In Search of the Children of Haifa
In Haifa last week, all the children had gone underground. The summer camps were closed. The day-cares were deserted. Occasionally, as our tour bus moved down the eerily silent streets, we would think we saw a child and shout. Immediately, our 40-strong group pressed their faces up to the glass.
"Over there! A child! By the shoe store, holding his mother's hand . . ." He would vanish as quickly as he had appeared, but we would swear that we saw him.
There were other sightings that day as well. Two small girls, pushing a doll's stroller in front of a bakery. A baby, bouncing on his mother's hip. A child jumping rope or perhaps playing hopscotch. Those boys on the corner by the falafel stand (or was it shwarma?) kicking a soccer ball (or maybe tossing a baseball?).
The truth is, there were no children on the streets of Haifa on the day that I visited. There were hardly any adults, only the brave few collecting the necessary groceries and sundries to keep life going.
In one makeshift fallout shelter in a subterranean parking garage, an impromptu summer camp had been set up. There was a magic show and a crafts table of Popsicle stick houses. Several boys and girls had their faces painted like kittens. There were balloons and glitter and an off-duty soldier strumming her guitar.
If they had been outdoors, it would have been lovely. Instead, however, there were exhaust fumes and car horns and the terrible echo of 200 giggling, shouting kids.
I thought my return would be haunted with images of rockets and gore. I was so wrong. After a week at home, it is the faces of those underground cherubs that wake me in the night. We didn't tell them why they were there. We put whiskers on their cheeks and crayons into their hands. They were good children. They sang and colored for us. But with every extra siren, they grew up just a little bit more.
Soon there will be no more children in Haifa. When the next war comes, we will have no one left to hide.
And for this, I cry and cry and cry.
Kamin, a San Diego-based writer, recently joined the American Zionist Movement in a three-day solidarity mission to Israel.
Reprinted with permission of the author.
