A few minutes after the terrorist attack on Moriah Street, A. arrived at the "Burekas Junction," named after the nearby burekas diner. He was looking for his son. "What happened to Y.?" he asked. "Does anyone know where he is?"
Apart from a few confused words, nobody had an answer. He said he had been speaking to his son, who was on bus no. 37, when they were cut off. Seconds later, he heard on the radio of the terrorist attack on Moriah Street.
Y.'s friends from the eighth grade of the Reali Merkaz school began gathering at the junction. Close by, like a fresh monument, stood the devastated bus, the smell of horror still pungent.
"He's a good friend of mine," said Noah Gastfreund, a class member. "He's such a cute kid, a happy boy. I'm very worried. We've called all the hospitals, and he's not there."
"I heard that a girl from seventh grade died on the operating table," another classmate briefed them. Asaf arrived and told them of two other wounded teenagers from their school who were hospitalized.
More friends came, updating the others with new details. For some it was not their first terrorist attack. "The previous attack, in the Matsa restaurant, was next to my house," said Mariah Krot, of the Reali school. "We moved to this area, and now this attack caught me here. Myself and my girlfriend were supposed to stay in school for another few hours. If that had happened, we would most likely have been on that bus."
Bus no. 37 travels through one of Haifa's central routes, picking up passengers from various quarters on Mt. Carmel. It leaves the old terminal near Bat Galim and starts climbing toward Haifa University, passing schools and commercial centers.
Yesterday's attack coincided with the end of the school day for many students at a number of these schools, including ORT Hanna Senesh technological high school, WIZO (Arts), Hugim, and Reali Center. The bus also picked up elementary school children after school in the central Carmel area before proceeding toward the university.
This is also the bus students take to Haifa University. "Everybody goes on this bus, children from good homes, students, new immigrants, Arabs from Wadi Nisnas, and Arabs from the Kababir quarter, which is quite close," a social worker said.
A long time passed yesterday until the familiar yells from terrorist attack sites - "death to Arabs," "No Arabs, no attacks" - began. It took hours for the "professional" yellers from the center of the country to arrive.
"We're from Haifa," explained Guy Toledano, an 11th grader at Hugim. "We probably don't have practice in that yet."
Yoram, a resident of the area in his 40s, walked up and whispered to the boys: "What's the matter with you? Does it look like a coincidence to you that it happened next to an Arab village?"
"Right," swiftly responded 11-grader Lital Mor. "I'm sure someone from the area helped the terrorists."
"How do you know?" queried classmate Katya Aharonov. "They shouldn't be accused just like that," intervened a boy who was listening.
"I'm never going on another bus again as long as I live," declared Noah Gastfreund. "My mother will drive me to school every morning."
"I have no other choice," said her friend Maria Krot, a new immigrant from the former Soviet Union. "I'll continue taking buses."
"Don't be silly, you'll go with me," said Gastfreund. "We'll pick you up every morning.
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