A Shared Experience

Merav’s story is not only about a prolonged threat, but also about what happens among people forced to wait together. The shelter— in ordinary times a technical, empty, and unremarkable space—has become a place of unexpectedly human connection.

“On a personal level, going down to the shelter is a truly rare opportunity to get to know the neighbors,” she says. “While we’re there, you meet every kind of person—families with children, elderly residents, singles, and dogs too—and everyone gets along in a remarkably harmonious way.”

For Racheli, 42, her first memory of the current conflict begins with the morning of Feb. 28. “At around 8:30, the first alert sounded, signaling that the Israeli-American operation in Iran had begun,” she says.

“You can’t say it surprised anyone, because we had already been preparing for the possibility of a strike for about a month.”

Early warnings that arrive on cellphones several minutes before sirens blare fundamentally change the experience of waiting, she says. They give people time to prepare, grab a blanket, and head to the shelter without unnecessary panic.

“It seems we’ve become fairly used to the situation already; things have become orderly and clear,” she says. “We set up mattresses for sleeping and sitting in the shelter, the children play together, and sometimes they even sleep there together. It creates a unique kind of togetherness.”

For Racheli, the shelter has also become a place of belonging. She was still relatively new to the building, but gathered with other residents in the shelter, she stopped being “the new neighbor.”

“Personally, I got to know the neighbors because of this time together,” she says, before adding: “Sometimes I actually found myself waiting for the next siren so I could see everyone.”

Humor, it turns out, also finds its way inside. One evening, wrapped in a blanket on a mattress in the shelter, she opened her eyes and found a dog staring at her from inches away.

“I leaned my head back and started giggling at the situation,” she recalls. “But then I realized there was another dog to my left staring at me too, and at that point I burst into laughter.”

That moment, she says, changed the atmosphere all at once. “Situations like that always give me a feeling of happiness and a brief moment of calm inside the tension.”

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