Posted on 09/10/2003 1:26:32 PM PDT by yonif
When Tzippy Farkas, 25, of Melbourne, Australia, went out on Tuesday night with two friends, security was very much on her mind.
"We had discussed it many times and what the odds were that something would happen," said Farkas from her hospital bed in the Bikur Holim Hospital, Jerusalem.
At 10:15 p.m., together with fellow Australians Tova Ross, 24, and Rachelle Rostiker, 25, she headed for Rehov Emek Refaim, taking a taxi in order to avoid the buses.
"We reckoned a bomb might happen on a bus, but not in a caf ," she said.
The group decided on Caf Hillel, choosing to sit at the back of the eatery, said Farkas, for safety reasons.
"We thought that if anything would happen it would be near the front of the shop," she said. As the three sat on a bench at the back of the room facing the door, a suicide bomber pushed his way into the glass-walled caf and detonated his charge.
Farkas saw nothing and only knew of the attack when the blast hit her.
"There was a huge bang and what felt like a severe electric shock went right through the caf , right through me," Farkas said. "I had to check I was still there." For a couple of seconds after the explosion, said Farkas, everything was quiet, and very dark.
Then the screaming started.
"The floor was a shambles," she said. "There was blood in my hair and it wasn't mine." As people scrambled to get out, Farkas and her companions also made their escape.
"What we did next was purely instinctive. We knew that we shouldn't go to the front because that was where the bomb went off." The three friends climbed out through the windowless walls into an alley that runs alongside the caf . "We ran down the alley away from Emek Refaim," she said. "I knew I was injured and it hurt to move." A piece of shrapnel had punched into Farkas's lower back.
"We just stood on a corner and screamed in English for help," she said. "We also shouted 'pigua' [attack]." A young English-speaking couple, alerted by the sound of the explosion, came to their rescue and took the three into their apartment. "They let us lie down there," Farkas said. "We covered their couches in blood." The couple then alerted medics from ambulance crews pouring into the area. Farkas and Rostiker, who suffered minor cuts and abrasions, were taken to hospital. Ross escaped unhurt.
"I didn't look back at the caf as we left," Farkas said.
In the hospital surgeons removed the shrapnel from her back, although Farkas declined an offer to keep it as a memento.
As Farkas left for hospital Ross called her sister, Miriam Farkas, who was also visiting Israel and staying at a hotel in Tel Aviv. "She told me what had happened but warned me that there was no point in coming to Jerusalem because it was mayhem here in the hospital," Miriam said. She eventually visited her sister on Wednesday morning.
Before she came to visit Israel, Farkas, who has worked for the past four years in New York, told her friends she felt no safer in New York than she would in Israel, and with good reason.
On September 11, 2001 she was in New York and ran for cover as the first of the Twin Towers collapsed around her. She was still fighting her way through a thick cloud of dust when 45 minutes later the second tower came down.
"I told them that in Israel they are better equipped to deal with attacks," she said.
Although unsure if she will visit any more caf s in Israel during the remainder of her time here, Farkas, on her third trip to Israel, is determined to recover her confidence.
"It's part of life," she said. "Life goes on for the Israelis, so it will go on for me too."
I think I would also stay away from Zippy during lightening storms.
She's only 25. If I were in her place, I'd be showing up at a recruiting office in Australia real soon.
Yeah. It was during this movie that I realized M. Night Shyamalan's better days were behind him.
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