Fire in the Middle East

While Erga and I were planning to leave the war crazed country where the instigators of the massacres in Gaza are hailed by very large parts of the population I found out that Chen, a friend of mine from my time at the Conservatory in the Hague was living in Haifa. So we made a slight detour. We first visited Erga's 90 year old grandmother who lives in Netanya to drop off some stuff. Very warm and cozy. The next day we tried to hitch to Haifa, but it turned out the worst hitchhiking experience in Israel so far. There is no good spot to hitch on the on-ramp onto the highway 2 north so we tried road number 4, where we only managed to get 2 shorter rides. Finally we took a bus into Haifa. It was great to see Chen again. She took us on a little tour on the mountain after a remarkable event. At some point we heard the neighbours shouting "fire, fire". I first grabbed my shoes, Chen and Erga ran over there directly, to find a panicking old woman and her Philippino household aide. My first reaction was: where can I find a bucket? I couldn't find anything, and the rest of the bunch was too busy leaving the house. The old woman was worried about not being dresses properly. My next reflex was: blankets. I found a pile of blankets and chose the one that felt most like cotton and went into the bedroom which was mostly very smoky with a relatively big fire in the corner. I first tried it out on the burning electric plug, which worked really well and then on to the two fire spots. Pushing the blanket onto the heart of the fire worked really well and I'm glad I couldn't find a bucket. Chen had called the firebrigades and when they arrived they turned off the electricity (this you should do first, in any fire).