I miss New York. I walk the streets that only a few weeks ago were bustling with throngs of people, and I feel phantom pain: that pain amputees feel where their limb used to be; a sensation, irritation or itch. 

There are many things that are part of this nostalgia: the spiraling lineup at the most trendy pasty shops and delis; the brunch at restaurants people so eagerly await on weekends; the bars that are so dedicated to outdo each other over who has the best martini. 

The happy chaotic commotion at the theater district near Times Square, where the throngs of people who had just seen a Broadway show would blend with everyone, along with the whining over the lack of available cabs; the crowded lines of those who stay well after the show is over, determined to get an autograph of one the performers as they leave through the back door; the laid back reading of the New York Times' culture section in search of the next big thing; the cyan fumes that hovers above Central Park during the summer, creating a dream: the joggers, and the travelers and the many half-naked New Yorkers who lie on the prickly grass. 

Heck, I even miss Times Square's most crowded and ugly days! But the nostalgia is bigger than the many memories, the fragments of the vibrant urban life that had been drastically truncated about a month ago and now seem like they took place in a previous life. 

I miss the city itself like someone would miss a lover or a close friend you have unfortunately had to part ways with. Some 20 years ago New York welcomed me with open arms, and it has since confided with me some of its most well-kept secrets, those that it only tells those who truly love it.

The fact that I had arrived wearing my Hebrew spectacles – both the contemporary and outdated Hebrew – has helped me look at it through different lenses, unlike the masses that descend on the city.

My New York, even though historically speaking it is not that ancient, has a rich history, it has become mythical in our collective memory, and I would even dare say, it can be considered a biblical city because of its layers upon layers of meaning, memory, local history and stories that have accumulated over the many years there.

New York lives in its own warped timezone, on the same level as other ancient and holy cities such as Rome and Jerusalem. I am worried that the shock it has experienced by screeching to a halt despite being the city that never sleeps will result in some part of it dying forever. Its very soul might change and disappear.

That special makeup of my New York is still delicate and fragile like a butterfly's wings; touch it without care, and you will destroy the city's bewitching beauty and its singularity.

I end this entry in the Corona Diaries with anxiety and anticipation. On the one hand, I am full of great child-like optimism and eagerness to see the city wake up from this nightmare, shake off its painful vestiges and continue going about its business as if nothing had happened. On the other hand, the knowledge that this is impractical, that what had made New York so special is now forever gone, is killing me from inside.

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More than anything else, more than the fear of the disease itself, more than the pressure of self-isolation and my yearning for the routine that disappeared a month ago, more than anything else, what's killing me from within is the lack of certainty, the feeling that all my efforts to understand what is really happening and anticipate the future are just in vain, a childish attempt to control an uncontrollable situation. 

We sit in our apartments, which have become unusually crowded as of late, or in our old insect-infested country homes that we have fled to because of the pandemic, following the news closely, and our troubled heads just get nauseated from the conflicting messages that are sprinkled at us from all over.

No version of the new reality can be convincing or whole, and not one version can provide a sense of security or clarity. On the one hand, we are told that the curve is plateauing and that a graduated lifting of the lockdown will take place over the coming weeks, but on the other hand, we have been asked to mentally prepare for the possibility that this nightmare will continue into the summer and the next school year. 

Wall St., whose fluctuations affect every New Yorker even if they don't have a penny to invest, is capricious and erratic, goes up and then down in a dizzying pace like a roller coaster whose engineer is intoxicated at work or just mad.

Over the past two weeks, we have seen the strongest rallies in years, despite the grim reality of our lives, making people question the sanity of our overall financial system. The global price of oil, on the other hand, has entered negative territory. "Theoretically, oil producers will have to pay customers to buy oil," financial reporters explained to the stunned readers. This absurd piece of information, which cannot be filed under any rational category in our conceptual mind, is yet another part of the chaotic mosaic of the new reality we are trapped in. 

This confusion and absurdity are also brought to us from high up. President Trump, who apparently still has doubts as to whether the virus is real and sees it as some left wing-liberal conspiracy against him, has called this week to "liberate" the states that have been placed under lockdown, saying that the governors are supposedly imposing the restrictions and the social distancing measures.

He has also refused to wear a mask, saying so publicly in a press conference last week. But this is anecdotal because no politician would wear a mask when talking to the press, and no one could expect the president to wear a mask, but Trump made it a point to stress this matter and by doing so, to send a message to his die-hard supporters. In response, many of them have started protesting against the lockdown and are demanding a return to normalcy, and more than anything else – to reopen businesses. 

The online magazine Slate published a picture of a young woman protesting with a sign that features a face mask, with a thick red line over it. Underneath it reads: "My body, my choice! Trump 2020." Her face, deliberately without a mask, is a statement in and of itself, as is the manipulative use of the feminist-progressive rhetoric over a woman's right to her own body in order to promote the president's hyper-conservative agenda.

It's not just the protesters who are taking Trump's combative and divisive rhetoric to the street. The ultra-conservative right-wing news channels, as well as YouTubers and Bloggers who are associated with the extreme Right, are exploiting Americans' sensitivities and mental anguish in order to promote bizarre conspiracy theories whose sole purpose is to undermine the public's trust in its government and press and to frame the lockdown as a destructive liberal conspiracy.

This unprecedented situation, in which the president in and of himself, is actively trying to undermine the trust of the public in the laws and the official narrative of the authorities and the media, brings yet another monstrous dimension to this malignant feeling of domestic chaos and uncertainty that has been destroying our miserable mind. Our minds are already on the verge of exploding because of anxiety and boredom and the other ills of living in isolation. 

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Like a dream that keeps coming back and has a grip on your consciousness, our reality is slipping through our fingers.

The days seem to be merged, the mornings are late, the nights are longer, and time has become blurred, with dates no longer having a meaning now that they lack any activities or take place in a different format, online.

The meetings, the discussions, and the lectures through Zoom are also characters in this dream and do not have that invigorating, energizing influence of face-to-face encounters.

The faces have become thumbnails that flicker in small squares across the screens with metallic voices, which reminds me, more than anything else, of Alice's psychedelic experiences in Wonderland.

The occasional short walks outside don't strengthen my grip on reality. It is eerily quiet, it is not healthy, it is surreal.

Traffic is light; I see a vehicle every so often, a single vehicle, or a man walking his dog or a woman who determined to go jogging. We exchange tense looks, and even a slight "hello" gesture with our hands, and that's it. We go about our business on our own, maintaining a safe distance from each other. This momentary disruption of the quiet disappears very quickly and that total, almost threatening, silence once again sets in all around.

The flames of the Forsythia lighten the still-grey grass and the bare trees. This overwhelming yellow-phosphorous blossom does not create a sense of being in control of reality, not even the massive and sensuous flowers that have suddenly adorned the bare branches of the Magnolia trees, not even the nauseating pink blossom of the citrus trees that have suddenly awoken from their winter hibernation as if our world has not become frozen in time and turned into a quicksand of a permanent present.

The heart does not get filled with joy in the wake of these blossoms; what would normally be a breathtaking sight no longer penetrates the mind or lights up the soul. A big cloud of uncertainty hovers above everything: a cloud of constant worry and helplessness.

Now that time has lost its meaning, the near future suddenly looks like a distant horizon, and the colorful seasonal rites of passage – and nature itself – is devoid of meaning and has become grotesque.

It is not just the gap between reality and imagination that has become blurred, but also that between reality and fiction.

The effort to create an alternative reality on paper – an effort that in normal times would be an absurdity – is twice as ludicrous in a dystopian reality that has emerged on its own, as if it was taken from science fiction novels.

What am I supposed to do now? How can my writings compare to the impossible situation we have found ourselves in without preparation: A strange pandemic that arrived out of nowhere and grinds the world to a screeching halt; cities are on full lockdown; roads are empty and skies have no planes.

I don't write science fiction, but even if I did, I would not come up with such a manuscript so fast, as this would just rehash the worn-out movies in this genre. What can I add to this? That bats are allegedly the source of this disease and caused the world to stop in time for an unknown period? Such a plot would be ridiculous. Who would sign a book deal with me with such a storyline?

But surprisingly, despite what I concluded through common sense – and despite the impossible conditions that are supposedly around me – my ability to focus on writing has actually improved.

I make sure to use my daily quota and write on things that have nothing to do with mysterious viruses, pandemics, bats, or cities on silent lockdown.

Ironically, it is in these realms of fiction that I have found my solid rock of reality. In a place where time has gone haywire and stopped moving in the right direction, the prose is once again putting it back in linear motion, more or less.

In this situation, where meaning cannot be distilled, prose enforces its convoluted logic and rearranges things in a way that might be comprehensible once again.

Reuven (Ruby) Namdar has lived in New York for the past 20 years. His novel "The Ruined House" (2017) won the Sapir Prize, Israel's most prestigious literary award.

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This year's Seder will be weird and foreign, different than any other Seder I have experienced over my lifetime. Passover, and especially the Seder, is usually wrapped in layers upon layers of traditions and meanings, restrictions and rebellions, recipes, memories, nostalgia, and humor.

All those layers have been removed this year, leaving us close to the real thing, the actual experience it celebrates with its nostalgic sugarcoating: the memory of our ancestors' last night, their most fateful and awesome night, in Egypt.

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What will be missing above all is the sense of family. The Seder usually has a hyper-familial setting that often provides a cozy environment but also occasionally becomes a burden.

Every year our relatives gather at our home for a noisy feast laden with wine and delicacies, we read the Haggadah (most of it at least...) and we end with off-key renditions of American folk songs.

This year we will be alone, enclosed in our own place; we will try to compensate for this void by being overly occupied with Zoom as we try to lower the volume and adjust the angle of our laptop, along with other petty matters that will disguise the emptiness, the uncertainty, the concern, and the sadness that we will obviously feel.

It's not just the familial setting that will be left out. All the Passover tableware, the special recipes of the dishes my late mother used to prepare, the beautiful dresses, the white shirts, and the other Passover paraphernalia have all been left behind in the city.

Some three weeks ago, when we left New York, it was unthinkable that we would not be coming back for the holiday. They are just objects, right? They are not germane to the actual meaning of the holiday, right? But the truth of the matter is that these objects keep the memory alive for us and create, just for several days every year, a feeling of a different era, a beloved and special period. This will be very much missing this year.

But what is particularly missing this year is the celebratory feeling; that calm, free and joyous atmosphere. Who wants to browse the internet for new recipes or new ideas for the Seder these days? Why would anyone be in the mood to actually look at flower arrangements and decorations for the table or think about wine and novel interpretations that would make the Seder a little more interesting? The general anxiety is eating us from within, leaving us without a lot of room for anything else.

Ironically, this year we will actually deal with the very deep meaning of the holiday, the very core of the holiday that has been hidden well from us through many generations of traditions and rituals. This core belies a deep memory of collective trauma that has accompanied the outburst of freedom, a trauma that has been bigger than anything our imagination has allowed us to imagine.

The final night of the Israelites in Egypt, referred to in Judaism as the "Passover in Egypt," was a night of great horror. The destroying angel did not differentiate the wicked from the righteous. Our forefathers convened for their Seder in their lousy slave huts, protected only by the thin layer of blood that they painted above their door and mezuzot on the doorposts. What a terrible sight it must have been.

Freedom, which was inconceivable for them after generations upon generations of bondage, was born in this moment of total existential anxiety and complete uncertainty. Seder, which means "order" in Hebrew, wasn't even remotely present. It was a night of total chaos.

But here we are, preparing to celebrate the ancient holiday that was born from the mix of trembling and happiness in a horrific night in Egypt, even as some of the very components of this horror are felt now.

There are news reports on field hospitals in Central Park and in Javits Center; the dozens of mobile morgues that have been brought to the city, alongside reports on the mounting death toll of a scale not seen in a hundred years.

The destroying angel is on the loose in the empty streets and deserted avenues. The doors, the lintels and the mezuzot of the closed apartments will once again serve as the last line of defense as we hide from something that is beyond our control, something that has shattered the myth of freedom we had and brought us back to reality regarding what a real Seder is all about. It reminded us what we can and cannot control.

Reuven (Ruby) Namdar has lived in New York for the past 20 years. His novel "The Ruined House" (2017) won the Sapir Prize, Israel's most prestigious literary award.

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"The streets were empty."

Writing this short sentence would usually be embarrassing, because it is such a cliché.

This time, I had no choice but to use it, and I am willing to take full responsibility for this. The streets were indeed empty.

We came back to New York for several hours, just to pick up necessary chattel, and mainly in order to remind ourselves that the world we had come to know, our beloved world, still stands. This was a bizarre and depressing experience. 

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West End Avenue was desolate, as if I was in some dream or a psychological thriller like Vanilla Sky. We saw an older man with disheveled hair in his night gown, boots, surgical mask and blue rubber gloves walking his white, limped-tail dog, which seemed to be dragging along just as stunned and confused. 

On Broadway, you could barely see a single person. The traffic lights, which seemed more colorful than normal, continued to change colors at their normal pace, without letting the almost-empty street affect their daily routine.

Instead of the normal traffic, there were police cars and other first-responder vehicles.

Perhaps these cars are always there, but now, with the other cars nowhere to be seen, their presence was much more prominent and made the apocalyptic atmosphere even more aching.

The various outcasts – the crazies, the beggars, and the homeless who have no place to shelter-at-home to fend off the pandemic – can also suddenly attest, in their dramatic presence on the street, that the city had indeed shrunken. 

Most of the shops were closed. Those that had opened had long lines.

Customers were waiting for a green light to get in – 10 at a time – to buy that urgent thing they need and then quickly disappear back into their shelter, their apartment.

It took me a minute to internalize why the long lines seemed so weird to me, and then it hit me: New Yorkers had departed from their usual impatient and in-your-face demeanor and instead just stood apart and chose not to step on each other's toes.

They kept a safe distance. I don't quite understand what I was going through, but I found this matter particularly saddening. 

Nevertheless, New Yorkers haven't stopped being the social animals that they always were. The municipal and community centers are still a vibrant place, but just not physically: They are active within the many homes and iron gates of buildings, with doormen who now wear latex gloves and surgical masks rather than don their hats and white gloves.

The slew of organizations in the city – from churchgoers, synagogue congregations, and various parental groups in co-op schools – have continued to live very real online lives, and have been doing all they can to bridge the physical distance that has been imposed on them by the new urban reality. 

Ironically, Jewish life in New York has not stopped even one bit, and it is actually seeing a renaissance of sorts.

The synagogues, whose gates were shut closed as soon as the outbreak reached the city, are now offering a whole host of online activities: daily prayers, Torah study, support groups and fundraising for the many who have been afflicted by the new situation, whether because of their lost livelihood or because they are now isolated.

For many of the participants, there is no time or patience to deal with all these activities but they offer comfort because they give the impression that life continues despite everything. 

A new, rather beautiful institution has been created by this situation: the virtual cocktail. Luckily, alcohol stores have been declared "essential businesses" and hence sales are flourishing.

Most of our friends set up virtual cocktails in which they can drink together online, thanks to Zoom, which has been a godsend in these dire straits.

This may sound silly, but we find ourselves eagerly waiting for these online gatherings and truly enjoy them. We don't belittle the degree to which this situation has managed to shock our lives, even as we try to disguise this with nonchalance and irony.

Every type of contact with people in the outside world helps ease the anxiety, especially when you are drinking good wine or a properly-stirred Negroni.

Reuven (Ruby) Namdar has lived in New York for the past 20 years. His novel "The Ruined House" (2017) won the Sapir Prize, Israel's most prestigious literary award.

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