I’m standing in the old bus station filming the refugees from Darfur when it happens. The sky turns almost imperceptibly darker, and where before the air was hot and still now a breeze picks up, running against my cheek like a wet tongue, and I taste salt. I am annoyed because I need to take another light reading now and the scene in front of me is shifting, but I have no choice. I am making a new documentary, my third. You might have seen my previous work — A Closed House, about that orphanage in Be’er Sheva, or The Painted Eyes, about the Russian immigrant prostitutes that I filmed right here in the old bus station of Tel Aviv. I take social issues seriously — I think it’s important to bring them to the public’s attention, even though it is hard to make a living this way and I still have to work as an usher at the cinema three days a week. I don’t mind, at least it’s still working with films, and at least I don’t have to be a waitress like all the wannabe actresses and singers and dancers in Tel Aviv.
I am here at the station to film the refugees that are smuggled into Israel across the Egyptian border. They’re from Darfur, in Sudan, and they came here looking for a place where they won’t be killed or tortured or raped. In response, the government locked them up. Our local human rights organizations petitioned the supreme court, which held that the imprisonment was unlawful. Following that, the refugees were abandoned in the streets of Be’er Sheva and elsewhere in the country, and today a group of them was being dumped in Tel Aviv.
While I am filming I can’t help notice that the sun seems to dim and the sky is no longer a bright blue but greying and there are streaks of colour running through it, red and black, and clouds are forming in crazy spiral shapes. It is all happening very rapidly. On the ground the refugees are just milling about, looking lost and hopeless, and the few civil rights people waiting for them are handing out sandwiches and trying to see if they can match people to the lists on their clipboards. I hope they can find everyone accommodation. I’d offer too, but I’m sharing a flat with two other people already. Anyway, now almost everyone is looking up too. The wind is picking up and the air feels strange, like there’s a raw current of electricity in it. It makes the hairs on my arms stand and I feel sweaty. I point the camera at the sky. Points of light are prickling in the swirling vista of a storm. They look like stars, but —
The wind picks up even more, pushing me, as if it’s trying to jerk the camera from my hands. I spin around and the camera pans across the old terminal and someone screams.
I don’t know what is happening. The camera is showing the refugees running, though since they don’t know where to go they are just shooting off in different directions. There is a low thrumming sound and the earth seems to vibrate. As I turn I see a shawarma stand and there is the sound of an explosion and I think — terrorists. It’s a terrorist attack. They always go for the old bus station. The front of the shawarma stand explodes outwards and bricks fly over my head. There are more screams and I am still filming the source of the explosion. The old walls seem to wobble, they move almost like jelly, and something is pushing out of them, vast and incomprehensible, something like glistening air and the smell of salt gets stronger and the wind pushes me and again I almost fall and all the angles suddenly become crazy.
Something, like a column of air, is moving through the bus station, tearing apart buildings, the road, lifting up people. I watch through the camera as a Darfur family gets sucked into the air and shredded — their bits like blood oranges fly in all directions and splatter the ground. I try to run but the maelstrom of air is sucking me towards it, more people are torn apart and I watch an old Chasid in black as he rises in the air and then explodes. There’s a rain of blood over the old bus station and the sky darkens further above and the wind moans between the buildings. Another thing rises slowly from the ground and then another one and now cars are flying through the air and I see one bus crushed with people inside it, flattened on the road and blood is sipping out through the cracks that are all that’s left of the windows. I’m running, I’m holding the camera but it’s not pointing anywhere, all I can think of is trying to get away. I weave a path between the things and the wind sucks me once here and once there but as long as I stay in a half-way point I manage not to get sucked in. Everywhere people are screaming and I realize I am screaming too. Something hits me in the face and I try not to look but as it falls I see it, someone’s hand, I even notice the wedding ring and the thick black hairs on the knuckles, a man’s hand. Is this happening all over the city? Does Iran have a new type of weapon and they’ve finally used it on us? Is it Hezbollah? Is it Hamas? The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades? I run as hard as I can, away from the station, without direction. I think the camera is still on.