AVIYA KUSHNER
417
noticed six fourteen-year-old boys-friends of the girls' brother-scur–
rying around, bringing drinks. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see
a second room-a bedroom-and inside it a dozen teenage girls in plat–
form shoes and close-fitting jeans. Eventually, the girls' mother and
brother noticed me. Yelena's "boyfriend" told them I was from a news–
paper. The mother nodded, and got up. I followed her. We went into the
bedroom Alex shared with his sister. Yulia's dresser was covered with
memorial candles. Posters of actors and rock stars covered the walls. I
tried not to look at them, because I wanted to listen. I had never thought
about how a mother discovers that her children have been blown up.
On Friday night, the first of June, Ella Nelimov went out with a
friend. Her daughters said they were going to a dance club in Tel Aviv.
The girls put on their homemade anklets and dressed themselves up to
party. They were friends, the sisters, who liked to go out together. A sin–
gle mother who is the sole support of her three children and her mother,
Ella was happy for the break. In slow but grammatically correct
Hebrew, she said, "I was driving around with a friend, and I decided to
turn on the radio. Just like that, just to see what was happening. I heard
that there was a bomb at a club."
Ella didn't panic too much. Bombs go off several times a week; many
are detonated without harm to bystanders. "On the radio, they said in
five minutes, they'd tell the audience which club." So Ella and her friend
kept driving. "Then they said a discotheque-Dolphinarium."
Ella called Alex at home. He said there were no names yet, so she
picked him up and drove to the hospital nearest the club. They thought
they'd recognize friends there, maybe someone who knew about the
girls.
But no one did. "So we went on to another hospital, Ichilov Hospi–
tal," Ella recounted. "They also had no names. They showed me four
pictures of girls they couldn't identify, scary pictures. I didn't recognize
my girls. They said you should go to another hospital, to Abu Kabir."
Ella and Alex reached Abu Kabir, their third hospital of the night, at
four in the morning. There, they were asked questions like, What did
they look like? What were they wearing? What was their hair like, and
their eyes? Did they wear earrings?
At six in the morning Ella went downstairs to look at the bodies.
There wasn't much to identify. A hospital worker handed Ella two plas–
tic bags. Each contained an anklet handmade by one of her daughters–
all that was left of Yelena and Yulia.
