As the vehicle ground to a sudden halt, the Red Alert siren that blared out air-raid warnings when Israel was under attack started wailing on my mother’s phone...
January 30, 2025 14:52
My mother, bless her, has never been one to let a crisis or emergency get in the way of her telling a baffling story, complete with every minor descriptive detail, no matter how irrelevant or incidental.
Take the time my parents were staying with me and had gone out for the night, borrowing my car. They went out, and off I went to bed for a rare and much-needed early night. I was, however, abruptly awoken by my mother sitting on my bed at 4am. “Misha, Misha, wake up, I need to tell you what’s happened.” Groggily, I came to, wondering why Mum was there, on my bed, in the middle of the night.
It turned out that, on their way to their destination, my dad had put petrol in my car. But on the way back at 1am, the car had conked out somewhere on Camden Road. My dad, always obsessed with engine oil, deduced that the reason the car had unexpectedly ground to a sudden halt was that his stupid daughter – me – had been neglectful as usual about keeping the oil topped up. And, leaving my mother alone in the car, he tried to get a bus back up Camden Road to the petrol station so he could buy some engine oil. The night bus driver refused to let my dad on the bus though as he didn’t have his OAP Freedom Pass on him and wouldn’t accept cash as, of course, London buses are now cashless. My dad, who was 81 at the time, was turfed off the night bus and had to trudge all the way to the garage and then back again.
Meanwhile, my mother was sitting alone and a little afraid in my broken-down car. After a while she noticed that the car had come to a halt right outside a mosque and that hundreds of men were gathering for late-night prayers. It just happened to be Ramadan. And it also happened that this was during the war of 2014 between Israel and Hamas and I had just that day installed an app, Red Alert, on her mobile phone, an app that blared out an air raid warning whenever Israel was under attack.
At roughly the same time that my mother realised she was sitting alone at night in a broken-down car outside a mosque where there were hundreds of men, the Red Alert siren started blasting and wailing from her phone. She panicked and screamed, a terrifying sound which drew the attention of all the men. So she tried to throw herself down into the footwell of the car. Unsuccessfully.
By the time she got to this part of the story (it was now about 6am), I was sitting up in my bed. “But why didn’t you just turn the volume off?” I asked. My mother stared at me. She hadn’t thought of that.
“What happened next?” I asked.
She panicked and screamed, a terrifying sound which drew the attention of all the men. So she tried to throw herself down into the footwell of the car. Unsuccessfully
Well, it turns out that by the time my dad had trudged to the all-night garage, bought the oil and schlepped back to my mother, she had nearly had eight heart attacks from all the Israeli siren-wailing outside the mosque. Oblivious to her terror, my dad filled the engine with oil. But it still wouldn’t start. And so my mother had hailed a black cab and came back to my house.
“So where is dad now? Is he downstairs?”
“No, of course not. He’s with the car. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”
I had to go out to him and get the AA to tow us. He had, it turned out, put petrol in my car that evening instead of diesel.
That’s just one example. Want another? Last week my mother phoned me to tell me my dad had fallen asleep in his armchair and fallen off it in the night. He couldn’t get up from the floor and they had to call Hatzalah. My mother went into the long convoluted, extraneous story of it all, ending, eventually, with “and you’ll never guess what, an hour later he fell off that chair again”.
“Oh no! So did you have to call Hatzalah again, Mum?” I ask.
“No, I want to, but the stupid man won’t let me.”
“Wait, are you saying dad’s STILL on the floor?”
My dad’s voice floated up from the floor: “Don’t call Hezbollah! I’m fine. Don’t bother Hezbollah again.”
“You see? So stupid,” says mum.
“I don’t want Hezbollah again. Don’t bother them again. I’m fine.”
“You see what I have to put up with?” says my mother, conversationally, as though we were chatting about the weather.
We had been on the phone for more than 15 minutes by this time.
In the end, some neighbours helped get him back up.
Do you see what I have to put up with?