Nahariya

October 7, 2023

I read the Facebook message from Elise before the dozen or so emails and texts I received about the massacre. So, I learned about October 7 not from news alerts, but from an old girlfriend I hadn’t seen in forty years. And I read her note all the way through, even paused for ten minutes, shutting my eyes, rolling the memories around my brain as I wrote my reply, before clicking on CNN, and moving from bittersweet nostalgia to the abject horror I would feel for—who knows how long? Maybe for the rest of my life. Here’s what Elise wrote:

Elephant,

How do I begin this correspondence? Do I offer condolences for the losses of your brothers and sisters in Israel, the babies, the grandmothers, the soldiers (especially the tank gunners)? Do I express my solidarity with Israel, with you, with your struggle during this most difficult and pivotal time? Do I repeat the now stale speech I recited to you before, when we first met, about the responsibility Germans of my generation feel to support Israel, and now I can add my deeply held conviction that this sacred responsibility extends to the next generation and the next?

Or do I simply tell you that even as a grandmother of three, twice married and divorced, facing retirement, surrounded by loved ones in the land of your fairytale nightmares, I think of you often and remember you with fondness. All of it, Elephant, all...