Boom. Boom. A few seconds later, a deeper, basso profundo boom, so deep, I felt the ground beneath me belching. Approaching a small house, the sounds of war, just five and a half miles away, pierced the air. We were visiting Avi Freiman, our cousin, who’d recently returned to his home near the border with Gaza. In October 2023, I wrote in the Mercer Island Reporter about the Hamas attack on Avi’s kibbutz, Alumim. Fifteen months later, the war was still going on.

“That’s coming from Jabalia,” Avi said, referring to a city of 172,000 in the northern Gaza Strip. As we watched plumes of smoke rising, he told the story of the past fifteen months, and what life is like now.

After commuting between Alumim and temporary shelter an hour and a half north for a year, he and his wife, Shula, and all the other displaced kibbutz members came home, determined to overcome their trauma and memories from October 7. But peace remains elusive.

Above us, migrating birds made their silent way south toward Africa. And then, another sound, this one familiar — the sonic boom that Seattleites associate with the Blue Angels. But this was no summer entertainment. Gaza was being pounded by Israeli war jets. The roar of the planes was background noise in Southern Israel.

Walking us around the kibbutz, Avi pointed to blood stains on the ground, bullet-ridden houses, the places where terrorists had entered, the clever hiding places where his Thai agricultural workers crouched in silence for hours until the Israeli army arrived to rescue everyone still alive. Each place had a story. For our cousin, recounting what happened on October 7 seemed therapeutic.

Showing me his indescribably small secure room, and recalling the morning of October 7, he corrected a misunderstanding. I’d thought it was just him and Shula hiding there in utter silence.

“No!” he said. “There were 12 of us, for 26 hours. Two of our daughters, their husbands and children were staying with us overnight for Shabbat and Simchat Torah,” the joyful holiday marking the culmination of a year of Torah-reading. “We’re lucky that the room is oriented to the left of its entrance. Even if someone fired at us through the door, we could huddle on the left side. But we had to hold the door from the inside all day and night to prevent terrorists from coming in.”

How could 12 souls fit in there? How could children be silent for so long? When your life is at stake, I guess you find a way. Back on October 7, while the attack was still unfolding, I’d texted, “I know it sounds idiotic, but I’m worried about the cows. Must be too dangerous to milk them.” His reply: “Situation at the dairy is bad. We can’t get there. Terrible damage. Worried about our own lives. It’s very hard … The dairy is my life’s work …”

In the days after the attack, terrorists were still at large. At a nearby kibbutz, a friend was shot dead while approaching the dairy barn. Desperate to reach his own prized herd, Avi called a colleague at Cornell University to ask how long could pass before his un-milked cows would be ruined, never again to yield milk. “For a high-production cow, two days at most.” It was four days before Avi could safely reach his herd. Despite the stress, the cows resumed producing, an unheard-of accomplishment, according to Cornell. Then, it took over a year to fully resurrect Alumim’s dairy operation. It was Avi’s personal mission, and also vital to the kibbutz’s economic future.

After Alumim, we paid our respects at the Nova Music Festival site, where 340 young revelers — including another cousin’s grandson — were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas’ Izz al-Din al Qassam Brigade. It was a grim day.

That night, sirens woke us at 2 a.m. Houthis were firing rockets from Yemen toward Israel. Everyone in the house had one minute to reach the secure room — the guest bedroom, where we’d been sleeping. Suddenly, eight people were huddling together on our bed! In the morning, we learned that although the “iron dome” defense system had thwarted the attack, large rocket fragments landed on a nearby playground and synagogue.

The war goes on, leaving people on both sides of the border crushed by the weight of generations of pain and trauma. Will it ever end?

Mindy Stern is a Mercer Island resident who also contributes a travel column to the Mercer Island Reporter. Send comments to editor@mi-reporter.com.