Waking up in Sderot is exposure to a terrible reality

It is my second month in Sderot, Israel, volunteering in the Sderot Media Center and experiencing life with Qassam rockets. In the beginning, I expected to start the day waking up to the sound of my alarm clock, as I would do anywhere else. But here in Sderot, the mornings are a little different. Only today I woke up to the sound of the “code red” siren installed in the city to warn residents of impending rocket attacks. From the time the siren sounds until the Qassam rocket lands, Sderot residents have 15 seconds to escape to a bomb shelter.

It is the reason that most Sderot families sleep together on the first floor of their homes, to be as close as possible to their built-in bomb shelter when the siren sounds and the Qassam falls.

I was upstairs on the second floor when I heard the siren, followed by the boom of the rocket fall. I simply lay in bed, praying that everything would be all right. With the end of Ramadan last month, Hamas and Fatah militants are once again intensifying the rocket fire against Sderot. There would be no more sleep for me that morning or for anyone else in city.

For the rest of the day, my mind remained unusually alert. After the siren in the morning, another rocket landed in the afternoon, hitting no one but simply continuing the intense rhythm of the day. I am experiencing what Sderot residents have experienced 365 days of the year for the past seven years. For these Israelis, living with Qassam rockets has become a daily routine. For me, it is abnormal and terrifying.

When I speak with Sderot residents, they tell me that they plan their day around the Qassam rockets. A trip to the bank or food market requires a special thought-out route. Sharon, a mother of five, explained to me that a simple trip to the grocery is not so simple.

“I have to plan my driving route according to the location of the bomb shelters along the way,” said Sharon. “If a Qassam rocket falls, I need to at least feel I have somewhere to escape.”

Although the Hamas and Fatah militants in Gaza cannot aim the Qassam rockets at specific targets in Sderot and the western Negev, they are able to time the launching of the Qassam fire. Therefore most of the rocket attacks take place in the mornings when parents drop their children off at school and in the afternoon when school lets out and parents come to pick their children up.

Knowing approximately the Qassam rocket routine does nothing to help alleviate the shock and trauma when a Qassam rocket hits. As we approached the evening I finally began to relax, hoping that the alerts and rockets would be over for the night. This is of course the thought of a newcomer in Sderot. Those who live here know that the rocket attacks can happen anytime, even at night.

Tonight was not an exception. Just when I think it’s over, we find ourselves racing to film the evening scene of a rocket attack on a public housing complex near the center of town. The darkness of the night simply adds confusion to the situation as ambulances and medical personnel rush to the scene. The residents of the complex have evacuated their homes, littering the street. Frightened children group together. A mother clings to her baby, whispering words of comfort. The old men and women look on with an air of despair.

There is a gaping hole in the roof of the complex where the Qassam rocket blasted through. Soon a police officer locates the rocket in the building and carries it out. The rocket shell is intact and although it is on the smaller side, the damage and the terror it has wreaked in the past few minutes is way beyond the scope of its size.

Although miraculously no one was hurt or injured, several were hospitalized for shock and trauma. Even after the police have cleared the area and the ambulances leave, people remain sitting on the sidewalk of the street, afraid to enter their homes. One mother asks me: “How do you tell a child to go to sleep after something like this?”

I don’t answer because I can’t answer. Knowing the terror scene that I witnessed tonight is not a bad dream or nightmare, but the reality Sderot residents live through on daily basis, makes it impossible to say anything rational. To begin the day with a red-code siren and to end it with a rocket attack is a Qassam nightmare that the people here long to wake up from.

Anav Silverman is a 2004 Calais High School graduate. She works in the Sderot Media Center and is a student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.