Thumbs up to Steve Erlanger and the NY Times for an excellent look at life in Sderot:
But already quiet, with the population down unofficially to perhaps 17,000 from 24,000, the people of Sderot live in a most un-Israeli hush, so they can hear the alerts. The vendor in the market who sits on a stool and yells out the prices of his cheap underwear has been told to stop using a megaphone. People sleep with the heating system off and a window open on the coldest night. There is no Muzak in the grocery store, and people keep their car windows open and their radios and televisions on low volume, even in the town’s few bars or pubs.
They take quick showers, afraid to miss an alert, no longer sleep in upstairs bedrooms and avoid public places at what are considered peak Qassam times. And when the alert sounds, people drop everything, including their unpaid groceries in the aisles, costing Daniel Dahan more than $100 a day, he said. He owns Super Dahan, the grocery his father started. They run to one of the square concrete shelters, known as betonadas, after the word for cement, that increasingly dot the town. Then they pull out their phones, to check on their children.
Related reading: Sderot Unspun
