Long before the signs and checkpoints appear the warning signs. I drive down an empty lane, in front of me convoys of cars rushing to leave. Drivers' eyes wonder - sure you're going in the right direction? Welcome to an old-new twilight land. Once called the envelope, now it is wrapped in dust rising from all sides. Tanks travel on the sandy ridge, batteries of cannons are dug along the hills, among them a determined tractor plows new furrows in the western Negev. Agriculture, an optimistic act.
Sheep damage to property, photo: Sheep damage to property
A month after the massacre, Sderot, almost a ghost town. Here and there a car passes, whoever doesn't have to - not here. Dogs roam the green lawns. "It's taken care of," Ohad Peretz, a musician and friend from the city, reassures me. "My dog was also very frightened by one of the bombings and ran away, it took two days for him to come back." Peretz came from Haifa to collect some things from home, musical equipment from the safe room, which served as a studio for the soul, and to take care of the seven chickens. "My little daughter really loves eggs, I came to collect them," he laughs.
Ohad Peretz in the recording studio,
Family town Sderot. My father, the only neighbor left in a neighborhood of dozens of families. Used to his safe room, you have to take care of the plants. In the middle of my father's huge nursery there was a fall pit, the garden dwarf's face was mutilated, a redhead cat howling in the sun.
Missile impact area, photo: David Peretz
From the nursery you can exit onto the main road. On Black Saturday morning, two policemen shouted at my father to come back in. They did not survive. A few days later, my father opened a food cart for the soldiers, shakshuka from fresh eggs and nursery vegetables.
In the city park a woman with a beggar's cart stretches out on a bench. Her gaze responds to the greeting with a calmness of innocents who do not know how to ask. "She's mentally challenged," Peretz explains, and right now the empty city is her realm of reality.
"What will I do at the hotel?"
The shopping center is closed. No one cleared the Sukkot. "Sderot is still a holiday," Peretz observes. Until a month ago, the center operated the "Shoponi" project, a creative space used by the community of artists from Sderot and the surrounding area. The wall is full of pictures of the life that was. Beer smiles, guitar excitement and the joy of time and place songs. "You see him," Peretz points to one of the singers, a guy from Kibbutz Be'eri, "his father was murdered on Saturday and his mother is apparently kidnapped."
To our surprise, one shop in the center is open. "Sometimes one or two people come. I'm not coming to make a profit, I'm coming to stay sane," explains Moshe Mualem of Moshe Spices. "What am I going to do at home or in a hotel all day? So I come here and open." We buy great cashews from him and continue towards the police station.
One or two buyers a day. Moses never,
Peretz tells me about a musical tour he created in Sderot. Soon there will be combat heritage tours here, I think to myself. Two weeks ago, the houses stank far away from the leftover food left by the evacuees. Now that rot has also dissipated. The garbage can area smells of the carcasses of city animals. Next to a fancy hairdresser is parked a car with a "For Sale" sign. The rear windshield is shattered by a bullet. A sign on an electrical cabinet warns of the danger of death.
In the apartment above, the Border Police positioned himself, created a sniper position there and took down terrorists until he could no longer do so. The great battle for the police station left marks all over the area, only the station is gone. It was razed to the ground, the rubble was cleared. There remains a small oil egg in the heart of the red earth, refusing to disappear.
"They just executed"
I say goodbye to Bay and continue to a spot etched into the map of horror memories, the bus stop and the unopened shelter near the municipal library. When I'm filming, Reuven Peshov arrives. He searches, finds and shows me: "This is one of the bullets the terrorist fired at me." Peshov passed by, saw the pensioners' bus stop to fix a flat tire and the pensioners trying to open the shelter - but to no avail.
"Maybe I would have been able to save", Reuven Pinchasov,
He went down to help open the shield, and when he couldn't open the front he went to check in the back if the cables were connected. In retrospect, it was a decision that saved his life. At that moment, Hamas murderers began shooting at pensioners on both sides of the road.
"When I realized what was happening, I ran like crazy and hid behind the Yad Labanim house next door. Even those who went behind the shield were simply executed. Until now there are blood stains on the wall at the back. Here, look, here stood one of the pensioners, here is the bullet hole that killed him and here is his blood that splashed to the sides. When I saw that, I ran into the neighborhood behind, and I run and shout, 'Terrorists! Terrorists! Come home!' They didn't believe me, one Ethiopian guy drove by me in a car and started driving," he pauses.
In the setting sun, Peshov's bright eyes look back through me and through time all month back. "I keep thinking, if only I could open the door I would save the pensioners. They would have been locked inside, and maybe the terrorists would have left them."
"There's nothing you can do about what would have happened if," I tell him, "your story is crazy anyway." Peshov shakes his head, looks around, and finally blurts out: "I'm not special, the whole city is full of crazy stories."
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