We’re headed to this new high-end Ethiopian restaurant in Tel Aviv – Jaffa that’s been calling my name since I first read about its injera brioche. For three weeks, I checked the reservation site daily, my happiness hinged on this one outing. Finally, I landed a table – on a Saturday. The day of the demonstrations. Neglecting my civil duty while supporting the economy.

Tel Aviv needs me, I whispered to myself.

Or was it the other way around?

We stand on the sidewalk waiting for the taxi – him smoking a thin, rolled-up cigarette under a flashing half-light; me, stoic as a mannequin, staring at the road in my fancy black-and-white ensemble. Like bored extras in a French film. Are we allowed, as Israelis, to appear in French films, even as a metaphor?

“I don’t want us to talk about the war,” I announce to my husband, to the world. “Tonight, we’re going to enjoy ourselves!”

“Sure,” he says with a smile.

A cluster of teenagers soaks in the last days of summer break – the closing remnants of vitality pushing them forward, toward us. They part, swallow us, then rejoin.

“It’s like we don’t exist,” I say, looking at their retreating backs.

As we pass down Yigal Alon Street, my face is pressed to the taxi window like a child’s, the tip of my nose cold. The hostages’ faces stare out at me from posters – some bearing a single face, others a collage of many. Snapshots of who they were, not who they are now.

“How was your day today?” I ask, as if I haven’t been with him since this afternoon.

“Great,” he says.

“This is going to be so much fun,” I say, their gaze following me.

“Those demonstrations should be outlawed. Every road here is closed,” the taxi driver complains. The never-ending construction of Tel Aviv – cranes, blockades, protests, closed roads – demands we stop. We ignore it.

The restaurant sign greets us. So does the dirty street around it. Jaffa at night – a mixture of ancient architecture and dog piss.

We pay. Step out.

I brought a clutch. I wedge it under my arm – a youthful reminder of who I was.

My husband opens the glass door.

“Did you make reservations?” the young hostess asks, barely looking up from her laptop.

“Of course,” I say. Does she think I just happened to walk by – a war raging outside, useless clutch in hand – and decided to eat in a restaurant?

The place is packed. Every seat taken. And yet, it feels empty, as if the absence haunting the city has infiltrated this place as well.

We’re led to the bar. It’s a short walk – not enough time to fix my hair. The music is indistinct, nothing I’d chase on vinyl.

The space is fine – high ceilings, an open kitchen. I count six chefs. That’s a good number. Decorative light fixtures, shaped like thin cylinders, cast a soft yellow glow – a forgiving hue for my wrinkles.

Tables for groups. Tables for couples in need of conversation. At my age, I recognize it as the first sign of divorce.

High, uncomfortable bar stools.

Silver utensils. Paper napkins.

Glasses clink as I lift myself onto the stool.

The staff all wear black. I look around – everyone’s drained of color.

A charming bartender introduces himself. “Hi.”

His hand glides along the bar, leaning to the point of bowing. I recoil.

“Have you been here before?” he asks – a line designed as both hospitality small talk for us older clientele, or a pickup line for the attractive women sitting next to us. He’s a multitasker, that one.

“No,” I say. There’s no place for my clutch; I shove it to the back, fitting it between me and the low backrest.

We’re handed a menu: two black-and-white pages, the print small.

I resist using my phone’s flashlight.

“I’ll give you a couple of minutes.” He slithers away.

The prices are shocking – but no longer surprising.

So is the heat.

The war.

The inflation.

The world’s hatred.

Even my mediocre four-dollar coffee from the café every morning feels like penance. But that same café with the overpriced coffee stayed open on October 8, while Harvard students screamed their solidarity with rapists and murderers.

“Need any help?” the bartender, whose name we now know, materializes to take our order.

I order several dishes from the medium-size section of the menu, the new standard – this size has taken over Israeli menus: not too big, not too small.

Even the food doesn’t know where it belongs.

An Ethiopian Israeli chef and his wife have created this space in Jaffa where their ancestors’ food intertwines with Spanish gazpacho made from sunflower-yellow cherry tomatoes – our second dish – then flirts with summer squash – the third dish – and mingles with finger-lime aioli on two other dishes.

We marvel at the teff – a gluten-free Ethiopian grain – paired with lightly seared beef tartare in clarified butter, spiced with mitmita, served with lime aioli, crispy shallots, and injera-crusted potato purée. We order a dish where their famed injera dough morphs into a giant dumpling that takes over the plate.

The roast beef arrives. It’s lovely – like layered brown petals on a white plate.

I see the same dish on nearly every table. A quiet consensus.

No one around us draws a breath at these combinations.

Experimentation in Tel Aviv is nothing new.

We carry each ethnic dish like a roadmap to our identity.

To the world, we’re reduced to a singular image – devoid of nuance.

Tell that to my dad’s Moroccan chickpea soup, now made by my Romanian mother.

To my husband’s Bulgarian kebab slathered with fiery Yemenite schug.

To every Shabbat dinner table across Israel, where Bulgarian, Tunisian, Yemenite dishes mingle. I’d say an Ashkenazi dish is somewhere there making its presence, but we are lost, not desperate.

We are the dumpling, I say to my current plate.

Full of bits from everywhere, contained within this delicate dough.

I look for a safe space as I bite into the dumpling – standard procedure. A siren could, and probably will, occur. I hope it doesn’t happen now; my dish will get cold.

My first night out after October 7 was on my birthday, three weeks after.

I insisted we go.

Because we were alive.

Because the economy had to move.

Because I needed a margarita.

The streets of Tel Aviv were quiet. No honking. No yelling.

Like zombies, we walked – heads up to the sky, then down to our feet.

Are we being attacked? Still? From which border?

The waitresses wore hostage and soldier tags over crop tops.

Their smiles didn’t reach their eyes – but they brought us nourishment.

A siren hit mid-dinner. We filed through the kitchen into the safe room.

I clutched my glass and my clutch tight to my chest, sipping between long pauses.

The food was forgettable.

The tequila was resistance.

“Everything good?” the bartender interrupts just as my fork reaches my mouth with another bite full of the Awaze Fish Tartare with pickled pumpkin sauce, berbere oil, teff cracker – our nod to the ceviche of the world.

“Well, I think it’s missing a…” I say. “Great,” he responds, as his gaze moves to the attractive women beside me.

I used to be as attentive as this bartender back when I worked behind the bar in the early 2000s, when Tel Aviv stood for:

Affordable food. Cheap rent. A hostage-free zone.

I worked at the hippest bar in town: Georgian food – khinkali, khachapuri, churchkhela.

Balkan-Georgian playlist.

People dancing on the bar. Loud talkers. Hand bangers.

Alcohol chasers. Vodka shots. Cheap beer.

Arak cost 18 shekels.

We’d finish our shifts and drift into the night, smiling into other people’s smiles.

We’d go to Allenby for meloukhia at 3 a.m., then wander into a sleazy bar on Dizengoff so dark we could barely see each other.

We’d stumble home – our hair smelling of smoke, lips bruised, feet aching – shielding our eyes from the sun.

Marveling at the people already up and heading to work.

Now, the young are missing – Nova kids. Soldiers.

No one’s drunk enough to burst at the seams, to laugh too loud, or even say l’chaim.

No pickup energy.

No beautiful chaos of Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, Polish, German Israelis colliding in the dark.

Just quiet conversations in undertones, enjoying bites of tartare with mustard oil.

We function: the fork moves in the right direction. The hand lifts the glass.

The wine tastes like wine – taken more for the buzz than for any hint of terroir.

My Tel Aviv was selfish. Reckless. Electric chaos.

That’s gone. The guilt of eating while hostages starve clings to every bite.

The perverse joy of going out while others walk among us as shadows keeps us grounded.

The unbearable privilege of living while others died hovers between me and the scantily dressed women hogging all the attention to my right.

As I bite into the sour cream ice cream, teff crumble, and Ethiopian basil syrup, I realize that the melting pot is melting. And that sticky, stubborn, concentrated mush at the bottom – what’s left – is who we are now.

Me, my clutch, and my husband make our way back home to our sleepy side of Tel Aviv, already planning my next outing to one of the many new places that keep popping up. The city mimics functionality. I mimic someone holding it together, someone who goes out to eat pan-African food in her Tel Aviv on a Saturday night.