When I was little, we rarely ran to the bomb shelter. Compared to the north and south of the country, Tel Aviv was super calm. Until the age of thirteen, I went to a bomb shelter ten times max, almost always for training. A bomb shelter is a room in the basement with a heavy door. Inside are a couple of chairs, some tables, mattresses, a toilet, and a washbasin. We always had an “alarm suitcase” in the hallway. There was everything there to last for at least a week—canned food, crackers, cookies, dried fruits, a change of clothes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, a flashlight, a phone charger, a first-aid kit, documents.

When I first heard real sirens in November 2019, I froze. I had no idea what to do or where to run. My mother and I were in the fitting room of a large shopping center. I’d been asking for new jeans for ages, and as luck would have it, I just got one foot into the pants when the sirens went off. I peeked out of the fitting room and saw all the shoppers heading towards the exit. My mother and the young saleswoman were the most panicked. I was trying to figure out if I should take off my jeans and run in my underwear or just leave the store wearing unpaid-for jeans. The saleswoman didn’t seem to care. She couldn’t figure out how to lock up the store and was fumbling with the door. She didn’t know where the bomb shelter was either. In the end, I took my mom’s hand and walked out in those new jeans. We made our way downstairs to the underground parking. I’d never been there before. It turned out to be huge, but it was totally packed.

Some people were sitting on the cold concrete, while a few kids ran around, playing and laughing. Others kids were munching on Bamba and watching cartoons. The adults were mostly scrolling through their phones or chatting, trying to figure out what was going on. We spent about an hour there, but it felt much, much longer.

I remember the feeling of stepping out into the sunlight after being in the underground parking. When I got home, I read that more than two hundred rockets had been fired from Gaza to Israel that day.

Earlier that year, in May, more than six hundred rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel. Many people in Sderot and Ashkelon lost their lives, but to me, it felt like it was terribly far away, and nothing threatened us. However, in autumn, Hamas fired hundreds of new rockets, which could now reach Tel Aviv.

At first, I was nervous, but we quickly got used to it. Whenever we heard the siren, we would grab the “alarm suitcase” and rush downstairs. We also subscribed to the Home Front Service’s Telegram channel and set up a special email alert for missile strikes—red spots started showing up on Israel’s pale, thin silhouette.

If the siren caught us on the street, we had to drop to the ground, cover our heads with our hands, and stay there for 10 minutes. It was unpleasant because when you got up, you were all dirty and dusty, often walking around like that for the rest of the day. It was nothing like the low, monotonous siren that sounded once a year on Memorial Day. This one wailed and vibrated, like Tarzan’s cry.

If you lived in the center of the country, you had about a minute and a half from the sound of the siren to the explosions. In the north, it was just 15 seconds—I couldn’t even imagine how fast you would have to be to take cover. As for me and Mom, it took us about a minute to reach the shelter, just in time to hear the terrifying roar of shells exploding under the Iron Dome.