Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

The building I live in is populated primarily by the same people who bought their apartments before the building was up, sometime in 1972.  We know each other well, even though we are very different in our lives.  And on the 15th of December we turn on the underfloor heating.  It is the least expensive form of heating and keeps the chill off our old bones.  Sometimes we can put it off for a week or so, but today the neighbors were knocking at our door to get Ezi to fire up the furnace as soon as possible.  The dampness is the hard part, the cold walls and the wind coming in from under the window sills.  Before I lived here, we used a kerosene heater that had to be lit outside because it smelled so bad.  After that we had a gas heat, and one night, I fell asleep next to it while keeping watch over a sick child.  It was a stormy night and the electricity failed, which woke me up to discover that the gas line had gotten loose and the gas was flowing freely into the room.  That was a ‘defining’ moment for me, following the sound of the hissing gas and pulling down the lever, groping for the windows in the dark and throwing them open to the rain, etc.  We had no phone and I was the only adult in the house. And even though I knew then I’d be able to rely on myself, I also knew that I’d have to find a safer way to heat the house.