I so sorely miss flying and the whole experience of aviation. This is a somewhat bizarre fact because I am generally not an abroad-kind-of-person. Only when I was 32 did I actually fly outside Israel, to northern Italy. This was not so long ago. Who would have thought that in 2012, eight years later, the skies would close and the humming of the planes would sound like a beautiful cantor's prayer? 

Before the first flight I was very scared of flying, but after a physicist graciously explained how an aircraft flies and told me about the four different vectors (I moved to "flight mode" when he started talking about equations), my fear was replaced with expectation. 

Michel de Montaigne wrote in his essay On Solitude that when Socrates was told that someone did not have fun on his journey, the great Greek philosopher said, "Of course he didn't, he brought along himself." 

This is perhaps why I miss traveling so much. When I arrive at a foreign country, I can imagine myself peeling off my identity, even if it is just for a week. I can give up my opinions, stop with the posing, and adopt a character that I have always wanted to adopt. 

I like every minute detail of going abroad. Even the thought of how to reach the airport: by train, by taxi or with a private car.

At the airport itself, I like the grilling of security with the question "Did you pack by yourself?" After being asked this question I get a slight sense of fear that I would not be allowed to leave, but then I get calmed down when the luggage gets sent on the conveyor belt and get a pat-down and go through passport control, and then the sprint begins: the liberating, wild run toward the departure gate.

In this mad dash all the wheels on everyone's suitcase participate. And then there is a bizarre walk between the various letters: A, B, C. And eventually you find the gate, and you board the plane, and you get the welcome greeting by an airline crew member as if this was their first flight. 

I like that walk in the aisle, passing by the business class with all the big seats and wide legroom until I reach my place, worried that I won't get a window seat. 

Since I am a disorganized person, I am very much attracted to the well-defined systematic approach of the flight attendants.

The small meals wrapped with aluminum foil, containing food that I would never ever eat in any other circumstances, the collection of trash and the calm words they tell the anxious passengers when there is turbulence. I exchange a nod with my neighbors sitting next to me and turn toward the examination of the world wonder before me: floating cotton is all around, giving me the sudden drive to just sail around them. Luckily, engineers are in charge of building aircraft, not some people with fantasies. 

Because of the monotonic noise, I enter into staring mode, as if it was some magic potion that helps move plots forward. During my flights around the US I began drawing up my storyline for my latest novel. "It's me, Iowa." During my flight to Shanghai I completed a short story dealing with the mourning of a lost baby, and during my flight to  Alicante the roots of my current novel began. 

As soon as I hear the wheels slamming on the runway I get transported to a new world. English becomes my language of choice and with great enthusiasm, I tell the clerk at passport control about my itinerary. This always gives the clerk a smile as he stamps my passport. 

Every week I go to Tel Aviv and think about the writers workshop and the topic of the meeting and wonder how the participants will react. On the coronavirus and its damage I no longer think, but all it takes for me to get nostalgic about flights and the airport and passport control is for one plane to pass overhead.

I miss all this so much that I am willing to give up a windows seat in my next flight.

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An omen that could spell the realization of my wishes came in the form of a letter from a friend in the US, after four years that I had not heard from him. He told me about the depressing state of the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" and wondered whether I was still an independent when it comes to politics (I don't know why this has always bothered him). He ended with a question: "Do you think that Trump is not too much of a punishment for humanity?"

I had to agree with him, although I have never really liked redheads. 

With R. another friend, I corresponded extensively over the new kosher section in the US market, in which many books are taken off from shelves or get a special advisory because they may offend people: Blacks, women, overweight, hyperactive, or sushi haters. Just like the principal at my girls-only ulpana in my youth would do when he measured the length of our skirts. 

I had prepared a list of books and authors that may be banned, all of them could face a de-kosherization certificate. It seems that in the steppes of Netflix and the great expanse of US literature, the word "without" is as popular as that word in nature stores.

Besides, alongside the Pavlovian responses that I have become accustomed to and reply with a yawn ("they brought this Leftie again?" "Is she pretending to be Ashkenazi/Sephardi"), I also got a letter from a reader who has been beside himself. He is outraged that I have been critical of the state. He reprimanded me. We all have to be responsible, and we get amazing things from the state, more than what we give to it, he scolded me. 

I know a lot of couples around me who think that about their marriage. "I have given her everything," is one refrain. Another one is, "He took everything from me." This boring back and forth goes on and on. Having observed people for years, I know this usually does not end well. And trust me, when things fall apart, you don't want to be near them. 

In any event, I have never considered the state and I to have a relationship of giving and taking. I am just too wary of the state and try to trust myself until I get drunk, and then let's see you find someone to talk to. 

In any event, dear reader, it is clear that the state is acting with cruelty to the self-employed and business owners, it hurts their rights and listens only to organized labor and those who make a lot of noise and issue threats.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you, dear reader, the following: If you don't have anything to do this week and read this coronavirus diary entry, I am still where I stand.

The people in the halls of government are acting with total rudeness and with a heart of stone, they are using bureaucracy that is impossible to beat and lacks any meaning and reason, they do as they please with the state, celebrating at our expense without leading by example, and taking advantage of this resource called coronavirus. 

Let me just remind you dear reader that the word Patriot comes from the Latin "Patria," which means homeland. You can love your homeland and detest the leaders.

I have wandered to letters at a different place, 2,000 years back, to the Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca.

He was exiled to Corsica under the pretext that he committed adultery. He spent 8 years there, in solitary confinement that pales in comparison to what we call self-isolation these days.

Slowly but surely I translated his letter to his mother, in which he consoled her. What I particularly liked about it is that he feared that he would come off as too jolly, lest this makes her outraged.

I have to bring this here: nam in morbis quoque nihil est perniciosius quam inmatura medicina. Loosely translated this is: Even when you are sick, nothing is more harmful than immature medicine.

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I was so innocent back then. I was convinced, in mid-March, that the project will continue for four or five weeks and then we would return to our normal lives, which now seem so distant. But I now understand that this acute stage is over; we are now at the chronic stage. We will just have to live with the virus somehow. I already see how my despair fits in a more comfortable position. 

What's particularly difficult is the fact that I am locked inside Israel. If we do not consider the domestic flight my friend arranged for me when I was 17, it is safe to say that I was 32 when I first flew overseas.

I have been invited to various writing programs abroad ever since. The meetings are now carried out by email correspondence with my friends around the globe.

Hau in Singapore wants to know more about the radical change that has transformed Israeli society since May, from a country that is among the safe "Green" countries to one of the most "Red" countries.

Tatiana has been taking pictures styling a face mask and posing like a supermodel, sending me a makeshift picture book. Only with the Chinese, I have yet to talk. This has nothing to do with the coronavirus; it just an old grudge from some writing program in Iowa. 

The government's bipolar conduct may raise some eyebrows, trigger ridicule and bewilderment among people globally, but my reaction is horror. It's amazing how little is necessary to unmask the facade of government solidarity, showing the atrophied and complicated situation in our regime, the foot-dragging and shirking of responsibility, and the inability to appoint someone who could manage the situation in a cold and calculated way rather through some populist policies. 

The government's next step is to use profanity against the people, and that has trickled to the street. "Israelis are a bunch of scammers; it is all because of us," I hear a man preaching to his friend at a coffee shop near my home.

Such statements cause my blood to boil and I approach them and recite from my black book all the tricks and fraud methods of our apathetic elected officials: ministers who took part in super spreader events without a mask with great banter; the Health Ministry that sends people into isolation without any accountability and destroys their livelihood along the way, as well as the esoteric term called "privacy;" the jaw-dropping ineffectiveness and the rejection of offers to help just because of ego. And of course, the waiver from isolation for the rich. The two men turn silent and I look at the other customers. Whoever dares to demean the people has been warned. They better not try me. 

My outrage is not just affected by the first coronavirus year. This is also my first year of divorce. I got my divorce only two months before the virus emerged and I am getting used to how society treats a divorcee and has been learning that one can write an entire novel, a thick one, with the gems of this term. For example, there are some people for whom the word "divorcee" threatens them much more than the agile and lethal virus. 

The writer's workshop is not filling up. People are worried about congregating and they are sick and tired of Zoom. The fear of the unknown has led me to do something that I have not done in many years: send my CV. I call that Corona Vitae.

I have been sending it all over to various offices, including some that I never knew could exist in our world. Because of the plethora of such places, I do not get a response. Sometimes someone blurts out in a passive voice: "So many books! Why is that useful?" 

These responses take me back to my novel, which has been spending time with me for two years since its conception on a flight to Spain.

We have a complicated relationship. He makes my life miserable, he sneaks up on me and turns off the light at the end of the tunnel just when I reach it. The concentration is difficult in these times of divorce and corona. But now, perhaps as a gesture of solidarity, he flashes with great fondness on my computer screen and asks me to come closer. 

I put down all my worries and daily anguishes, and allow myself to snuggle with the words and characters as I go on a deep dive – even if it is just for an hour – to this unuseful world.

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The government is making sounds of lockdown, another one. People are being sent to self-isolation in droves, indiscriminately, because of the Shin Bet security agency's tracking mechanisms, and the public once again gets blamed by the arrogant leadership that is doing everything it seems to undermine the little public trust that it still enjoys. 

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The last time that I felt something like this was in 2003, when my doctor advised me to get an abortion because of a virus that had been detected in my blood tests. The doctor did not spare words in his warning and said the baby would be born without eyes, legs, hands and other organs. 

I remember entering the special ward, waiting for a specialist. It was there when I heard many horror stories about various cases. It is good to stay out of hospitals and avoid that place as much as possible, where thousands die from infection every year. This piece of data is very relevant today as well.

That day, I refused to talk about abortion. I asked to be discharged and get a second opinion. After a battery of tests it turned out that the first doctor had misinterpreted the test results. They were indeed positive, showing that I actually had the antibodies for the virus. "So a woman who got this opinion would get an abortion? " I asked. "Easily," he replied. "She wouldn't have even come to me."  

When I returned home that day I decided to stop having all my pregnancy checkups at that filthy place and to just go for walks and proper breathing. I conducted a comprehensive study on home birth and interviewed women, learned about the mortality rate and risks. And the two births I carried out were at home, despite my doctor's protestations. "As far as you are concerned, I am supposed to abort the baby, so why do you care,"I answered him.

Now with all that's going on, I have to walk to the old city to feel the soil under my feet. Jaffa Gate welcomes me and I enter through it to a parallel universe. Everything looks the same, yet different. I go through the various stations that are familiar to me: The Tower of David, where I held instruction tours during my second year of military service until the Second Intifada broke out.

During those days there was an exhibition of the works of a glass sculptor called Chihuly. All these years I thought he was Chinese but only upon writing these words I had to look him up and realized that he was American. His first name is Dale. Did I feed an entire generation with the wrong information? 

I pass by the various landmarks. In one of them, an Armenian monastery, I once interviewed the school principal there ahead of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The entrance to the Jewish Quarter brings back memories of my first teenage kiss, at one of the churches. By the way, the kissee was the son of a famous rabbi. Those were the days. 

Near Zion Gate I remember a Dutch guy I met when I was 17. He wanted me to take a photo of him, and then we ended up corresponding on religion for 10 years. He tried to make me change religions and even visited Israel with his wife. Now there are no tourists who are going to ask me to take their photo. Only the person selling bagels at the stand, with his bored eyes looking at the yeshiva students. 

I return to the border between the Jewish-Armenian quarters and I stumble upon a nun, a former mathematics teacher, who had left her homeland and now dedicates her life to living in the most difficult city on earth.

She recognizes me, smiles gently, and tells me sadly that she misses the tourist groups. She refuses to mention the virus and only says that the government is making mistakes that we are all paying for. We bring up memories from the time of colorful tourist days as if we were 100 years old. 

Bilal's shop at the local shopping area is closed. I go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There is no one there, not even a Slavic woman skiing for health for her family. I leave with very depressing feeling and go back to Bilal's clothing store, hoping it might be open.

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Although most of the classes were conducted through Zoom, it was a good respite from the terrible state of affairs the world is currently in. The ability to focus on books and deal with something that is beyond the constant news cycle was great. It reminded over and over again how important imagination is to the human soul. 

You can't always find the key to this kingdom. Matching the books to this period is a complex task akin to finding a precise cure to a disease. For example, I cannot get myself to read Kafka's books during this pandemic. Perhaps because, like many others, I feel trapped in a maze with the closed skies up above and the lack of a horizon, any horizon. This makes it impossible for me to dive into another Kafkaesque maze. 

Yesterday I dreamed that I was outside in a nature spot in Jerusalem. I dreamed that there was a big "Off" switch there. After a minute or two of hesitation I went to that switch in my dream and pressed on it, leaning with my entire body weight. Immediately after, silence set in all over, and the area around me became painted in light colors. I woke up with calm and pleasant colors around and I didn't have to call my dream analyst in order to understand the subconscious meaning of it all. 

During these days of the "Is this really the second wave?" my hands tremble as I think of just tuning out of the news; switching everything off: the figures on the dead, the morbidity rates, the confirmed and unconfirmed cases, the positive and negative data and so forth. I would like to silence the news pundits who keep chattering on the "situation" and "what needs to be done" and then finish with, "Let's go back and check with the corona ward that has just been inaugurated at the hospital." 

On one of those days this week I went down to the street and on the nearby bench an old couple was sitting down. The man took an apple from a basket and started peeling in circular motions. When he finished, he sliced the apple and offered some of it to his wife. I stood next to them, watching through my sunglasses. The world around them had turned on its head, and they have probably not seen their grandchildren (if they have any) for a long time, and here they are busy with an apple, with the same determination of newscasters who keep pumping the airwaves with hysteria. They ate one slice after another, and when they noticed me they offered me too. The situation and their gesture made me teary-eyed. 

It's really hard for me to listen to all these cliches about the solidarity of Israelis. Everywhere I go people keep mentioning how our leaders flouted the very restrictions they had imposed on the people; how the rich people got waivers from the lockdown, and how people have automatically been blaming the public for the situation, how the government is not really helping the people who have lost money with grants and compensation and we see people in the Health Ministry deal with power struggles rather than harness the help of private labs in order to ease the burden of testing. And we remember. We remember how incompetent people are and how the sense of being together has been replaced with a sense of helplessness, a lack of trust in institutions, and convergence on personal survival. From now on, every man to himself. 

A moment before I start my class on writing, I go to the library and take Charles Dicken's Little Dorrit. This is not one of his classics, but his depiction of red tape as the Circumlocution Office that never stops has always had always appealed to me. It appears that this description, whose origins are in the kingdom of imagination, a small intimate kingdom, is very relevant to our reality today in this big kingdom: The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart.

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I asked him," Why won't you just leave him the food next to his door?" 

"He likes extreme sports, and he is a mountain climber, this keeps him busy," the man said. "Break right, go to the right, Yoram," he shouted. 

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I recalled my friend, B., who is 50. He is an apocalypse enthusiast who lives in constant fear. Had there been dividends on fear, he would have been a very rich man.

The last time he has been seen outside was in early February. I had just returned from a speaking tour in Sweden and he agreed to meet me at a local park just because he was going to buy toilet paper in his favorite supermarket.

February was pre-coronavirus. B. opened the trunk of his car and presented me his loads of rolls. "Why do you have so many rolls?" I asked. He stared at me with a serious look. "The end of the world is near, and you, you keep asking why so many?" he shouted, waking up a couple of old folks on a nearby bench. "Have you ever thought about why none of the science fiction books have toilet paper?" he asked. 

"There are a lot of other things that are never seen in science fiction," I managed to blurt out before he declared that he was jettisoning home. Who knows how many germs he managed to get in this filthy place, with dozens of irresponsible people exhaling carbon dioxide on him? 

In the months that have passed since I have not had another chance to talk with B. But the story about the extreme-sports-loving neighbor ("he bought an indoor cycling bike and keeps spinning," said the guy in charge of delivering food) has awoken me from hibernation. I decided to go back to B.'s home. 

I put on gloves, four masks on my face, and a handkerchief on my hair and layers of protective clothes that I had borrowed from my neighbor who is a certified locksmith. With this shield, I went to B.'s apartment and knocked on his door.

He did not respond. I knocked harder and eventually, someone appeared in the stairwell and asked me, "Are you for B.?" I nodded and she said, "What does he look like anyway? We have a leak from his wall and he has never responded to our calls." 

"Well, if there someone who would be happy to deal with the mildew, B. is not the man," I said. The neighbor returned to her apartment and I continued with my knocking. The knocking, in different rhythms, created a sense of bizarre pleasantness. And B. just wouldn't answer. , 

I returned home. Several people in the street applauded me. Then, from his self-isolation porch, the new neighbor was cycling and singing in loud voices. After the clouds dispersed, he threw a note toward me: "I am waiting for the evening in order to go out for a walk. Do you want to come?"

I have no time, I shouted. I returned home, took a guitar, and headed again toward his place. The lighting in his building was pitch black. I sat near his window and began playing a collection of anxiety songs that he liked when he was a child. I began singing "Tea makes me nauseous" and ended with the lyrics "I don't know what happened, where the blessed way has gone."

From the apartment, beyond the window, I could hear a movement of feet being dragged. I went to B.'s apartment and felt that he was standing on the other side of the door, looking through the peephole. "B. I know you are there," I said. 

" I am self-isolating," he screamed

"Why are you self isolating?," I asked. "If you go don't go outside now, you will catch isolationitis," i continued. 

"What's that?" 

I replied, "First, open the door." He opened the door slowly. I put my foot down on the floor next to the door, before he could change his mind. "I can't quite understand how a man who has read the entire dictionary for classic hypochondria doesn't know what isolationitis is. This is a terrible disease that attacks people who never leave home."

B's face showed signs of distress. He cleared his throat. "The death rate of this disease…" I said. "Ok, ok, I am coming," he finally relented. "But only to buy toilet paper, and then we are heading straight back home." 

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There is also another threat, which threatens no just winter lovers: This summer, rather than go away, many will have to stay in Israel under the scorching heat from July through September, rather than take a breather and enjoy cooler weather abroad. 

The torrent of ads converges on my mind. "Now is the time to go on vacation in Israel," one ad says. "Let's help the tourism industry at home," another says. "This year, no vacationing abroad," another ad says. The ads touch a nerve because they harp on our emotions: Zionism, patriotism, the economic importance of GDP from vacationing locally at some bed and breakfast. And I feel suffocated. It's one thing to act with caution in reopening the skies, and it's an entirely different thing to color this caution with stark colors of Zionism. 

I have never viewed vacations as some ideological act. In my favorite books, leaving the familiar and protective place is an opportunity for a character to change and refresh, and to get a new perspective. This is what happens in  Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals as the character searches for golden fleece and in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

This is what happens in non-fiction as well. Leaving the country is for me like dressing up; it's like pretending that I live in this foreign place as you go grocery shopping and buy local shampoo or a special spice as if you are a local, or going off on the proper subway station as if you have lived in the place all your life. And precisely because I live in a small country, my desire to dress up has always been very high. 

This week I saw an old photo of myself and my first boyfriend standing at the sea grottos in northern Israel, with the sign behind us saying how far the capitals of Lebanon and Israel are.

My eyes look toward Beirut; he smiles toward Jerusalem. I remember the twitch in my heart everytime I would look beyond the fences. "Ah, if I could only cross these border by foot, and pass through the crossings by car and wander in Lebanon and roam Syria and get lost in Jordan. Israel is tiny in part because you can no longer ride the train on the Haifa-Beirut-Tripoli line, as you could during the British era. 

As if that's not enough, as a mother, the tininess of the country is particularly noticeable as the summer approaches and along with the biggest nightmare of them all: the school summer break. The big question of "What are we going to do today?" becomes as important as the question of "What is the meaning of life?"

It's hard to criticize me on this matter. The "precisely now" campaign to encourage the ZIonist choice in my selection of tourist destinations does not mention the exorbitant prices a family has to pay in the simplest of accommodations (not some fancy mansion or a 'comfy motel'). Sleeping under the open sky is not so fun for those who suffer from the heat, and even if you visit a local nature reserve for an hour or two just next to your home, this becomes hell on earth, because even secret ponds that are no bigger than a puddle will immediately become a Mecca for jeeps that would destroy any path and ruin the experience of just dipping in this pristine place, ending the promise of a special experience. Even a family of snakes that lives near the water landmark will flee as fast as it can.

"Until some miracle happens and the skies reopen, I'm not going to leave Jerusalem," my barber told me as I waited in line at the cashier in the local grocery store.

For the time being, until this happens and I can travel to faraway lands and pretend that I am not Galit, I go by foot from place to place, armed with sunglasses and tactics for evading the burning sky. I lift my head toward the sky, which has a lot of quadcopters in recent days, and hope that the lockdown on our borders will be lifted and we can leave and once again pretend, at least for a day, that we are not ourselves. 

"So, what about a haircut for this summer," the barber asked with a smile. 

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When I was four years old and my parents took me and my sister to the open-air market because there was a rumor that watermelons had arrived.

When I saw a large commotion I let go of my parents and hid under one of the stands. I felt so secure, with the first book in my hand that sucked me into a new world, that I could not hear the PA announcer calling my name over and over. 

I was raised in a home that did not have books, just perhaps an encyclopedia, prayer books and the Bible. You cannot blame my family.

They were cash-strapped, and that is why the local library was the most sacred place you would make a pilgrimage to, where you brought an offering to the high priest – the librarian.

If she was kind a gracious, she would let it slide that we borrowed seven books at once. If we happen to have bad luck and fall on a less friendly librarian, we would have to sacrifice our love of books to the gods of the library and have to uphold the sacred commandment of "though shall borrow only one book per day."

The books marked us, the readers. A head inside a book, a finger eager to turn pages while bumping into little objects in the public sphere: utility poles, dumpsters, traffic lights, bus stops, benches and annoyed people.

As readers, we were the darlings of the drivers: As far as we were concerned, they don't have to let us cross the street so long as we can continue reading to find out what happened to David Copperfield or Mr. Smiley. 

During my early childhood, the annual book fair was our way of clearing our mind by enjoying the new books whose covers were still fresh, without the stains of fingerprints, without having to see what previous readers ate, as some library books showed.

I would go to the fair with my sister and we would look at this great celebration, taking that smell of books all in and trying to keep this alive for weeks.

Thanks to this smell we managed to get through many challenges and obstacles posed by the various librarians. This tradition continued even during the height of the Second Intifada and the many bombings. At the time, because of the heightened security, the fair was held in the Israel Museum.

In 2010, I finally met this fair from the other side of the stand, as a vendor, following the publication of my new novel.

I have published other books since, and have continued to visit the fair each year, despite it being in a terrible state as if it was some warehouse that had suffered a major catastrophe, and even though some of the publishing houses don't even take part in it.

Year after year, I go there, and always meet people who read, who are also quite the characters. Jerusalem is full of such people. 

This year I am overwhelmed with a yearning to go back there. I miss the man who keeps asking questions on the plot, on the characters and the process of writing and then disappears after opening the book.

I miss my childhood friends who meet me and swear that they had always known that I would become a writer, even when I kept skipping Hebrew Literature class.

I miss the child who begs his mother to buy him a fantasy book I had written and she promises him that she would do that "tomorrow" and instead buys him Anne of Green Gables.

I miss the secret agreement between writers in the book fair that I can sign in their name, and I miss my annual tradition of adding the Latin phrase to my autograph:habent sua fata libelli – "Books have their own destiny".

I have no choice but believe in this phrase and believe that the coronavirus did not kill the only week of celebration I have had since being 4.

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And besides, the thought that we would discuss our lives two meters apart, with tables spread out two-meters each, made us confused. Yes, our culinary geometry is pretty weak and the coronavirus did not eliminate this disadvantage. 

All the merchants on the streets got together to prepare this event. We bought wine, chocolate, and cheese. We spread ourselves comfortably in the porch; we sipped wine bought from a store who had sworn that it is statistically refined to meet the palate of divorced wives, and we told our stories of heroism from the past week. I told her that I managed to replace two lightbulbs and to install a shelf and place a hook for the towels in the shower. 

"The coronavirus changed you completely. And you still whine that you lack any skill," my friend said with amazement, only to discover in disappointment that this was done with two male friends who happened to hop in for a coffee and found themselves atop a ladder.

In another case it was a deliveryman who could not turn away to the sight of my weeping face. I sliced watermelon, and from the other apartment, I could hear yells of a couple having a fight. 

N. told me that she was convinced that now that the lockdown has been lifted, many married couples will get a divorce. I then immediately recalled something and told her, "Remember that lizard researcher?"

For years I have been following that famous zoologist. Every time he publishes a book on a new skink or some gecko she calls and tells me in some sad voice that this is the man she wants to live with forever.

I was expecting her to lower her gaze and say that there is nothing new, as usual, and that they have exchanged emails but never actually got to meet each other. 

N. is a person who sanctifies slow motion.

I, on the other hand, complain that earth revolves too slowly. N. is the queen of lack of speed: She enjoys knitting, and she fetishes every opportunity to engage in deep thought.

She loves the idea of the process and she spread her Bachelor's degree over many years because it was important for her to figure out what it was that she wanted to study.

Even her divorce was exemplary of tortoises living a life of comfort: It took her seven years to get a divorce because she could not find a ride to the rabbinate. Had N. been the coronavirus, the pandemic would have never broken. 

That's why I was very surprised when she told me, in a zoological gesture, "The eagle has landed." 

"You have once again decided to meet in 2030?" 

"No, no. We already met!"

I gasped, swallowed wine, and began to cough. "What? What do you say! How did this happen?"

"Thanks to the coronavirus." 

"Because kissing through a mask is sexy?" 

"You are so annoying. I just realized that life is short." 

"If this is what made you realize this absolute fact, then congratulations to the coronavirus." 

"Yes, and the truth is that I got the courage and told him that he was wrong regarding the reptiles' heat."

"N., if you don't mind, I want to hear about your meeting and not about the heat of the reptiles." N. stared at me with a fascinated look, her cheeks blushing, whispering: "He is so wonderful." 

"So, if you don't tell me what happened, I am going to tell on you to the police that you have seduced a stranger who should have been in isolation!"

"I just think I had realized that this coronavirus is my only opportunity to do something truly radical. So we corresponded for two weeks, and then we bumped into each other…" 

"You bumped into each other!" I snorted in disdain. 

"And we maintained a distance of two meters." 

"Of course!" 

"And we had a mask on!"

"Obviously!"

"And can you believe that a reptile researcher can be such a good kisser?"

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The pandemic had to compare to many other challenges, and the race was close: the terrorist attacks of the 1990s, when we were not quite sure we would make it alive after boarding Bus 18 in the capital; the operations in Lebanon; the Second Intifada; the operations in Gaza; the rocket attacks that have gradually increased their range and paralyzed half the country.

Those episodes have never caused me to doubt my patriotism, and then the coronavirus happened. And perhaps precisely because it had nothing to do with Jews and the attempts of evil people to destroy us that our leaders have treated the average citizen as an afterthought, as not the most important thing

The citizens, who fund the public coffers, have become the suspects; they have to deal with tax issues. On the one hand, they have been promised relief, yet on other hand, the very tax authorities that are supposed to deliver it have wrapped it in so much red tape that even those who climb the Everest cannot overcome this hurdle.

Social media has been flooded with the joke, "Has someone been able to get relief?" And like many others, I have given up on getting it. 

The disconnect between the state and its most loyal citizens is also evident in the fact that only a handful of its 30 plus ministers, some of whom have titles that are taken right out of science fiction books, have considered slashing their pay in solidarity.

But we, the citizens, on the other hand, are required to show solidarity. When the government came up with the disgusting idea of monitoring people using the Shin Ben security agency, we were asked to stay quiet in the name of solidarity. 

It was not long before it turned out that the lockdown has become a political tool. Most people know what population had the biggest infection rates, but the flights from New York were stopped. A cop yells at four kids at a playground to stop playing, while his colleague stands helplessly in front of a yeshiva packed with hundreds of students. But we were required to stay silent in the name of solidarity...

When you went to get medical checkups but had to go back home because only coronavirus patients were given treatment, you had to stay silent in the name of solidarity.

When you sat at home alone during the Passover Seder and watched television as the president and prime minister hosted with their families and flouted the lockdown, you were asked to stay silent and show solidarity. 

When the government refused to rethink its course, and the Health Ministry chiefs' serious-thinking big wigs continued their scaremongering with unsubstantiated data, trust began to crumble.

When they allowed, in a spontaneous act and with no reason, IKEA to reopen but refused to let the open-air markets do the same, trust crumbled. Trust just wants to die now. 

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When there is no trust, the ground beneath you begins to collapse. When this happens, the search for a flight to take you out of the country becomes ever more real. 

"In Israel, there are many charities and a lot of giving," someone told me. Well, I don't see any advantage in a country that discriminates its people, makes them get used to the idea of cutting corners and on the way gives them a small tax credit as an afterthought. 

The exhausted citizen sits at home and sees what's happening in his country and starts wondering. The "Anyone But Netanyahu" party and the "Only Netanyahu" party have imposed on the law-abiding citizen a choice: He or she has to choose a side. But the citizens don't want to have to deal with these religious wars. They don't want to join the protests against Netanyahu or the celebrations and rallies honoring him.

This bipolar disorder in Israel is very dangerous. History has already proved that superpowers much stronger than Israel eventually collapsed. They didn't die as lean and modest. They died when their monstrous state bodies turned against the country and attacked the very underpinnings of the nation and its citizens. It is hard to get rid of such a plague. Even the Health Ministry will not get rid of this self-inflicting virus, despite the serious demeanor.

The post On despair appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.