After the attacks and frantic efforts to leave Israel, when their plane departed, Kim Fish thought: “When am I going to be high enough that the missiles can’t get me?”
She said she believed about 10 to 12 people from the Springfield area attended the wedding.
One of those people, Ann Chitkara, the mother of the groom, expressed her feelings Monday morning between flights in a brief layover in Chicago, finishing the conversation as her plane boarded for Dayton.
“It’s just sadness for my son and daughter-in-law, and her family. It is just so sad,” Chitkara said. “And for Israel. We probably saw the country the last time it will be like that ... It’s a wonderful country.”
The trip was the first time the Chitkaras had been in Israel.
“We had been there a week,” Chitkara said.
They traveled, toured for four days and spent time with the bride and her family.
Waking to sirens, explosions
Kim Fish called the Friday night ceremony fabulous.
“We were in bed at around 6:30 or 7 (a.m. Saturday) and heard sirens and big booms, like the finale at fireworks,” Kim Fish said. “My Israeli friend phoned me in tears in her PJs in her bomb shelter and told us we needed to take cover for 10 minutes after each siren.”
She thinks the nearest missiles to their hotel might have been up to five miles away to the south.
Still, the Fishes and others sat in the stairwell at the hotel, where staff had placed six-packs of bottled water on each landing.
“It went from the sublime to the horrific in a matter of hours,” Larry Fish said.
Dr. Mubin Syed and his wife, Afshan, traveled from their Springfield home to Israel about a week before the wedding.
They toured in the days before the wedding as their first time there, “happy to see all the sights,” he said.
They said the wedding was wonderful but the next day was hard to believe.
The Syeds were awakened by an air raid siren, and they heard multiple explosions.
“Consecutive boom, boom, boom,” Mubin Syed said.
Added Afshan Syed: “It was beyond what we could imagine. Honestly, I don’t think I processed what that was until I was told.”
Iron Dome protection
Larry Fish credited Israel’s Iron Dome air defense missile shield with preventing more deaths and injuries.
When you hear a siren, he said, “You’ve got 90 seconds to be in a bomb shelter.”
The Chitkara family ended the wedding party and went back to their hotel about 3:30 a.m., Ann Chitkara said.
“At 6:30, we heard the sirens and the (missile) intercepts,” she said.
At first it seemed to her like a testing of tornado sirens, but “then you realize it is not a tornado.”
Chitkara said they went five times Saturday to the shelter level because of separate alerts.
“They are brief,” she said. “You go down maybe five to 10 minutes.”
Scramble to get out
The Springfield couples scrambled to figure out how to get out of Israel. That included considering flights to Ethiopia, the Czech Republic and Ireland.
Kim Fish said it was ironic “when you consider flying to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) is safer than where you are.”
Chitkara said they flew out early Sunday after having to change flights. They flew Ethiopian Air, landing in Ethiopia, then a brief stop in Togo, then to Newark, followed by Chicago and then to Dayton.
She said Monday her daughter ended up in Turkey and will head back to the U.S. later this week.
The Syeds also found a flight out to Addis Ababa. They said they were nervous about flying Ethiopian Air, knowing little about it or what would happen at the next stop.
“The goal was just to get out,” Afshan Syed said.
Debris from the missile and the Iron Shield intercepts fell in Tel Aviv, the Syeds said. One of the passengers on their plane out had been injured by debris and was bandaged but bleeding on the flight.
Connecting flights later routed the Syeds to Dublin, Ireland, and eventually to Chicago and Dayton on Monday.
Persistence pays off
The Fishes tried to use Israeli versions of Uber or Lyft to go from the hotel to the airport, but no rides were to be found with the attacks. Their Israeli friends drove to the hotel, took the Fishes to Ben Gurion Airport and helped them get inside.
From there, it was another six hours or so of uncertainty in the airport, Larry Fish said.
“Kim got a notice that our Fly Dubai flight had been canceled,” he said.
They had to scramble across concourses and work to track down other options. They also scrambled to bomb shelters at the airport as Hamas fired more missiles,
“Imagine 600 sweating people with luggage and kids,” Larry Fish said. “We would wait, then come back up.”
They scrambled to find plugs to charge their phones, their only lifelines to airlines, friends and family.
“We Facetimed our daughter in Chicago, who was in tears worried about us,” Kim Fish said.
Larry Fish called the efforts to get out a nightmare that ended with his wife’s persistence.
“Kim was very polite and very forceful to explain we needed to get on this plane,” he said.
“They were holding the doors open” for them, Kim Fish said.
The Fishes eventually managed a flight to Japan, where they had initially planned to go later this week to meet with relatives.
Larry Fish said they were the last two people to get on the plane out.
“The taxiing and the climb out was very unsettling,” Larry Fish said.
The stress they faced, the retired eye surgeon said, “is nothing compared to what is going on in southern Israel.”
The long flight to Japan included no WiFi and no news. They then landed without luggage and scrambled to buy train tickets, find a hotel, contact family and friends and get some sleep.
“We are now just absorbing the scale of this,” Kim Fish said. “It is just like a gut punch over and over.”
“We got lucky. We got out,” she said, “but millions of people are living this hell still.”
‘Definitely an escalation’
The Syeds, not realizing the severity of the Hamas attacks, kept a planned tour led by an Israeli Army veteran well outside of Tel Aviv in a remote area Saturday.
They were out in the desert and the guide did not seem alarmed. He called it the safest place to be at the time.
The Syeds started to receive texts and updates, and “that’s how we were realizing that this was a major event,” Afshan Syed said.
Mubin Syed said Israelis don’t panic.
“People there overall take it in stride,” he said. “It is a very tragic situation. We feel for the people ... It is definitely an escalation,” he said, worried about innocent people on both sides dying in the conflict.
The Fishes, who were on their second visit to Israel, said their Israeli friends have lived in their home country except for five years in which they were in the U.S. The friends have four children plus grandchildren.
“This life is not new to them as it was to us,” Kim Fish said. “They are shaken to their core. The surprise element, and the taking civilians hostage and killing families and children are shocking.
“They appreciate prayers — and they are secular — and they want the world to see this horror.”
The friends, who asked not to be named, are sharing their house with their children and grandchildren.
The wife said in a message: “It’s not easy. Trying to play with them and keep them busy. Running with them to the shelter ... so they won’t be afraid. I am so tired.
“We need all the support from the world we can get.”
‘Put your politics aside’
Kim Fish said Israel is as divided politically as the United States, but their Israeli friends said now: “We are first united as Israelis and the time for finger-pointing and bickering is not now.”
She said it pains her that U.S. politicians are pointing fingers already.
“This is not helpful,” she said. “What is helpful is to pull together.”
Chitkara, whose husband Vijay is longtime pediatrician, said Americans should keep Israelis “in your prayers put your politics aside.”
Chitkara’s son and daughter-in-law brought together people of several different cultures and religions to celebrate, Kim Fish said.
“We are all at our best selves,” she said. “It’s just tragic to be living with such joy one day and the next day, it all just falls apart.”
The support and care from friends and family members touched those from Springfield as they left Israel and tried to return home, several said.
“The outpouring of concern for our safety from friends via text and social media has been very heartening and helpful,” Kim Fish said.
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