By Avirama Golan- Ha'aretz
"Cover my ears tight," five-year-old Shahar begs the visitor. "I don't want to hear the siren any more." She bends her head under the table as the seven-year-old next to her instructs us gravely: "Close the iron door quickly." "And the net," another child says. And although all the openings have been closed, and the fans are working at full speed, the heart-rending wail continues to penetrate from outside.
In the three well-maintained shelters at the Irisim school on Haprahim Street in Carmiel, there are summer camp programs for children of three different age groups, including both Arabs and Jews.
There is no dearth of activities: painting and molding clay, story time, TV and a theater workshop, together with a hot midday meal. There are instructors and caregivers sitting at every table, and some big brothers too. On the face of it, everything seems so great that a visitor just dropping by for a short while might think these children were having a great time underground.
On Monday, a large vehicle from the central library arrives and unloads piles of children's books, and every child may choose one. Liron and Re'ut, twins aged five and a half, rush to open the surprise box of "Felix the Rabbit." Liron wants to be the first to stretch out the rainbow. "Look, this is how we do it," he says. "When it's raining and then suddenly the sun comes out, this is what happens." "Wow, it's so beautiful," his sister enthuses. "Now it's my turn."
When the alarm starts sounding once again, little Tal walks over to the drums stacked up in the corner. She begins banging on a drum with all her might until no one can hear what is going on outside any more. The kindergarten teacher asks her to stop because the children want to hear a story, but Tal does not give up.
Without state assistance
Carmiel is a well-organized city. Mayor Adi Eldar did not wait for the government to start acting. Rather, he instructed all municipal workers to continue working according to emergency regulations. Their response was not surprising to him or to other senior municipal officials, but an outside observer finds it hard not to be amazed by it. In the early morning hours, the municipal welfare department appears to be a strange combination of a war headquarters and a giant supermarket. Bottles of mineral water, food products, boxes containing fans and first-aid all stand in the yard in giant piles waiting to be sorted out and sent off. Meanwhile, in the welfare department's air raid shelter, officials of the municipal headquarters allocate tasks.
"We are able to manage very well on our own," Eldar says. "There are plenty of donations, and good will, and wonderful people."
In a less formal conversation, it is easy to note both the exhaustion and pain on his face. Carmiel, which has undergone many upheavals in the past 20 years, absorbed new immigrants and managed well with the edicts and cuts of the last few governments, now looks like a ghost city in the middle of the day. Eldar encouraged residents to leave for a safer haven in the center until the worst passed, but now the deserted roads, closed shops, impact on peoples' earnings and residents' mindset are worrisome. Two thirds of the population left. Only the most vital workers and the weakest sectors of the population have remained behind. There is a direct connection between poverty and distress in war.
The attempt to tell the children a sweet and innocent story about toy animals in a forest lasted only a few minutes. Out of the nine children crowding around the table, only six-year-old Kfir, who knew all the stories of Winnie the Pooh and Baby Roo by heart wanted them to continue reading. All the others wanted to talk about the war.
"I want to tell you what we will do if we catch Nasrallah," said Adar. Without even noticing, the children began inventing a story in installments: He will be caught, he will be sent to Boris, the boxing instructor, he will be beaten up and perhaps he will even have his head chopped off, like in an animated movie - "so that he will lose a lot of blood."
This is where the imagination stops and anxiety takes over. "Where is my mom now?" and "Why didn't grandmother come?" some asked. Almost all of the children spent time with family in the center of the country, but later returned to Carmiel because their parents had to return to work or were simply tired of being guests in other people's homes.
In the Givat Rambam neighborhood, in an air raid shelter which served as a religious kindergarten until a month ago, mothers sit with their children in what is now a neighborhood shelter.
Swieta, a 33-year-old teacher, agreed to come to the shelter for the first time two days ago. Swieta's husband is serving as a reservist in Lebanon. For a while, she stayed with her three young children at the home of relatives in the center of the country. "That was only because they were fixing our home which had been hit by a Katyusha," she explains. Afterwards she hurried back because it was hard to keep the children somewhere else, and too expensive, and she also did not want to be far away from her husband.
Her neighbor down the street, Rama, took a week's vacation from the bank where she worked so she could be with the children. From time to time, her husband takes over. Their eldest daughter who is 14, agreed to go away to a summer camp at Beit Berl in Kfar Sava. The six-year-old son, however, was not prepared to leave his mother.
The world of the imagination
Ariel, aged nine, asked to keep the book he had chosen from the pile and was given it as a gift. It is about the imaginary land of Narnia. "What happens there?" he asks. His mother had promised to take him and his sister to the movie, but then the war broke out. He can hardly believe his ears when he hears how the story begins: Four children are sent from London during the Blitz to the home of a professor in the country. "So there it's exactly the opposite," he marvels. "They're from Tel Aviv and they go to Carmiel." His eyes open wide as he hears about the wardrobe that opens to an enchanted and snowy world which a wicked witch has frozen and where only the children will be set free.
"There are no shelters in Lebanon," Yuval says, as he arranges a pool of ketchup on his plate. Daniel is worried. "So what do the children there do?" he asks. Yuval doesn't know the answer. "Shut the door!" shouts Daniel, who is a very responsible little boy. "Can't you hear that the siren is going off?" In the corner of the shelter, Ariel is absorbed in his new book. He is traveling to Narnia through the magic door that suddenly opened for him in the Carmiel shelter.