“I spent that night with my lover,” Avigail says after our cocktails arrive. I sip a tangy, sunset-colored drink with a slice of orange — so spicy, it could easily be mistaken for hot salsa.
It’s been so long since I’ve been to a bar, made new friends, or had those conversations where you quickly sum up your life in a single, not-too-dramatic story, that I’ve forgotten how to do it. Or rather, I’ve never been very good at it, even though I know the recipe: 1. A terrible ex-husband (one or two, to taste). 2. Terrible Tinder, where everyone looks like the same intellectually challenged guy in the same sunglasses, kissing the same dog. 3. Annoying kids (optional). 4. A not-so-terrible Stephen King memoir for writers — an ingredient that’s usually not needed, unless you’re trying to make friends in a creative writing class.
I don’t have much to say — I lack the usual girly narrative that helps you make friends. Besides, I didn’t like King’s memoir much because, as it turns out, he married another writer when he was young, proving once again that, at best, only the man can succeed in that situation. I’m not so sure I can complain about Stephen King’s choices while girls are venting about their exes, though.
“…there was no bomb shelter in his house,” Avigail says as I tune back into the conversation. “He told me that if the siren went off, he would just lie on top of me.”
“If Iran is going to bomb us tonight, I don’t care anymore,” Shira says. She can’t pass the Jewish studies exam at school, and that’s weighing on her more than the possibility of another war.
We are already living in the war that began on October 7th, 2023.
On this sauna-hot summer day, Iran is threatening to attack Israel again, just as it did in the spring. Back then, the missiles and drones were shot down. I wrote a short story about it for my fiction class. What will happen this time, none of us knows.
“A Tinder guy asked me what I’m best at in bed,” I tell my friends after we order the second round. “Reading,” I said honestly, “and that’s why I ended up spending the night alone.”
Actually, that’s not true. On the night of the last Iranian threat, I went to bed because I’m not afraid of being alone even in the face of an apocalypse.
These are our cool bar stories now. We sit on the terrace of a fancy place in Jaffa, speaking louder to be heard over the Arab musicians performing tonight. The girl sings well. This is the kind of music I used to dance to when I was younger.
“Women fear other things in war,” Avigail says. “So all feminism is kinda doomed. Let’s face it: at the end of the day, we need a man to protect us.”
Avigail has lived in Israel the longest, and she is also American. Shira immigrated a few years ago from the Netherlands. I came here — they call it making Aliyah — from Russia. Until tonight, our lives were as dissimilar as those of secular Jewish girls from different parts of the world.
A pair of soldiers walk into a bar — just kids, when you look at them from our age. A girl in jean shorts, with a machine gun on her hip — she can’t leave it at home because of army rules. I came to this country too late to be of any real use.
We quietly check our phones to see if Iran has attacked yet or if we can still finish those cocktails. We talk about Trump grabbing women by the pussy but always standing up for Israel. We discuss how we’re so used to pro-Hamas rallies in European cities and American universities that we wouldn’t be surprised if progressive voices started supporting Hezbollah now. We also talk about how, if we write about this, we’ll probably never get published.
The last time I thought about masculinity was when I worked at a men’s magazine in Moscow years ago. I pretended to be a male writer because no one wanted to listen to a woman. Maybe the only thing we can oppose pure evil with is our ability to speak our truth.
I check the news again. I hope we still have time.
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