7 days into the second Iran War, March 9th, 5 PM.

I drove back to the foothills of the Judean mountains through the tunnels – to avoid the traffic on route 1, the main Jerusalem to Tel Aviv highway. I had not heard any hatra’ah makdima – the warning that gives you between 5-7 minutes in the event that you may hear a siren. But other cars pulled to the curb, so I did as well.

Then the migration out of the tunnel began – no siren, no ‘ding’ that signals that the event had ended.

As the roads became more pastoral, two line highways turning into one, I felt the car jolt – a sharp, sudden bang. I was sure I’d blown a tire. I was afraid to look at the air pressure gauges on the dashboard, but they appeared to be fine. It sounded like the tire had been slashed, yet I drove on.

It was only a few days later that the Home Front Command decided that stopping in a tunnel was the wrong thing to do, though a few steps up from seeking shelter in a gas station.

At the last sharp turn before my house, a shirtless man gestured frantically at the truck in front of me. I didn’t know what he wanted; I drove past.

Arriving, as my daughters and their kids were coming out of the safe room, they were both relieved that I had come home, but exasperated by my nonchalance.

I had no idea what was going on, but as they looked shaken up, I offered: ‘it must have been very close.’

‘You didn’t hear it?’ they asked.

‘I was listening to music. ’ [Credence, ‘Run Through the Jungle’]

Just as they suspected: their oblivious father.

My oldest son took me back outside, and pointed to the smoke rising on the nearby horizon, as the sound of sirens – fire engines this time– got louder. It was a direct hit on a communications center in the Ella Valley – for which Hezbollah claimed responsibility later that day.

‘How did you miss it?’ – they persisted.

But I hadn’t actually missed it. I had felt the jolt and heard the sound. I just read it all – the slowing traffic, the waving man – wrong. I had been Oedipus in my own mini-drama – with no awareness of the story in which I was a part. I had the insight of the fear, the terror that I had gotten it all wrong, but refined of danger: the world without me, me without the world.

Back in the house, there they all were: my daughters, chopping vegetables, chatting, making the salad, the kids back to their joyful and oblivious play.

I was home.