room, if it's an apartment), and my mother reassured her that it was (she had just cleaned it that week, just in case). This is the same shelter we used back in 1991, during the first Gulf War, when I was 16.
Romi also asked, how can the people fighting shoot so much? Don't their guns run out of batteries?