Last Stop

30 October 2020 · The One

The second wave came, just as they said it would. In September, on the eve of the High Holidays, the country closed down for the second time. In October things slowly began to open, but the bars stayed shut. And yet, on the night of 30 October, The One was fuller than ever.

The Halloween party was supposed to be a secret. But people's hunger for a night out beat the silence that had held for five months, and the rumour leaked into too many ears in the city. It was a gloomy night. The walls were covered with white cobwebs, hanging skulls and skeletons, flickering candles and blinking orange lamps. Muffled music rolled between the shadows, and laughter and whispers stretched between people as if they were secrets.

Alex sat in the corner of the inner room and scanned the space. He wasn't looking for the party. He was looking for the story happening behind every laugh and every glance. People moved around him, watched each other, laughed, fell silent, waited for the small moment of freedom that seemed impossible these days. In the middle of all that noise he felt detached from the rules – watching, but not caught. Observing the human code hiding beneath the masks and costumes.

Then a loud noise came from the entrance, like a sun exploding inside the darkness. The doors were flung open, white light flooded the walls, and a cold, piercing voice called out:

"Police!"

Alex froze. His heart pounded, his hands shook. Around him people ran in every direction, looking for a way out, trying to melt into the shadows. The whole set fell apart in a single moment. The frightening creatures on the walls had suddenly become the real thing: fear.

"Alex!" someone shouted through the smoke. The voice sounded distant and threatening, and familiar too.

He tried to move, to find a corner to hide in, but everything was fast, loud, unstoppable. About fifteen police officers raided the bar together, as if they had come to arrest the leadership of a terror organisation. Many of the partygoers made it out through the back exit Maor had opened. Among them was Tal, who in a stroke of genius grabbed the cash box, shoved it under his shirt so the police wouldn't get their hands on it, and slipped out onto Mikveh Israel Street, where he vanished among the garages of that chaotic street.

But many were held. The officers collected ID cards, took down details, handed out fines for breaching the regulations. Douglas, one of the staff, swore at them and was taken into custody. Lipitz, another of the owners, went with him in the police car. And Alex, in the background, fired off accusations and insults as if he were standing on the terrace:

"Slaves of the establishment! What's next? You'll arrest us for making love to our own women? How far do you want to control our lives?"

Far away, Natalie watched it all live on mutual friends' stories. She had no idea Alex was there. She only felt the danger that had entered other people's lives, and the secret bonds that grow stronger precisely in moments of chaos.

Mehran, too, in Gaza, saw the video online. And understood that the world they lived in was more connected than they thought – through screens, through small secrets binding people far apart who were facing the same chaos.

The raid made that night a defining moment for Alex. He felt the fear – the living, real kind you can't escape. But also the connection, the friendship and trust that are built in moments when danger is that close. Everyone who was with him in the bar that night was burned into his memory.

And perhaps for the first time he understood that real life isn't measured in rules or masks, but in the ability to choose your own way – even when it runs against the establishment. Standing there, his heart beating wildly and the world dissolving around him, a secret, anti-establishment feeling was born in him: if he stayed true to himself, he could live outside the lines someone else had drawn.

It wasn't just a raid. It was a test. An experience that revealed who he really was: an Alex willing to see the danger, to feel the fear, and still hold on to his humanity, to connection, and to his own private, quiet courage.

November 2020

George Floyd's death hadn't only shaken Natalie. It echoed through political discourse, intensified social tensions in the United States, and deeply affected an election campaign already boiling under the pandemic and the divisions of the Trump era.

On 3 November 2020, while the world was still trembling from the waves of protest, the presidential election was held – a tense battle that reflected exactly the fractures Floyd's death had exposed.

Alex sat in his flat in Jaffa with a bottle of beer in his hand, his eyes fixed on the screen, the numbers moving like a tide. Days of counting. Joe Biden climbing, Donald Trump clinging on. And when the networks finally called it, on Saturday 7 November – 306 electoral votes to 232, and a margin of more than four per cent of the popular vote – Alex leapt to his feet, fist in the air.

"Yes! Finally!" he shouted, and his voice echoed in the empty room.

He hated Trump. The lies, the walls, the contempt for Covid. "Bastard, you deserve this defeat," he muttered, swearing out loud as if Trump could hear him. "He wrecked the world, turned America into a swamp of hatred."

Now, with Biden, Alex saw light. A hope that wrapped around him like sun after a storm. He imagined a better world – less racism, more unity, and maybe even an influence on Israel, where political divisions echoed the American ones.

"It's a sign," he texted Natalie. "Biden will fix what Trump broke. We'll beat the darkness."

In the streets of America they celebrated. People danced, horns blared, and Alex felt part of it – as if this victory, coming against the background of the fractures Floyd had exposed, belonged to him too. To the generation looking for real freedom. But while America tried to heal, the world kept splitting apart.

December 2020

At Hanukkah, the Ben-Gurion family lit candles in front of a laptop screen. Digital connections replaced the warmth of a full room. On the screen were Vitaly's relatives in Toronto and Irina's sister in Kyiv. Flames flickered in parallel in three flats, in three cities and two time zones – in Toronto it was still midday – like a flock of light moving in perfect coordination, every moment reminding them how far apart everyone was.

"Next year in Jerusalem," Vitaly joked, stroking tradition with words like a hand searching for presence.

"Next year anywhere but home," Alex muttered. His eyes wandered across the screen as if looking for a way to escape the walls. He was thinking about Athens – a city where, to his mind, even if the news from there spoke of a lockdown of its own, a little freedom could feel enormous, and the pharmaceutical opportunities were plentiful.

On 24 December, Christmas Eve, the European Union and Britain reached their agreement – the last chapter of Brexit. A free trade deal, with no tariffs and no quotas, that kept goods flowing worth hundreds of billions of pounds a year.

In Gaza, in the Shati camp, under a weak bulb that flickered like a candle, Mehran sat beside his father. News from the world came out of the radio, and they talked about the deal – a broken bridge, a sign of a separation followed by a forced closeness. Ahmed, who always had a book in his hand, explained.

"Look, Mehran, it's not just trade," he said in a soft, confident voice. "It's about control. Britain wanted to leave the union to control its own borders, its fishing, its laws. Now, without tariffs, they keep the goods flowing, but they lose the single market. That's the price of separation."

"Dad, I've been thinking about it," Mehran said quickly, his eyes curious. "It's like a balancing equation in maths. They gain independence, but their businesses will pay – new restrictions on services, on fishing. And the union demanded a level playing field, so they wouldn't lower environmental and labour standards."

Ahmed smiled, proud of the son who had absorbed so much from him – hours of conversation about world politics, economic forces, borders that divide and connect. "Right, habibi. It shows how connected the world is, like a net. If one part breaks, everything shakes. Like here, with us. Except we always live under siege, and they – they chose to separate."

Mehran nodded. His mind worked like a machine, calculating equations of power and fragility. A moment of quiet wisdom in the middle of the crowding, in which a father taught his son to see beyond the walls.

The al-Ghazi family didn't celebrate Hanukkah, of course. But they too had had their festival this year with the same screen: Eid al-Fitr, back in May, celebrated over video calls with the extended family scattered across refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The same inability to be together. Screens that had become gates – gates with no way of carrying real warmth.

"Technology connects us to everyone," Mehran had said then, looking at the screen as if trying to touch every face that appeared in the call windows. "Except the people we actually want to touch."

He had grown used to the distance. It had been his whole life. His fate was to be born in a closed strip of land, because of a complicated political and security situation with Israel. He had no passport, and until now he had never had any way to leave the borders of the Strip.

That summer, in August, he had found himself, several times, among the boys sending incendiary balloons towards Israel, in actions encouraged and led by Hamas, which ruled the Strip. Mehran didn't see them as terror. He saw them as cries for help to the world. He felt that only if they did something the world would hear about, maybe someone would finally listen.

But he also remembered the moment the match flared under the first balloon. A small spark, and with it a spark inside him – warm, dangerous, too sweet. After a few times he stopped going, without explaining to anyone why. He never forgot that spark.

That same August, Maya sent Natalie a video from Nirim: a dry field of thorns turned black, white smoke stretching over the fence, someone filming and swearing quietly. "Another balloon," she wrote. "We're used to it." Natalie sent a broken heart and scrolled on. She didn't know where it had come from. Mehran never knew where his had landed either.