This is The First Time, a column where Zach either 1) writes about the first time he did something specific in his life and talks about any pop culture connections surrounding it, or 2) tries something for the first time ever in 2025 and writes about it—sees a new movie, eats a new food, etc. etc. etc.Above all, her name is Noa.
Noa. A name I have come to love in the past ten days. A name that has been there for me, every few hours. The pink pajamas that match the pink fingernails. The playful contests. "You made it down before me!" "Why are you so slow?" And so on.
She is there, every time. Her fleece marks the chair where she sits in the bomb shelter (also known as a miklat). She comes down, with her go bag, in case a missile hits our building and she loses everything. I do the same.
Noa is incredibly beautiful.
Until ten days ago, the missiles being fired our way were coming from Yemen, one at a time. No massive volleys of rockets. The sirens the Houthis triggered were mostly a nuisance and their rockets were mostly intercepted. I ignored a few of the sirens.
When Iran started bombing us, we all knew it was more serious. We got the first alert around 3 AM on Friday, June 13. It was an alert unlike one any of us had ever received. You know the amber alerts you get on your phone, when there's a tornado warning or when a child is missing or something like that? That's what it was like. Blaring, scary sounds, yellow exclamation marks, the whole deal.
I had barely slept all week just because I was running around, doing a lot of things. People were talking about war with Iran, but it felt like more of an abstract idea than an immediate threat. I had no inkling things were about to get real.
I thought I had heard a knock on my door that morning, but I couldn't be sure. Then I got up, with a start. I haven't been sleeping with my phone in my room for sleep hygiene purposes. What happened? I got up. The lights were all on in the apartment, and the bed on the couch was made. Neither of those things made sense. Putting two and two together, though, it was clear that my roommate had knocked on my door to wake me up, and that there was some kind of attack happening. Our neighbor who doesn't have a shelter probably had come over and was sleeping on our couch. And I was late to going down to the miklat in the basement because I was such a sleepyhead.
Quickly I went to check my phone. There was one text from mom. "Really nervous about news of strikes on Iran. It's very scary having you there. I'm so worried about all of it, and the country, and the world. Please stay safe." Another, from a friend. "Stay safe."
I ran downstairs, to the miklat. There they all were. My roommate, the neighbor who I suspected was crashing on our couch. All the other neighbors in our building.
And Noa.
"Zach!" she exclaimed. "You're an idiot!"
***
Noa and I already knew each other. She lives in Apartment 5, one floor below me. I met her in the miklat at one point, after one of the Houthi-inspired sirens in March. We chatted a bit. She hasn't been there the whole time I have—she probably moved in around January. I decided to take a flyer on inviting her for Shabbat dinner, and she was super appreciative of the invite, even though she couldn't come. A couple months later, I hosted again, and she came. I was already crushing on her a little bit at that point. She is the girl next door, with an energy I love. She's very giving—she offered to help me get unemployment benefits after leaving my job; she offered to put me in touch with her sister who could help me find a new job if that's what I wanted—and strong. An athlete. Doesn't suffer fools. Calls people on their bullshit. I was into it.
But she lives in my building. I have to see her relatively often. And the main kicker—she's not religious. She grew up in a religious family, but gave up on it, and isn't where I'm at these days. I've dated non-religious people and it generally just doesn't work. The lifestyle we want for ourselves is just too different. (Not that dating religious people has "worked" up to this point either, but yeah.)
I told my friend who is married and pregnant and who was also at that Shabbat meal that I had a crush on Noa. "Join the club," she said to me. "So do I. She's very crushable."
That put it in perspective. A good looking, available girl who lives in my building? Of course I'd be into her.
So I let it go. She was cute, yes, and single, and fun and nice and all the good things. But why should I pursue something that probably would lead to a dead end? Better to just let it roll and move forward.
And yet. There she was, in the miklat, worried for my safety. I was late coming down to the shelter. She called me an idiot for moving slow. She cared enough about me to think about how I hadn't made it down there in time.
Iran hadn't even attacked us at that point. The alert we'd gotten that morning? It was to tell us that we had preemptively bombed Iran, that we should expect a response.
I went back to sleep. But Noa was on my mind.
***
Since then I've seen Noa close to fifteen times in the miklat.
First we get an alert, warning us that a missile is on the way. It gives us a five-to-ten-minute warning. Considering that a ballistic missile takes nine minutes to travel about 1,000 miles, the Home Front Command app sends us the alert, along with a government-issued scary Amber Alert style notification. It, too, makes a scary sound.
I get out of bed when I get that alert. Sometimes my roommate has had to wake me up. Alerts have come at midnight, 3 AM, 6 AM, 4 PM, 8 AM, 5 PM. There's no way to know. But none of us are sleeping much. Is this what having a baby is like?
When we got the first alert Thursday, I was nervous about what would happen, but I wasn't really fearful for my property or my life. We get sirens all the time. It's part of living in a semi-war state of affairs.
But the first retaliatory rocket volley from Iran blew the cover off that safety. It was Friday night. I had a friend over, someone who I had just met the week before. He was visiting from New York, and he didn't really know anyone. The siren went off. We went down to shelter. That time, Noa wasn't there (she didn't come back until Sunday). But we heard booms. That was normal. And then—a whistling sound overhead.
My across-the-hall neighbor's face changed from calm to terrified in a second. "I've never heard a sound like that in my life," he said.
And the next boom we heard was so, so loud.
We found out later the missile defense system (the Iron Dome) hadn't succeeded in intercepting that one. It hit a high-rise about a mile away. And the whistling sound, one I also had never heard? That was a ballistic missile, fresh from its trip outside the atmosphere, whizzing right above our heads.
My sense of security was further degraded after the 4 AM volley Iran sent our way early Monday morning. We heard loud booms that time, too. Afterward, I checked on the news. The outlets don't publish the exact location of any hits, but it was clear there had been a few that morning. The Iron Dome intercepts most incoming missiles, but it's getting overwhelmed by Iran at different points. It can't get everything, and missiles have also hit research labs at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and a hospital wing in Be'er Sheva. Somehow, there were no deaths in either of those cases, but major damage was done.
The WhatsApp groups started to light up that Monday morning. At the end of the day, it turned out that the missile had fallen right near a synagogue I attend, a couple miles from me. Multiple people had sustained direct impacts to their apartment. The only reason they were still alive—the only reason—was because they had been inside their mamad (a safe room inside their apartment).
The blast radius from the missile affected many buildings in that area, and lots of people lost all their possessions and apartments. I personally know three people who lost everything. (P.S. we don't have a mamad in our apartment; we only have a miklat in the basement, which is also sufficient.)
One such apartment. I was there to help with cleanup.
I take a bag down with me every time there's a siren. It has CLIF bars, my passports, my prayer book and materials. I try to wear my running shoes in case my apartment is destroyed and I can't go back up to get them. Running will keep me sane.
This is the backdrop of my life now.
When I hear the siren, I dread it. Who knows if this will be the time things aren't actually OK? 90 percent of me is fearful and anxious. The blood pressure certainly shoots up.
But there's that ten percent of me that's excited. I'm going to get to see Noa again, in just a few minutes.
***
Every siren is a chance for me to have 20 minutes with Noa in a very unusual social setting.
The culture of the miklat is a funny one. It's full with the neighbors from my four-story building. We have young couples—one of whom has the most well-behaved dog I've ever seen—and older people. The older people are the most laissez-faire about their safety. "Is it time to go back upstairs yet?" they often ask. Then they go back up before the Home Front Command has given the all-clear. The young people all look at each other and shake their heads. We stay downstairs until we get the notification telling us it's safe to exit.
The truth? I have fallen in love, in some way, with every single person who comes down to that miklat.
I love them all. I've see the couple walking their dog this week, like normal, but this week our smiles of greeting are just a little bigger than normal. When I talk about Seinfeld with my neighbors across the hall during a siren, our belly laughs hit harder. I talk to Etti, the older woman, about God. "God isn't here," she says. "Where do you find him?" I love the young couple who wordlessly hold hands in the miklat, him with a nightshirt that has a diagonal zipper across the entire garment, for some reason.
What's also true: I love Noa more than all of them.
She rags on me. From that first early Friday morning, my reputation of coming down late for sirens has followed me. When I make it down quickly, she looks up. "Nice!" she says sarcastically, but with her million-watt smile. There have been a few times I've beaten her down there, and when I do, I can give it right back to her. "You're slacking, Noa," I say. She looked over at my roommate and me during one siren, eating cookies he'd brought down. "You guys are like a comedy duo," she said.
She focuses on her phone a lot, but she looks up often enough to talk, to make little comments. Her phone, with her cute case that says "Chill Pills." I know a lot about her now, like how she set up her new iPhone 15 this week, and it doesn't get cell service in the basement like her old iPhone 11 model did. So she gets up and raises it to the heavens. When it gets hot, she moves next to the fan to get cool. "I'm too old for this," she says. (She is 33.) Every move, so adorable. How she says she wants a rich husband so she doesn't have to spend the rest of her life in shelters like this one.
I wonder if it's some kind of defense mechanism? How much truth is there to it? What does she really want?
I try to impress her as much as possible. I definitely put too much pressure on myself to do it. But we have a great vibe down there. I can't get enough of her pajamas. Somehow she manages to look so good, even when she comes downstairs at 4 AM. Is there a chance, some kind of chance, that she's making herself look good for me?
Probably not. But a man can dream. Once—I think it was Tuesday night—I couldn't stop myself. "Do you match your pajamas and nails on purpose?" I asked. She kind of hesitated. I froze. Was that a creepy thing to ask? "Nah," she said. "I've had these pajamas forever, and the nails are from a few weeks ago... but thank you for the compliment."
I hadn't been trying to compliment her specifically, so I didn't know what was behind that comment. Anyway. Now I felt like I owed her a compliment. "I really do like your nails," I said.
And she thanked me and went back to her looking at her phone.
She is very aggressive at looking at it for long periods, even when she doesn't have service. She likes to update the whole miklat on where rockets hit, if she gets service for a second. She likes to tell everyone when it's time to go back up. She has a tiny bit of main character energy, but she also cares about the other people, offering her seat to the older ladies who come into the miklat from the street because they just happened to be walking by when the siren went off.
My heart is hopelessly ensnared in Noa's web. One day I passed her apartment and I heard her blasting
"Good Time" by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen. There is nothing that could make me love a woman more than hearing that song.
I spend my hours between being bombed by Iran wondering what I'll say to her when the next bomb comes in. When the pre-alert comes in, my heart starts beating, because I'll soon see her, and that will make me happy. Yes, of course my apartment could get destroyed too. I could get hit. But the humanity of the love I feel for Noa colors all of that with the pink colors of a summertime sunset.
I felt like a little bit of a creeper for commenting on her nails. But a few hours later, during the next bombing attack, the topic of her pajamas came up again. I don't know how. "I love pajamas," she said. And she was friendly to me. I exhaled. I hadn't blown my chance. Not here. And not now.
***
It was 1:30 AM Wednesday, during the second siren in an hour, that I realized my roommate was starting to lose it. The diagonal zipper couple was being a little more kissy than usual. "That guy is pissing me off," he said. "Why does he have to do PDA?"
There's a chance—a small one, but still, a chance—that my roommate has never kissed a girl in his life. I don't particularly like living with him. In fact, this week, I told him I'm moving out, war and all. He also doesn't speak Hebrew, and—here's another part of miklat culture—forcing Israelis to speak English to you during a missile attack isn't it. It's possibly one of the most Israeli experiences ever to be stuck in a miklat, with missiles raining overhead. When he's there, they speak English to him. And it sucks. (Noa, by the way, has American parents, so we speak English amongst ourselves, but collectively, with the other neighbors, we speak Hebrew. It's the only way.)
So maybe he was jealous of the PDA couple? I don't know.
A few minutes later, he started talking about a building in a nearby town, Bat Yam, that had sustained a direct hit a few days ago. Five people had been killed, none of them had been in miklats or mamads. They were all Ukrainian. My roommate, for some reason, decided to make some racist comments. He isn't a racist person. But he went there.
"It makes sense," he said. "The Russians wouldn't care about going to the miklat. They would just stay in their apartment, take the risk. I know Russians in Bat Yam."
Noa looked up. "Why are your stereotyping?" she said.
"Because I KNOW Russians in Bat Yam!" he responded.
"Why are you getting so worked up?" she asked him.
"Because you're calling me racist!" he said.
And they kept talking for another minute. It was now 1:40 AM. I stayed out of it, not saying a word. Obviously, I agreed with her. I went upstairs, already awake, and watched the first period of the Stanley Cup Finals Game 6. There are some benefits to being woken up in the middle of the night.
The next siren wasn't until 7:30 PM. I was out for a run when I got the pre-alert, about three-quarters of a mile from my apartment. I sprinted home. There were closer shelters nearby. It didn't matter. I wanted to see Noa. And I made it in time.
By then, my roommate had gone to visit his mother. It was just me down there, with the neighbors and Noa and her friend who was visiting.
"Where's your roommate?" she asked. I told her.
"Good," she said. "He needed a break."
And we proceeded to bond over his weirdness. "He's a very defensive person," she said. Inside, I smiled. Here we were, connecting even more over him. "You're chill," she said. Little does she know, but I'll take it.
I told her during one of the next sirens—when was it? I think it was at 8:30 AM—that I'd have the apartment to myself for the day, because I thought my roommate would stay with his mom.
When he walked through the door of our apartment at 11 AM, my heart sank. I texted Noa right away.
"Ariel came back already," I said. "wtf," she wrote back. And we kept texting, just a little bit. And I was happy. We got to a texting level! We weren't just bonding over bombs! There was more!
There were a few points where she could have broken off the texting. But she kept it going, just a a little bit, sending me a meme of sorts, unprompted.
My love had doubled, and redoubled, and redoubled once again!
I left my apartment for the afternoon to volunteer. My friend was cooking for reservists at the Home Front Command, and I helped him—165 meals in all. It got later, and close to midnight. I looked at the clock again and again. Iran had sent bombs our way the past two midnights. If they did it again, now, I'd miss my chance to talk to Noa.
But there were no sirens that night. I got to sleep through the night. And, most importantly, I didn't miss out on Noa.
Since then, there have been a couple more sirens, all without my roommate. I still don't fully know how to impress her in this kind of pressurized social situation that's unlike any other. I try my best. Sometimes I feel like I do a better job than others. Sometimes I can't tell if she wants to talk, or just wants to look at her phone, take deep breaths, text with her family, look at updates, do her own thing. I don't know. I try. I try my best. Every interaction, fraught with such importance like it could be our last. ChatGPT tells me no one interaction will make or break anything between us. I know that's true. And yet. I hope she likes me. I really want her to like me. I want to lock eyes with her, hold her hand, tell her that the world isn't ending, that I'm here for her, that everything is good, just because I'm here.
I know I can't ask her out. At least not now. Doing so would disrupt any kind of excitement I have at the possibility of what could happen between us. No. This is the time for quiet magic, for endless potential. It's not the time to drop it all and say "do you want to get a drink sometime?" like I normally would. This isn't normal. And that's part of the reason I like it so much.
I also really, really don't want to get my heart broken by her. It's not ready to be broken by someone who I have such a strong crush on. I need to protect it for now.
Tel Aviv is probably more in the Iranian crosshairs than any other city. But I don't want to leave, to go somewhere else where there will be fewer sirens. I don't want to leave my space. I don't want to leave all the neighbors. I feel like we're all together, and we need to ride it out together. Ride together. More than anything, I don't want to leave Noa.
I am so curious what she thinks of me. She definitely likes having me around, on some level. But anything more than that? Does she share any of these thoughts? Is she downstairs, typing something similar for her friend's Blogspot blog?
I don't know.
And that's part of the fun. The mystery. And the chance that anything could happen, at all.
There's a very good chance she's not at all where I'm at. She's not typing into her email about me late at night. But I want to believe. I just want to believe there's a chance. Even if it would never work between us. That belief, and that slight excitement—that positive female attention, regardless of anything else—is part of what's getting me through this war.
***
Things seemed like they might have been calming down just a tad over the weekend. My job called us back into the office. There were no sirens for 30 hours. Things didn't feel normal on the street—they were still very quiet at night, and the work from home arrangement the previous week and the restrictions on large gatherings gave off strong COVID vibes—but maybe we were getting closer to some kind of normalcy. Maybe. Just maybe.
Now the US has attacked, and we are back to square 1. But to quote
this week's MMM prompt: "This Post is Not a Political Post." And it really isn't. This is my war experience, plain and simple. The politics of the US's entry to the war affect my life, and that's all.
We aren't going to the office this week in the end. Iran is threatening to use even bigger bombs as retaliation. It's not impossible that my apartment could be damaged, that something could happen to us. The odds are low, but I live in Tel Aviv. It's happened to friends, and it's happened nearby, more than once. Every boom we hear during an attack is one we hope doesn't come for us.
The siren this morning at 7:15 AM was one where we had to stay downstairs for 45 minutes. Noa sits in the corner of the miklat, and my seat is right next to hers. We chatted a bit about her family—she missed one siren because she was helping her sister with her kids—and about the others in the miklat. About my roommate, and about how we can't sleep normally, because we're just bracing ourselves for the next Home Front Command alert. Noa looked at her phone. I stretched. I quietly felt my crush envelop all my bones. The booms were really loud this morning. We all flinched as we heard them.
Maybe she will grab my arm during a really loud boom, one of these days?
Wartime is one of the horniest times. It has to be. Just look at our grandparents, at the Baby Boomer generation, all the kids they were having, all the sex they were having.
I don't know how much the war is affecting my love for Noa. I'm sure the general end-of-days feeling that exists on the street here has something to do with it. I can't quantify how much it affects it, though. What's real, and what's not?
Would I love her this much if we weren't being bombed?
Does it matter?
I fantasize about writing a long love letter to Noa. Telling her how I feel. How incredible she is. How I love her necklace with a yellow ribbon, to remember the hostages. How I love her WhatsApp status (just a lemon emoji, nothing more). How I love that she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. How I just like sitting next to her, being near her. How I fear that leaving my apartment (I will move out around August 1) means leaving her. How I fear that the end of this war (whenever it comes) will mean that I won't be able to see her every few hours, even if it means I'll be safer and the world will be safer. How I picture me and her running through a grassy field, her in her wedding dress, me in a dapper suit, completely and utterly in love, with the best possible origin story to boot.
Maybe I'll tell her about my crush one of these days. When the war ends. When I move. When things are different, when I don't see her every few hours. When we can continue our lives, like normal people, who go to parties and concerts and synagogue gatherings (all of which were canceled at the beginning of the war).
Even if I do, though, I'll miss this magical time. The time where death and destruction stalk us, but when we feel things just a bit more. I'll miss the trips down to the miklat, the rushing down the stairs. And, then, turning that final corner, where I see the bottom of those pink pajamas, paired with pink sandals, legs crossed, one foot twirling circles in the air.
One day I'll be living in peace, with no bombs falling, hopefully with my own children surrounding me. But I'll miss that feeling, that thrill in my stomach. Of Noa. And of love, a love fully inside me, a new love that can go anywhere, anytime, subject to foreign missiles and geopolitics and two simple souls who, above all, just want to find one another.
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