chicken salt
The days are so long in December in Sydney that you can meet one friend for a sunrise swim in an open-air, ocean-water pool, grab a coffee at the cafes that open at 5am before returning home to rinse off the salt from the Pacific waves. You still have so much morning ahead of you to meet another friend for breakfast, linger over coffee, bounce from beach to beach, and take a nap after. And still, there is time to end the day with family and dinner together as the sun sets. It felt like across Sydney, we’d all had some version of this perfect day: reunion with family returning to Australia from overseas, long, leisurely meals with old friends, and dives into the Pacific to cool off from the December heat.
To end Sunday, my brother and I decided to drive to a surf beach. The name of the beach originates from an Aboriginal word meaning “like thunder” named for the power of the waves. Children learning to surf and pros were catching the final waves of the weekend. We found the flags to swim between, dove in, and swam under the waves pounding the long stretch of golden sand. Cognizant of the setting sun. This wasn’t only Sunday turning into Monday, but also the first night of Chanukkah. Even without a menorah, I was conscious of the darkness settling and the light starting to dip over Western Sydney.
My brother and I ordered fish and chips - Have you had chicken salt before? He asked. I must have had it. I’d eaten fish and chips in Australia before, but it didn’t bring up any memories or tastes. In Sydney, they add this yellow salt to the fries and battered fish adding a meatier, umami flavor to the fried food cooked in stainless-steel vat of oil. As we waited, urgent messages came through on Whatsapp. Videos of people like us, soaking up the final moments of this perfect Sunday, now fleeing Bondi Beach. Another video emerged of two shooters on a white bridge linking a patch of grass to the beach. I recognized the bridge immediately, I’d spent the morning catching up with a friend from London at a breakfast spot in Bondi. As we made plans of where to beach-hop that morning, the bridge framed her and people crossed over it to reach the Ocean.
The food arrived, a thin layer of yellow seasoning on the fries, but with every bite the breaking news, the pounding waves breaking on the sand, and the heaviness of the chicken salt made me feel distracted and nauseous. Half-eaten, we threw the food away and drove back home as helicopters swirled in the sky. Back at the apartment, a woman ran past me on the stairwell, asking if I had heard the news, not needing to name it, and telling me to get inside.
During the Hebrew month of Kislev, the darkest in the Hebrew calendar, I wondered how I’d feel connected to the darkness during the long, light-filled days of Sydney summer. But the darkness found us and forced us to find the light.
Fortunately, I never had to make the decision whether I would go to the Chanukah-by-the-Sea celebration that ended in the death of fifteen Jewish people in Bondi, the neighborhood as British as it is Jewish, for me an interesting mix of my British past and where I am headed toward Judaism. Before coming to Sydney, I’d been connected to a rabbi who led a temple in North Sydney. The plan had been to celebrate the holidays with latkes — even in summer — later that week. Instead, we sat in Shiva as a community, and Australian politicians sat in the front row of the service to show solidarity with the Jewish community.
God, as a constant conversation, can be the awe of sunset, laughing in the waves of the Pacific with a sibling — and in an instant, you’re pulled into the depths of darkness and grief.
