Fiction Gila Green: We All Have to Comfort Each Other

 Fic­tion | Wit­ness­ing: Post Oct. 7We All Have to Com­fort Each Other

Gila Green October 21, 2024

This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It's more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

This is a work of fic­tion and the views and opin­ions expressed below are those of the author.

Until Octo­ber 6, 2023, I was a much-envied Net­flix con­tent review­er, called a Tag­ger. (Now I am still a Tag­ger, albeit less-envied.) Though I do have a degree in film stud­ies, I'm the one with that cousin in Cal­i­for­nia. I choose words from a pool of about 1,000 to help cat­e­go­rize forth­com­ing movies and TV shows. You've read my work: "Famil­iar Favorites" or "Com­e­dy Movies Star­ring Women."

But my job as a Net­flix Tag­ger was noth­ing com­pared to the intense role my dear friend Moriya was step­ping into in the months fol­low­ing Octo­ber 7 2023.

It took five three-hour Zoom class­es before Moriya would con­fess that she was trig­gered. Trig­gered as in trans­port­ed back in time to three decades ago. Moriya was forty-sev­en, a decade younger than me, so although we were best friends, I still felt mater­nal towards her at times. This was the moment I was wait­ing for.

I lis­tened with empa­thy and then tried to con­vince her to drop this ridicu­lous cru­sade to become a vol­un­teer on a hot­line. This vol­un­teer train­ing course was engulf­ing her body and soul and now she had qual­i­fied to take actu­al calls. It did­n't suit her at all — a woman who could­n't keep a plant alive, dis­liked dogs, and, well, let's just say she was lucky her only daugh­ter was so inde­pen­dent. Some­one had to tell her she was­n't suit­ed for this role before she botched it up.

In Israel, where we both live, it had been Octo­ber 7, 2023, for months. But for twen­ty min­utes, and off and on for a few hours after that, it was 1993 for Moriya. Good. I mean, bad for her, but now I had con­crete evi­dence that years of work­ing on her­self would be reversed if she pur­sued this pivot.

She did­n't have to com­pen­sate for hav­ing no sons descend­ing into the "Gaza metro" by lis­ten­ing to heart-wrench­ing accounts of oth­ers' trau­ma on the phone for hours on end, then enter­ing it into some com­put­er appli­ca­tion, expe­ri­enc­ing it all over again. She had no sons at all, no one to grieve. Some peo­ple would con­sid­er that lucky.

"What was the part that trig­gered you?" I did­n't add, final­ly.

I did­n't want her to know that as soon as she told me she'd signed up for this course, I had con­cerns for her. I could­n't tell my friend what to do, as though she were my child. Instead, I turned over a men­tal hour­glass and titled it "Worth the Wait."