AVIYA KUSHNER
What Do You Do with Yourself After
a Terror Attack?
O
N THE STREET OF HOPE IN SOUTH TEL AVIV, long lines of Russ–
ian women in high heels and full makeup walk toward a house.
The lines look endless. It's two days after a suicide bomber at
the Dolphinarium dance club killed twenty-one teenagers and injured
120
more in a nasty, nail-studded blast, and the air in the city is thick
and hot, the street sticky and alert.
Radios blare from the shops, broadcasting lists of names and ages.
Every few minutes the lists are interrupted by a three-part routine: short
eulogies delivered by siblings, followed by mothers' formless wails and
the rhythmic shoveling of dirt on new graves . On the street of hope,
which runs through a poor area known for decades as "the neighbor–
hood of hope," the broadcast has personal meaning. This place, famous
for spicy kebabs, Middle Eastern music, and new immigrants, has just
lost more residents to terror.
I watch the women walk down the street for almost an hour before
deciding to follow them . The lines lead to a wall filled with black-and–
white signs of mourning in both Hebrew and Russian. Each sign says
the same thing: "Yelena and Yulia elimov, aged eighteen and sixteen.
Sisters killed in the tragedy."
I had read about these two sisters and seen photos of them on televi–
sion, but suddenly, watching those long lines snake stoically to what I
now understood was their apartment, I wanted to get to know Yelena
and Yulia. I wanted to see a bit of their world.
"VISITING AFTER A TERROR ATTACK says a lot about you ." That's what
an old creased man said, sweeping the sidewalk in front of the syna–
gogue near the Nelimov apartment. He knew something I was about to
discover. The first mourners are often strangers .
It
starts with the social
worker on the late shift, the cab driver the state pays to take you home
from the hospital. Sometimes it starts earlier, with the ambulance driver,
the emergency technician at the scene. Then, after it's definitely a death,
hordes of strangers come. There are people in this country who pay a
