Lately ten-year-old Sivan from Sderot has been drawing with the color blue - seas, rivers and lakes. That’s how she deals with the "color red" – the codename given to the siren warning of Qassam attacks. At the local help center for shock victims, she draws with a heavy hand, while the rockets whistle in the background.
Although the number of shock victims rises daily at a frightening rate, the State has budgeted only one help center to care for the psychologically distressed. More than 600 adults and children were treated over the past few months, by the handful of therapists that courageously arrive at the rocket-barraged town every morning.
| Nonstop Barrage |
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| 5 Qassams fired at western Negev / Shmulik Haddad |
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Residents of communities in the western Negev wake up to the sirens of Color Red early warning system, no injuries reported; Two rockets fired at Sderot |
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But the state’s helplessness doesn’t end here. Ironically, the help center doesn’t even have one secured room – and often the patients are too afraid to come for treatment.
Despite this, Sivan gathered her courage and came to see her therapist Friday. Little by little, as the lake she is drawing fills with blue, she agrees to open up and share some of her feelings out loud.
“What do you do when a Qassam falls?” the therapist asks. “I hide by the couch, or in the shower,” Sivan answers.
The therapist tries to understand where Sivan feels physical stress when the rockets fall, and asks: “In your hands? Does your heart pound? Your head?”
“My heart,” she answers.
While women, children and elderly tend to express fright more freely, the men we spoke with prefer not to admit their fear, and are instead forced to develop a sort of dulled emotionality. Sometimes they have their own answer to the Color Red: Black humor.
The center’s team of therapists use humor to ease their own stress as well. One of the therapists admitted that after the past two weeks, with the Qassams
hitting with increased accuracy, she herself has been showing light symptoms of shock.
And she is not alone. Not far away, no small number of rockets have hit David Sheetrit’s farm.
Aside from his six children, the farm’s other tenants are in constant terror: The sheep huddle together every time a rocket falls, and Sheetrit’s favorite horse, who until recently was friendly and relaxed, has become so irritable that he’s impossible to ride.
“He’s a shock victim too,” Sheetrit says sadly.
In the meantime, Sivan finishes drawing the blue lake and goes home. Against the backdrop of Sderot’s red sunset, she has hope that maybe, someday, her pastoral color will triumph, at least over her fear.
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