Tea, Lemon and Old Books

12 March 2020 · The night of the announcement

Evening fell over Tel Aviv and swallowed the neon lights, leaving behind streets trembling with a global anxiety that had been seeping through every screen for weeks. Long days of dizzying headlines: a virus that had burst out of China like a hungry ghost, travelled through crowded airports and busy restaurants, and turned a simple breath into poison. Italy was drowning in collapsing hospitals, New York was bracing for the wave, and the markets were plunging.

But in Israel the panic was sharper, more personal. Only a few weeks earlier the indictment against the prime minister in Cases 1000, 2000 and 4000 had been filed in court, and the country had spent a year stuck between election campaigns – the third had ended just ten days before, once again without a winner. Pundits shouted in the studios, protesters stood at junctions, and the headlines about cigars, champagne and deals with media owners hung in the air like the smell of gunpowder. And now, facing an enemy you couldn't see, one that crossed borders without a passport, all of that suddenly seemed almost trivial – a last exhale before the lungs are taken.

In the evening, while the streets still smelled of fried falafel and the nervousness of car horns, Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on every screen in Israel. Televisions in living rooms, phones on buses, small screens in trembling hands. He stood behind the podium, the Israeli flag behind him, his face deeply lined. In his eyes – the same eyes that had won over millions of voters – was the weariness of a man who had fought for years for his seat, and was now required to fight an enemy that was not afraid of bullets and did not hear orders.

He looked larger than life, as always, but something in his face had broken. A foreign note of uncertainty trembled in the thundering voice. The same soundtrack rose from every living room in the country.

"Citizens of Israel," he began, and spoke of a global pandemic, of a challenge without precedent, of the need to act now. Then came the decisions: schools and universities would close. Everyone returning from abroad would go into quarantine. Gatherings would be limited. He called for an emergency national unity government and, in the language of generals, promised that we would get through this too. "Together," he said. "In unity."

The words hung in the air and seeped in through the skin. Alex watched from his small flat in Jaffa, a cup of cold coffee trembling in his hand, his eyes narrowed like a soldier spotting a trap in the field. He could already picture the streets emptying, his friends locked in their rooms, the air itself becoming something you had to fight.

He remembered the protests, the "Bibi is a criminal" signs, the commentators who took the cases apart like a simple riddle – luxury gifts in exchange for favours, deals with journalists, regulation turned into a commodity. And now this man, who in Alex's eyes cared first and foremost about staying out of prison, was holding the wheel of everyone's fate?

"He looks like a captain who forgot where he put the key," he muttered to himself. But there was no contempt in his voice. Only raw fear, like passengers hearing the deck creak beneath their feet.

In Gaza, Mehran watched the same broadcast on the satellite television that picked up the Israeli channels. The signal shuddered like heavy breathing. His Hebrew, built from years of TV series and secret support for Hapoel, was better than his school English. Fatma sat beside him, her hands clenched on her skirt, her eyes full of the worry of a nurse who knows how fragile the hospitals here are. Ahmed, from the other room, shouted into the air: "Why is the devil on the screen?!" – just to have said it.

"They're locking themselves in," Mehran said with dark humour. But the laugh caught in his throat. "Wait, seriously – what's going to happen to us?"

Because in Gaza, too, the virus would not tell one fence from another. And the Israeli instructions reminded them of their own siege: permanent, suffocating, like sand getting into your lungs.

In Tel Aviv, Natalie watched with her parents. Vitaly muttered something about how "the Russians will manage, they always survive", and Irina shook her head, her hands gripping the edge of the table: "This isn't politics, it's science. But who's going to believe him?"

When Netanyahu finished, Natalie felt a double jolt. Not only the pandemic, which had opened like a crack in solid ground, but the knowledge that the wheel was in the hands of someone whose cases still hovered over him like a cloud. Leadership, she thought, isn't always a shield. Sometimes it's just a shadow that hides the cracks.

The screens went dark, but the instructions stayed, like invisible chains tightening around the neck. The small world of Israel shrank into crowded rooms and trembling homes. It was the beginning of a new season – a season of disconnection, in which freedom became isolation, and hope a tiny spark on a blank screen.

The night after

In the two-room flat in Jaffa, rented with the money he had saved as a combat soldier, the screen flickered on Alex's face like an open wound. The street beneath the window was terrifyingly quiet. Only a distant ambulance siren, and then another.

The phone rang and cut through the silence. Neta, again. Her name glowed on the screen like a fire that promises warmth and brings pain.

"Alex, I'm scared," she said the moment he answered. Her voice cracked. "Everything's closing. Can I come over? Just for tonight, please. I can't be alone with this fear."

"No," he said, and surprised himself with the weight of the word. His voice was steady, but stretched to its limit. "You chose to be scared alone. So stay alone."

He hung up. His hand was shaking. The silence afterwards was suffocating. He still loved her, and he was angry with her too – for deciding to leave because of the uniform, for the pain she left behind like a mine that went off again every night. The contradiction fought inside his body. The pills he had brought back from his service – white Adderall that speeds the pulse, blue Xanax that slows it almost to a stop – softened the gap for a while, turned the storm into a whisper, but left a bitter taste of ash on his tongue.

He forced the window open and breathed in Jaffa's cool air, trying to feel the freedom he had promised himself. But the night was heavy. This new war, he understood, would not respect borders or recognise uniforms. It would only take, and take, and leave him trapped with himself.

In the Shati camp, Fatma came home from al-Shifa Hospital in the middle of the night, her eyes tired as dry wells. She set her bag on the floor.

"We don't have cases yet," she said. "But it's a matter of time. And if it gets in…"

She didn't finish. There was no need.

Ahmed shrugged, trying to sow some hope. "Maybe the blockade will protect us this time. If the world is dangerous, we're already isolated. Maybe this time it works in our favour. Allah is with us!"

Mehran looked at them, his body tense as a spring. "We're not protected," he said quietly, in a voice shaking with anger. "We're imprisoned. If it gets in, there's nowhere to run. There are hardly any ventilators, the electricity comes and goes. There's only sand and fear."

The Israeli lockdown was a choice, he thought. Temporary, like a lock you can open. Gaza's siege was permanent. And this virus threatened to turn everything into a prison inside a prison.

His parents exchanged looks. Too clever for his age, their son. Floating above his friends, more interested in numbers and football than in girls. They weren't afraid he would break the rules – they only wanted life to be easier for him, in a place where being different meant being in danger.

In the Ben-Gurion home, Natalie sat on the old sofa, its cushions sunken like pits. The light of the screen flooded her young face, her large eyes that had already seen too many nights of endless scrolling. Vitaly held a glass of vodka and Irina sat in front of her laptop, but neither of them was drinking or working. They were all just staring.

"It's like a horror film," Natalie whispered.

"They always come back," said Vitaly. It wasn't clear whether he meant viruses, trials, or anything else that threatened to swallow them.

The night was long. Natalie tossed in bed and texted her friends – "You OK?" – and got shaky replies: "Scared." "What do we do now?" She felt loneliness creeping in, and knew that her small rebellion – the older guys, the forbidden nights – would now turn into something more internal. More dangerous. Because there was nowhere to run, except into the screens.

14 March 2020 · The second announcement

Two days later, on Saturday night, came the second announcement. Restaurants, bars, cafés, malls, gyms – all of it was closing. Gatherings of no more than ten people.

Alex sat in front of the screen and felt his dream being devoured. He had planned to become a bartender. To breathe the city's nights, to drown pain in cocktails and the laughter of strangers, to save for a year behind a bar and then, maybe, enrol at Tel Aviv University. That plan, which was mostly a ready answer to his mother's questions, was now postponed indefinitely. In one sentence from the prime minister the doors had closed, and he was left in the flat with cheap furniture, the smell of stale coffee, and a pulse that threatened to burst.

Football had stopped too. Less than a month earlier, on 17 February, he had stood in the away end at Teddy facing twenty-two thousand Beitar fans, when Altman put away a penalty in the ninth minute and Hapoel held on to the one–nil to the end. He remembered the silence that fell over the stadium after the goal, the silence of twenty-two thousand people, and their own songs, a few hundred reds, rolling through it alone. Now that silence was everywhere, and no one was singing inside it.

15 March 2020 · The day after

The sun rose over Tel Aviv like a traitor. A warm, yellow light that promised an ordinary day and met empty streets, shuttered shops, and people hurrying along, some in improvised masks, eyeing each other with the suspicion of wounded animals.

Alex went out to buy groceries, an empty backpack on his shoulder. He passed a closed restaurant, its menu still hanging in the window like a flag of surrender, the smell of fried oil still lingering. He bought milk, bread, a few tins of tuna – things that last, like ammunition. At the till, the woman behind the mask whispered: "It's the end of the world, isn't it?"

He only nodded.

At home he sat by the window and watched the city shrink. "The whole world has actually stopped," he thought. "Breathing has become dangerous. Practically against the law." According to the media, every breath carried a risk. And he didn't know what to believe.

In the Shati camp the sun burned as always, but the alleys were quieter than usual. Mehran went out to help his father prepare lessons for the neighbourhood children, but the parents had already called to cancel. "I'd rather my son didn't walk around the streets right now, with this corona," one of the mothers said. "And there's no money for lessons either. We have to save." The children vanished into crowded homes.

"We'll get through this," said Ahmed. But the words sounded weak.

In the Ben-Gurion home, Natalie woke to a call from Maya, her friend from Instagram who lived in Nirim, a kibbutz right by the Gaza fence. "Everything's closed. That's it, the world is screwed." Then, with a tired laugh: "For us, staying home is a regular drill. Every Red Alert – run for the safe room. Now the whole country's in the safe room." They talked for hours, building virtual walls against the loneliness. Vitaly came back from the supermarket with full bags. "Like in a war," he said, and his hands were shaking. Irina was already working from home, her fingers racing over the keyboard. Natalie scrolled through Twitter into the small hours, reading theories that grew wilder and wilder, and felt the world closing on her like a trap.

22 March 2020 · Gaza

On Sunday morning Fatma came home from the night shift, and her face was pale.

"Two cases," she said. "Two who came back from Pakistan through Egypt. They're in quarantine in Rafah."

She said nothing more. Ahmed didn't ask. In the flat there was only the ticking of the clock and the breathing of two little girls who hadn't woken up yet.

The next day, 23 March, Mehran turned sixteen.

The whole world was in lockdown. People were stranded in countries not their own as flights were cancelled everywhere, football had stopped almost everywhere, and artists performed from their living rooms in front of a camera. Sixteen is not just any age. It's the moment you suddenly feel grown up, the official passage from child to young man. Mehran celebrated it at home, with his parents and with Jana and Reem, in front of a small cake and a single candle.

April 2020

April arrived, and spring bloomed across the world like a poisoned rash – colourful flowers hiding thorns. The numbers became an abstract poetry of disaster: millions infected around the world, more than a thousand dead a day in the United States, hospitals in Madrid full to bursting, and ventilators howling like wolves in the night.

Alex, in his modest flat in Jaffa, started dealing pills to pay the rent. Nothing serious – Adderall and Xanax for friends who needed some chemical help with lockdown anxiety. He didn't see himself as a criminal. Just as an entrepreneur in a pharmaceutical economy where everyone needed something to hold on.

"It's not natural, Mum, I'm telling you. What's happening here isn't natural," he said at a family dinner, which had become the only time they all came together. "Viruses don't just jump from animals to people like that. Someone in a lab–"

"Alex." Irina cut him off, and her voice carried the full weight of someone who grew up on Soviet conspiracy theories. "Science is science. Viruses mutate. That's how evolution works."

"But the timing, the coincidences–"

"The virus doesn't care about timing," she answered, steady as a rock in a stormy sea. "It doesn't work to our schedule."

The conversation moved on, but it left ripples of doubt behind it. Alex felt his freedom shrinking, like tied wings. And in his heart a decision had already taken root: when the vaccine came, if it came – he would not take it.

Natalie, caught between her brother's suspicion and her mother's rationality, found herself scrolling Twitter until three in the morning. The platform had become a battlefield in an information war, where truth and fiction looked exactly alike, and every expert had a voice equal to every inventor of conspiracies. She wandered there like a nomad in a digital desert, searching for an oasis of truth, and every scroll only deepened the pit. Sleep came at last like a heavy relief.

In Gaza, Mehran experienced the lockdown differently. Like a bird in a cage that had long since forgotten the sky. The family flat had never felt spacious, and now it became an entire universe: bedroom, makeshift classroom with rickety chairs, a desk piled with photocopied books, and a shelter from the world outside.

Ahmed's informal school, emptied in mid-March, actually filled up again after two weeks of panic, as families looked for a way to educate their children while the institutions were shut. Those who could still pay, paid with whatever they had. The flat filled with neighbourhood children learning maths, Arabic literature and basic English, from textbooks photocopied so many times that the letters had almost worn away. Tea, lemon and old books. That was the whole world.

Mehran became his father's assistant, and in secret solved maths problems he had taught himself from PDF files he downloaded. His abilities impressed even Ahmed, who had taught high school for fifteen years, until salaries that arrived in halves, when they arrived at all, pushed him out of the school. Since then the living room had been his classroom.

"You could study engineering at any university in the world," Ahmed told him on one of their evening walks along the beach – the only open space they had left. "If the world lets you."

The condition hung in the air, like the lights of Ashkelon glowing to the north, beyond the fence.

Ahmed pointed at the lights. "And past Ashkelon, another hour's drive north – Jaffa. My grandfather, your great-grandfather, left there on a boat in forty-eight. All we have left of him is one photograph, by the clock tower." He was quiet for a moment. "He left once. And since then we don't leave."

The ability was there. Geography made it almost impossible. European universities offered scholarships, but no way to reach the campus. American institutions offered online courses, but demanded a stable internet connection that Gaza could not guarantee.

On that walk, Mehran's phone briefly caught an Israeli cellular network spilling over the fence. He quickly opened his hidden folder – old Hapoel highlights, from the season that had frozen halfway through. Players in red running in front of full stands, as if nothing had happened.

"What are you watching?" Ahmed asked, curious and suspicious in equal measure.

"Study videos," Mehran lied, and the words slipped out of him like water between his fingers. "Maths tutorials."