ON LOCATION

Real stories, in real time

THE SCENT OF WAR

In this new series of literary dispatches, I will bring you stories written in a particular place, in time as real as I can translate into near- instant writing. My goal is to preserve true moments that might otherwise disappear or sublimate into something intangible. They are selective, of course, capturing something essential but not complete. Snapshots of a future memory, written on my iPhone

So here is my first such reportage - from Israel.

June 2026.

I booked a short holiday, staying on a kibbutz Airbnb, bucolic calm with nearby swimming pool. Horses, lemon trees. I picked a time that promised a temporary absence of war. All (or most) sides of all current Middle East conflicts were busy negotiating or planning on breaking/keeping various ceasefires. All nervously glancing in the direction of the most recent and constantly self-reversing update from the world’s least reliable commander in chief. I figured I’d have my ten days of relative calm.

Because in this new era of on/off warfare, life returns to normal as soon as the security app on your phone informs you that missiles flying in your direction have been intercepted.

This happened in the early morning hours of my first night on the kibbutz. The phone began to howl, a warning to get close to a protected area. For me, this meant going down an elegant flight of stone steps into my landlord’s part of the house, where they have a safe room.

His wife was stretched out on the bed, he was in a chair by a computer. We were all in our night clothes. Intimacy with strangers. During the first alarm, we made polite small talk. During the second, fifteen minutes later, my landlord asked: Which song would you like to hear? I said I didn’t mind, so he turned on some North African background music and sang very soulfully into his microphone. The next song was one I did choose and this security situation was now an intimate singalong.

Did we sing to drown out the sirens? The fear? I discovered that I’m good at dissociating from both. I met two old timers by the pool the next day. They live in very old little houses without security rooms. I’m supposed to run to the nearest shelter, one said. But I just stay in bed and send the Iranians or Houthis my best regards.

As soon as the war sort of stopped, the very next day - and yes, that’s a thing - I took the train to Haifa to visit an old friend. She is 97 and has seen and experienced pretty much everything. Her perspective on life always cheers me up.

On the way there, a much younger but still elderly Russian speaking lady (she later dramatically confessed to being 80) was causing a commotion, looking for someone to help her find her train. She was also going to Haifa, where she now lives. Some of her hair was platinum blonde, blue eyes under bright green eye shadow, orange lipstick. She wore a small cross hidden under a pretty blouse, on a cheap plastic chain. She spoke very elegant Russian with a Ukrainian accent, and only Russian. She addressed everyone in her own language, and although most didn’t understand her, everyone was helpful, especially very young people who gave up their seats and helped with her rucksack and cane. My help was hardly needed but she insisted on declaring a deep friendship between us, telling me her entire life story several times over. It was part tragedy, part comedy, part sharp-tongued reportage. In almost every sentence, she returned to stark memories of her home town, Mikolayiv, as if she was still living there. As if her family home was still standing. She spoke of the long dead as if they were more alive than the living. Her voice full of tears and laughter, like a grand actress. She spoke of the beautiful convent she visits in Israel, for my soul. When we changed trains and a crowd carried me to another section, I allowed it. I was exhausted.

At the very end of that day, having returned to the kibbutz feeling oddly younger, my train acquaintance, now lost, was still on my mind. I googled the name of the home town she had mentioned at least twenty times, and found that ‘During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, large parts of Mykolaiv were destroyed by Russian attacks. Mykolaiv holds the honorary title "Hero City of Ukraine".’

This very peaceful, very sunny day had been infused with all kinds of war. War memories, war survivors, war heroes, war victims, war fears and a surreal sense that war and peace are not so much opposites as each other’s ingredients, like a heavy perfume with hidden, contradictory notes.

My holiday reading on this trip was CLOSING TIME by Joseph Heller, in which he returns to the war heroes/victims from CATCH-22, now living as old men in a time of peace which barely remembers their war, even though it (the peace era) owes its life to it.

On the day of the alarm, the security app on my phone had competed for my attention with Ring updates from my London home. As the sirens wailed, I distracted myself with two foxes who at that very moment entered my garden, curling up under our cherry tree. They looked peaceful. From a distance. They, too, have their prey.