The first place I needed to get to, on arriving in Tel Aviv, was my warehouse, containing my collection of rare artefacts — I had planned to make a museum out of it, though naturally this admirable goal now had to be postponed. It was conveniently located in the basement right under my mother’s apartment at the north end of Weizmann Street. It was quite a long way to go by foot from the University train station, especially as everything became more and more ruined and distorted the farther I went. In the beginning, there was only the occasional collapsed building and the remains of some overturned cars, and the major difficulty was the darkness, as none of the streetlights were working. I saw unsteady light coming from behind some buildings, but didn’t think it’d be smart to investigate, or even to use the flashlight I had brought.
I couldn’t help noticing there was absolutely no one in the streets, nor was there any other sign of life. The noise the train made must have been heard at least five kilometres away, but nobody came to investigate. All was quiet.
It stayed that way until I got to Namir Road and, thinking happily for a moment that about half the distance was already behind me, I first noticed the bonfires.
There were considerably fewer buildings in the western part of Tel Aviv than I remembered, but on top of every one of them there was a fire burning. This was beautiful to see, even amazing, but not as wonderful as the reason I could see all those buildings from my rather low vantage point: this part of the city was now spread upon the low slopes of a mountain.
It vaguely reminded me of a volcano. There has never been an actual volcano in Israel, unless you count pre-history or, God forbid, you happen to get into one of Aharon Reueli’s lectures, in which case you are swamped with false evidence that there was one, Mount Sinai, and then wish that a volcano would erupt right there and then, to kill the lecturer and, mercifully, yourself, so as to avoid permanent brain damage. I could swear the slopes I was seeing were becoming steeper and steeper the higher they were, but above some point there were no fires anymore, only the feeling of something huge and impossibly tall, a new kind of darkness hovering above numerous specks of light.
As I crossed Namir Road, the main highway coming from Haifa, which was now abandoned and without a single car to be seen, I thought of how this reminded me of Yom Kippur. It’s the only day of the year when nobody — well, almost nobody — uses any vehicle other than a bicycle, and everyone, especially the children, walk freely in the streets and on the roads, supposedly asking forgiveness of God and of their friends for sins they’d committed during the previous year, and which they’ll be happy to commit again in the new one. It’s an eerily quiet day. This was an eerily quiet night.
I hoped that Tel Aviv hadn’t become a religious place just because of some perfectly explainable unnatural occurrence.
As I continued west I started noticing people. At first only hints, faint noises, monstrous shadows on broken walls, quick flickers of light, something which sounded like a heavy object being thrown into a dumpster. Then, from the roofs above me, talking, laughing, shouting. Then, almost silently, someone small, perhaps a kid, went running past me and disappeared behind a corner. I quickly hid behind a barrel half-eaten by fire, and not a moment too soon, as a gang of five men shot out from somewhere nearby and ran after the fugitive.
I became very careful after that, which slowed me down.
When I finally got to my warehouse all was quiet around me. It was already very late at night or, if you like, very early in the morning. The bonfires on the roofs were still burning, but there were no more voices to accompany them. Everyone probably went to sleep. I needed a good night’s sleep myself, but first I had to make sure nothing had happened to my collection.
The first two floors of the building seemed intact. The third just wasn’t there. This meant that some of the neighbours, whom I’d known since I’d been born and had grown up with, were probably dead, which was fine with me. It also meant that there was no bonfire on the roof, which was good. At the moment, I didn’t need any kind of attention.
I entered mom’s apartment, which was on the ground floor, using my own key. I was still living with her when I left Tel Aviv, and I saw no reason to find anywhere else to live, even in the current conditions. I didn’t want to wake her up, though — her method of questioning could have been taken straight from the Spanish Inquisition — so I went very quietly, in the dark, down the stairs to the basement’s steel-reinforced door, unlocked it, went inside and locked it again behind me.
My hand, by reflex, pressed the light switch. Nothing happened, of course. Either the lines were severed by whatever happened here a year ago, or the city was deliberately taken off the power grid. Instead, I turned on my flashlight. I inhaled deeply. Until then I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath.
The secret journal of the Rabbi of Safed. The prayer book which was held by whoever it was who’d built what we call today Noah’s Ark. The yet undeciphered writings of the Kinneret Cult. The wooden staff Moses had used to part the Red Sea. And documents, numerous precious documents, copies of items held in museums, articles by archaeologists and historians. Everything was there, in my specially made locked cabinets.
And, in the iron safe, when I opened it — the Hanukkah oil container.
It was all there.
Amid all this, sighing in relief, knowing that everything was going to be all right now, I fell asleep without even noticing.
A sound invaded my dream. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was quite insistent. I opened my eyes. All was quiet for a moment. The basement was still very dark, but I sensed daytime. It was hot, and little slivers of light came in through the gaps in the doorframe. I stood up slowly, got my keys, went to the door and started opening it when the sound returned.
It was a man, and he was shouting.
It’s peaceful on the roofs, one need never come down to the ground. They migrate across the rooftops, a world of dark solar panels no longer working, of abandoned washing never collected from the lines strung under the sun, of barbeque pits and deck chairs no longer inhabited, a wide and open world occupied on one side by the endless sea, on the other by the mountain rising high overhead. They migrate across the rooftops, setting up their tents each night on top of a new building. They hunt the birds that come and settle here, the rats that live inside abandoned buildings, trade self-grown food with the below people, sometimes. Sometimes they catch some of the strange fauna that seems to have come down from the mountain. You learn to love the sensation of peeing from a height, expressing at once your freedom and your contempt for the world below. Titles no longer matter up here. Nor job descriptions. A man could have been an accountant in a previous life: now he is a hunter, a leader of his own small tribe. The babies who are born need never experience street level. They collect rainwater and brew alcohol from fruit when they can be found. There are a lot of things one can find on the abandoned rooftops of Tel Aviv. Sometimes it seems many denizens of that city had never left their apartment blocks, had made entire lives for themselves within, and above. There are storage rooms up here, and some of its hold can be traded. Some roof-people aren’t nomadic. Some live on one roof in great green gardens, tiny self-contained Edens they will protect at all cost. The people above are a different people, a new people, and they look after their own.