"Israel must be wiped off the map"
- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
We have mushrooms growing on our skyline.
Above us, stealth bombers clear their throats like speakers at college podiums and drop bombs that seem to be carried down to earth by squadrons of angels, guiding them with holy precision. The ground underneath our feet shudders and lurches and twists. It struggles like a prisoner of war on a torture rack.
Have you ever heard the whistle of a bomb as it drops towards a target?
Have you ever heard what a Jewish synagogue sounds like when a bomb takes part in a prayer meeting?
The sound is first met with silence and a few bowed heads.
And then screams and concrete bits puff out from underneath it like confetti in a ticker-tape parade.
There was a strange kind of snow in her hair. It was was cold and ivory-soap colored, but when Adina touched it with her fingers it crumbled like chalk and made her hands look as if she had been playing with blackboard erasers.
The snow continued to fall, unaware that it was unorthodox.
Someone up in heaven was tearing up teddy bears and sprinkling their cotton guts all over Adina's city. Smiling, Adina lifted her face to the sky and felt the cotton-snow brush up against her face like the wings of doves cooing and strutting in synagogue squares. She spun slowly in a circle and her dress allowed the drifts of snow to take a peek at her legs.
It was so peaceful.
No more airplanes making artificial thunder in the sky.
No more bombs shaking the earth by it's hair.
Adina, still smiling, decided that seeing the town in it's new fur coat of cotton-snow would be a pretty sight indeed, and headed down the street. She walked delicately in her bare feet and tried to avoid the rubble spread across the road. In some places, she was forced to climb over chunks of concrete and asphalt with mangled rebar sticking out like the roots of uprooted garden weeds.
In some places, there were crumpled cars to dodge and climb around as well.
They all looked like cattle lying in butcher's yards with engine oil spurting out of slit throats.
At the edges, her dress became a little smudged.
Eventually, Adina came to her family's place of worship – a tired old building with it's windows bleeding soot and all it's insides scooped out like jack-o'-lanterns glop. Her footprints were left behind as she walked towards a bench in front of the synagogue but the wind came along in lukewarm, smoky bursts every so often and swept them aside like a chain-smoking janitor pushing a broom through the city. Adina laid on the bench with her face towards the sky and watched the cotton-snow flutter earthwards.
She had read in a book that children would sometimes catch snowflakes on their tongues.
When she tried this, Adina found the snow was bitter and tasted like cereal box cardboard.
This sort of snow was meant only for decoration, it seemed.
But she still loved it.
We hold our children close to our breasts and smell their hair and whisper into their ears. In the skies, there is a traffic jam due to of all the prayers rising to God from the city like skeletal hot-air balloons. It is a wonder that all those bombers can fly through and around these airborne supplications.
Maybe all of our prayers are getting caught in the engines and spattering into the windshields of those airplanes like high-flying seagulls.
Maybe all of our prayers have turned into ground beef by rotors and propellers.
It doesn't matter.
We'll just keep making more.
Although as the bombs fall and turn us into ash plumes, we can't help but wonder if perhaps God needs to replace his hearing aid...
The city has either had it's voice-box torn out or is suffering from laryngitis.
Adina wondered if she is the only person inside of it.
The idea was a romantic one and she decided to explore her new playground a little further. She waved goodbye to the slumped over synagogue with shadows standing in the doorway like homeless men using makeshift urinals and headed further down the street.
She didn't get very far though.
Because she discovered that she was not completely alone.
In the middle of the street there was a circle of people, lying in fetal positions and as still as Roman statues striking poses in city centers. As Adina walked closer, she saw that their skin looked like whale blubber and their clothes were stale-crust stiff and charred. It looked as if a doctor had come along and performed free abortions and had left all the leftover fetuses strewn across the road.
Adina knelt beside one: a woman.
Her lips were salt-shriveled snails.
In her hands there was a burnt copy of the Torah.
All these nuclear blasts make the air chilly.
They also burn patterns onto the skin of any woman wearing lace, like henna tattoos.
We realize now that there is no chance of survival. We realize that we should have taken the hint when the Nazis loaded us up in concentration camps and baked us into neat little pots of ash and filled out lungs with mustard gas so that they looked like puffed up IV bags.
Now, Jerusalem is nothing more than a burn barrel.
All we can do is stand around it, warm our hands, and wait for death to tap us on the shoulder.
Adina stood up.
She turned away from the circle of corpses and began humming a song.
Nothing could stifle her good mood, not even prune-shriveled neighbors with skin like black leather motorcycle jackets.
Because today it was snowing.
Today there was snowfall in Israel.
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139,556 Literary Works • 672,608 Reviews
A really great story. It's so realistic. And Joe, by putting that much "m"s in your review you are just cheating to make that a review.
About the story, I can see that it is greatly detailed and was very interesting. This description was the best,
This description really depitcs the realisticness of that story.
But I found one mistake,
This should be 'fatal'
So, great work again.
Good luck.
Hello Kylan,
I must say that this story should live amongst those white dots that call themselves stars. Maybe then they'll learn what it truly means to shine. You've kept me hooked from the beginning to the end like you always do.
This is a lovely piece of imagery and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
The title that you used is magnificent, and the way you weave aftermath through the perils of war is exceptional. You just have this way of writing that will go down in history, I'm sure of it. Well I'm sure you don't want to hear my compliments all day because believe me darling I can go on forever.
Fab Job,
The One and Only
-Angel
I'm going to try to ignore some grammer mistakes... but a few might seep into here.
"Have you ever heard what a Jewish synagogue sounds like when a bomb takes part in a prayer meeting?"
I've never heard of a synagogue that wasn't Jewish. I've also never heard what it sounds like when a bomb takes part in a prayer meeting. I've never actually heard anybody use the term "prayer meeting" before: maybe you mean, "services" or "yeshiva".
You have many metaphors or references to non-Israeli, Western things here which disproves the authenticity of the story. For example: "jack-o'-lanterns glop" is not relevant to Israel, as they don't celebrate Halloween.
Another thing: the section that starts with, "We hold our children close to our breasts..." doesn't feel authentic at all. First off, it's obviously an orthodox person saying this, or otherwise a highly spiritual secular person. Either way, if this is a person speaking, then I suggest you change the entire style of this section, because it sounds way too much like the third-person narrative you've introduced us to. Many of the things they say, like "airborne supplications" and "Maybe all of our prayers are getting caught in the engines and spattering into the windshields of those airplanes like high-flying seagulls" are way too awkward, practical and, well, weird for an Israeli person to say, even in Hebrew. And even if I suspend my Israeli knowledge, I feel as if nobody would say something like this.
"It looked as if a doctor had come along and performed free abortions and had left all the leftover fetuses strewn across the road." This is an interesting revelation, and yet very implausible from the point of view of a little girl.
"In her hands there was a burnt copy of the Torah." I agree with Sam: it should be "the Siddur", which is in book form, wheras the Torah is a big, fat scroll.
---
Kylan, usually I'm really impressed with your stuff, but this just didn't cut it. Sometimes it seems like you try too hard to find metaphores, allusions: this is way too much of a mishmash of words, cultures, to be a great story. Your main character is supposed to be a little girl. How little, it's hard to tell: she seems so oblivious to the tragedy that I think she couldn't be older than three years old, yet she walks and thinks and has these strange, sophisticated ways of thinking about things. Which is another point: you have to stick with one point of view. When you say that someone in heaven was tearing up teddy bears, etc., it seems like a third-person specific point of view, like you're sort of jumping into Adina's head. Yet later, you said that the city might be suffering from laryngitis. That's smart, but if it's from Adina's point of view then it's very unbelievable. Stick to one POV--don't get all over the place. This doesn't count for the "We..." part, because that's sort of a break from the Adina narrative, though you should definitely revise those as well.
Overall, I didn't like this too much. It was smart, but it was all over the place too. I'm also Israeli, so I might've carried a little bit of cultural criticism into the crit, too. PM me if you have any questions or need any help.
Absolutely shiver-inducing. I am no one to critique, I just wanted to say that I loved all of it... the imagery, the perspective.
Adina is perfect because she has simultaneously an innocence about her... and a very hard heart ("Nothing could stifle her good mood"), something I imagine would be common to a kid living through such horrors.
I may re-read this and see if I have anything to add, but for right now... amazing stuff!
Kyyyyylan!
Oh, dear, it appears that the doorway to my heart is somewhere in Jerusalem. -_- Your language, as usual, is beautiful--and this whole story had a way of taking gritty events and making them poetic. I'd be perfectly happy to sit back and watch you crank out things for the rest of my life. You're just that good. ^_~
PAGAN LESSONS
I know the least about Jerusalem as a city, but you referred to a few things that were blatantly Western--a teddy bear, Halloween and Jack o' Lanterns. When you're writing something set in a foreign place, even though it's you writing and not someone of that culture, you have to look at it through that lens. If you're not sensitive to culture and context, it ends up sounding a lot like Mystery Science Theater. And though that's good for a laugh, it's not so good for making a point.
MISERY LOVES COMPANY
I think the strangest thing about this piece, perhaps, is that it's lacking a Foreign Other--we don't know who to blame for the teddy-bear snow and the burning synagogues and all of that jazz. Who's attacking them? Persians? If so, how do they avoid West Jerusalem, or do they go ahead and bomb the Palestinians, too? And for what reason?
Though you're telling it through a child's eyes, it's important to keep in mind the paradigm thing that I mentioned earlier. Kids aren't blissfully unaware of everything. Even though I tend to watch my BBC in solitude, my brothers know all about Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad and bin Laden, just from grossly mythologized playground reports. If you're going for the post-apocalyptic fairy-tale feel (which I kind of got from this), you're going to want to go for the clearly imagined--the kid stuff. Who's attacking them, and how much does Adina know about them?
NIT-PICKS
I always love watching what you do with metaphor, but sometimes there are a few strange ones.
It sounds a lot like nothing, because all of the people are dead. It's different if you were talking about a land-based bomb, but here it sounds like an air strike.
This is a weird metaphor because explosions tend to go in, not out. If something were pulling at the Earth--giant suction cups sent from Iran--then this might be a different story. It's a cool line, just not including bombs.
I'm having trouble envisioning this, because traditional Torahs are in scroll form--so they fall apart a lot easier, because they don't really have a cover. They're also huge and really awkward to open. If you want to keep this imagery, go on and describe it further, so that we know what kind of Torah you have in mind.
__
Thanks for the read, Kylan! You are awesome sauce, as usual. ^_^ Let me know if you have any questions.
Ooh, just the sort of thing I like! A treatise on something that might/could happen or "has" happened.
Let's see what we've got, shall we?
Grammatical Line-By-Line
The bold "it's" are used wrong in these sentences. "It's" is a contraction meaning "it is"--you want its for the possessive here. I think I got all of them...but proofread again just to make sure.
Make one paragraph; your second line will still have the effect you're looking for if it's part of the earlier paragraph, and they're both about the same topic, so it doesn't really make sense (to me) to make this two paragraphs.
I agree with Invalid--strike this sentence.
This is a mouthful. Make it two sentences: Her lonely footprints were left behind as she walked towards a bench in front of the synagogue. However the wind came along in smoky, lukewarm bursts every so often and swept them aside like a chain-smoking janitor pushing a broom through the city. Also, I'm confused as to what you mean by 'chain-smoking janitor.'
How about 'against' instead of 'into'?
Love it...but loose the ellipsis.
Again, make these one paragraph.
Other than these things, all I have to say is I'm thoroughly pleased I spent the time to read this little piece.
Bravo, it was quite a delightful read!
Very powerful quote, but shouldn't it end with some sort of punctuation?
Beautiful.
I don't know, your description are fantastic, but then I felt that sentence was a little bit unnecessary. Let the reader assume some things, give them freedom in the scene you're guiding them through.
In my opinion, I think you need something more bitter than a cereal box. D:
I think the sentence should be:
Adina wondered if she is the only person in it.
I flows better and is more direct.
Lovely, very lovely.
~~~
It was simple. No. It was simply delightful. Descriptions were well done and such. However, the only thing I am curious about is Adina. Why did she survive? Who was she other than the fact that she was a merry little girl? But I know, those details aren't really necessary. Again, very delightful.
Once again, a very good story. I like how you showed us something as horrible as a nuclear strike through the innocence of a child's eyes. It is very much like you, and works very well. The kind of imagery you use is usually stunning, and this is no exception. I'm wondering who's speaking when we aren't looking at Adina, whether it's supposed to be an omniscient victim, or someone else. I also like the way you tackle a controversial subject without being either patronizing or negative. Not many people can do that. Once again, a phenomenal piece of work from you.
*gold star*