In 1973, when the Yom Kippur war broke out, we hid in the shelter.  I hadn’t even known that we had one, but there it was, with bunk beds that reminded me of Auschwitz.  We didn’t use it after the first day, when there was no immediate danger any more, and we didn’t think any more of it.  But in the Gulf War, since it was clear most people didn’t have shelters, we were instructed to tape our windows and hide in a room we could seal off from the gas attack we were threatened with.  We spent many long hours in our gas masks in the kitchen,  and I wrote a poem a day, like this one:

floors and shelters.

But if gas and bombs are used together,

you have what we define as

a problem.

The only instructions I remember were that we were told to drink water.

After the “Desert Storm” war in 1991, however, it became clear that shelter was needed, and a law was enacted to mandate security rooms and/or shelters for new buildings.  Most people use their “security room” for storage, and they were filled with junk.  I tried to get my neighbors to add on a safe room, but no one was interested.  Now they’re too old to run down to the shelter and sit in the hall.  

Our home was built in 1970 and the one thing the builder did right was make a shelter.  Ezi’s father built the home my daughter now lives in in 1947 – no shelter.