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PARTISAN REVIEW
condolence visi t, or a shiva call, to every single victim of terror. They
drive distances, and they usually show up on the first or second day
after the death.
While some people rush to soothe terror victims, others hide, retreat–
ing into their apartments, into silence. I fall somewhere in the middle.
I'll listen to the news and then ignore it. I've come close to a few bombs.
I was walking up Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, toward Ben Yehuda market,
when a bomb exploded there, killing a politician's daughter. The 963, a
bus line that snakes near the breathtaking scenery of the Jordanian bor–
der, was bombed-just at the time I'm often on it. I had postponed my
trip, and the bomb killed the bomber, but no passengers. Everyone in
Israel has stories like this.
With all the close calls, I've never really looked the horror in its face,
never had blood on my arms or shattered glass hit my body. I've never
even been in the home of an actual terror victim . This wou ld be my first
such after-the-bombing visit, and I wasn't sure what I'd find when I
walked in. So I walked around the block nervously, adjusted my shirt,
put my hair back, and tried somehow to look dressier, more appropri–
ate. Then I came back to the apartment that was home to Yelena and
Yulia.
The sisters lived above a noisy mini-market, where bare-chested
workers were standing outside, spraying the sidewalk and themselves in
the horrible heat. The market was doing a brisk business selling soda
and juice to mourners who wanted to walk in with something, anything,
to offer as a balm. I bought a six-pack of something cold. The clerk said
nothing. We both knew what I was doing.
I walked up the stairs to the Nelimov home, a second-floor apartment
painted white like everyone else's in the area, and sat on the porch. I was
afraid to walk in, so I waited .
Red and yellow shirts waved in the occasiona l wind. The dog,
parched, alternately barked and scrounged for water. I wanted to go in,
but was embarrassed . I didn't know them. I could hear Russian, only
Russian, not a word of Hebrew. Outside, a guy who introduced himself
in Hebrew as Yelena's boyfriend-which later turned out to be a far–
fetched description-started to talk to me. After two hours on the
porch, during which he ranted about his economic problems and I sat
quietly, he brought me inside.
I saw a circle of Russian men and women, and next to them a table
piled with the round foods of mourning: eggs, plums, rolls. An elderly
woman with a swollen foot kept trying to talk with me in Russian.
Eventually, I understood that she was the girls' grandmother. 1 also
