Fleeing a war zone 1: Jerusalem to Amman

From a war zone it’s easy to see

The sense in deciding to flee

Thanks, Iron Dome,

For helping me home

Through the Iranian Qassam missile spree.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I worked telemedicine, a COVID-19 clinic, a VA clinic, and spots Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.  Taking vacation from circuit-riding rural clinics in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I went on vacation to Israel, and found myself in war zone.  Israel closed its airspace.  Grey Bull Rescues orchestrated our evacuation.

I’m Jewish.  I will not be writing about religion or politics.  See my post https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

Saturday evening we went to sleep with the expectation of being called to busses at 9:00 AM but we were awakened to 4:30 AM with notice to leave the hotel at 7:00 AM 

We breakfasted at 6:00 AM and the 11 of us rolled our suitcases away from the youth hostel. 

We had clear, cloudless blue skies and perfect temperature, the streets quiet before the Jerusalem traffic wakes up, on our way down the hill.  We stopped at the ATM and the convenience store.

After a half-hour walk we came to a parking lot, the evacuation’s marshaling point, surrounded by construction and green space.

By 7:30 AM the crowd of 350 Americans fleeing Israel had gathered in the shade.  We could pick out the teenage Orthodox women in white shirts and long black skirts and teenage men in black trousers and white shirts and fringes dangling from undershirts. 

Other young people with conservative or not so conservative clothing, and a few families with very young babies.  Our Sioux City group separated out at the edge of the crowd.  

The sun ascended higher, the temperature warmed and the traffic noise picked up.  Two young New Yorkers with tsitsit approached the 4 men in our group with beer on the breaths and tefillin in their hands.  The Bible commands donning those phylacteries daily, but most Jewish men only did so when studying for their Bar Mitzva.  We agreed to do the ritual right there in the car park, one of us for the second time ever, the first the day before in the bomb shelter.  He’s a remarkable man, previously a combat medic in the Panama campaign, who has brought insight into the nature of Jewish suffering and mission.  

When they had gone, with half of us seated on the curb, still in the shade, near a cluster of Arab-driven taxis (full-sized passenger vans), the air raid warnings came to our phones.

By this time we’d all downloaded the Israeli app that divides the country into more than 1000 zones, and gives different levels of alert.  One says that you need to seek shelter in the next few minutes.

And there were 350 of us and not a shelter in sight.  So we watched off to the south, high in the sky.  The missiles leave a contrail.  At first there were only one or two, then there were 3 in parallel lines, followed by many more and all headed to Tel Aviv.  

When an Iron Dome missile hits an aggressor there’s a very bright flash, much like the flash of fireworks or the bright light of a welder or a sparkler lit in the day.  Bright despite the bright morning and the clear blue sky.  

Then came the other warning, saying Those Missiles Are Coming Right For You, Get The Hell Into A Shelter.  The sirens sounded.  That’s the warning we got.  It even includes instructions on what to do if you’re out in the open: lay face down on the ground and cover your head.

And I remembered the duck-and-cover drills from 3^rd grade.

So I went recumbent between two of the white passenger vans and looked up at the sky and watched the action till our combat veteran reproved me, gently, so I rolled over, covered my head with my hands, and looked at the pavement and listened to the explosions.  

Most of the crowd stood and stared at the sky, a brief, multi-million dollar spectacular of contrails and flashes, followed by chest-thumping booms.

The section of asphalt that I watched bored me, but I studied it until one of our party said, “It must be all clear.  The construction workers are going to work.”

Afterwards we stood or sat on the curb, and we chatted while the day warmed, the sun strengthened and the traffic picked up.  We moved with the shade, to the other side of the parking lot, until about 9:00 AM when the 6 nice new busses with AC pulled up.

We left Jerusalem in heavy, big-city traffic, passing through Arab East Jerusalem.  Crossing the city limits came as an emotional relief.  While Iranian missiles are notoriously inaccurate, the chance of getting hit went way down outside of a target city.