The IDP* Club

An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country’s borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee. (Wikipedia)

The first time Kiryat Shmona received an evacuation order was on Friday, two and a half weeks ago. Though steeped in military history, Kiryat Shmona has a history of resisting evacuation orders. And so I found myself uprooted, displaced, wandering, homeless.

Google’s Bard suggested some prompts; this is what happened in Adobe Firefly.

Home is security, roots, and a place in the heart, head, and reality. And me? My security crumbled, my roots were torn, my heart was broken, and my head sank into thoughts, and the thoughts sank into reflections, and the reflections of the thoughts floated and rose aimlessly in my head. I stared at the ceilings, at the ceiling of the car while waiting for the traffic lights, at the ceiling of the coffee shop, at the ceiling of the children’s room while they were uprooted too from their own room and moved to another one with more concrete and a steel window.

Nothing feels like yours. You are a guest in the lives of others.

Everyone is more than pleasant. Considerate, encouraging, asking, interested, “What do you need? What do you feel like? What suits you? Make yourself at home!”

I don’t need anything, I don’t feel like anything, nothing suits me, and I can’t feel at home.

It’s really not their fault; it’s my fault that I planted roots, built a place that felt like home, and settled in it in the homeliest way possible. But now it’s not mine anymore. It’s a tool in others hands. Maybe they will spare it, and maybe not, but it has lost its security and its homeliness. It’s just distant walls right now, for now just walls.

Google’s Bard suggested some prompts; this is what happened in Adobe Firefly.

Right now, I’m trying to float in Pardes Hanna. I washed dishes at a coffee shop in the evening to boost my morale; my morale went up because I was busy washing dishes, stacking them, and placing them all in place, like a children’s game of zero to three of slipping shapes into holes in a box. Locals laughed outside, and I dropped my expectations and focused on removing garlic butter from stainless steel trays. Activity calms the thoughts, and box games even more!

A Watercolor painting I made at the coffee shop in Pardes Hana

It’s nice here in Pardes Hanna; there are no alarms. There is a nice Falafel that scolds you for ordering their Falafel, not their SABICH. The streams here are intermittent. We went to run on the shore in the morning Between a strategic facility of the Israeli electric company And the strategic bunker of the prime minister’s neighbor. A plane passes every once in a while. After all, war is war.

Google’s Bard suggested some prompts; this is what happened in Adobe Firefly.

This post was translated from The original Hebrew with Microsoft Copilot, Grammarly, and Google Bard. I'll be happy to know if you have any suggestions or corrections.

Thanks.