  Tamar Rotem From Ha’aretz, August 25, 2002
"I covered my head with my hands, I don't know for how long," she says, evoking the horror. "I told myself, `Don't lose consciousness, don't lose consciousness.' I was so afraid." When her sense of reality returned, she realized that there had been a terrorist attack and that she was alive: frightened, but in one piece. An eternity seemed to have passed from the moment she left the main hall until the bomber blew himself up a few minutes later. She had gone to wash her hands, which were greasy from serving the first course. The sink was outside, and that was what saved her. In the many sleepless nights she has had since then, everything comes rushing back. Shafts of fluorescent light that thrust into the hall from the kitchen and lit up parts of the dark room, revealed the utter chaos: destruction, puddles of water from burst pipes in the ceiling, objects and people - dying and wounded - strewn on the floor in mangled heaps…Vishbin kept going, looking desperately for the two waitresses who had worked with her - a good friend and her sister-in-law. "I ruined their lives" All three are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Vishbin, 34, came to Israel two-and-a-half years ago and met Anna Ivragimov, 27, who has been in the country for eight years, at the Cosmos food chain in Ra'anana, where they both work - Vishbin as a graphic artist and Ivragimov as a keyboard operator. Their background, including the fact that they are both mothers of young children, drew them together. The two families saw each other almost every Saturday and frequently went on picnics. Vishbin, who came to Israel without a family, found a warm home with the Ivragimovs. The third waitress, Anna Vishbin, is the wife of her husband's brother and also a good friend. That morning, March 27, Vishbin got a call from the head waiter at the Park, who knew that she occasionally waitressed to supplement her income. She called Ivragimov and asked if she wanted to join her, and then she persuaded her sister-in-law to come along, too. Anna Vishbin had hardly gone out since giving birth to a son a year-and-a-half earlier, and Vishbin thought this would be a good opportunity for her to get out of the house and earn some money at the same time. In her recurring nightmare, Vishbin sees over and over the way from her house to her friends' places and then to the hotel. She conjures up scenarios that might have changed the course of events, as though she has a tape that she can edit. As Galina Vishbin left to wash her hands, Anna Ivragimov drew Anna Vishbin's attention to a suspicious figure wearing a long black coat. "Maybe it's a terrorist," she said. "What are you so worried about?" Anna Vishbin replied. The anxious Ivragimov looked at the person, who gave her a look back. The bewigged terrorist blew himself up four meters from the two young women. Ivragimov lost an eye. Vishbin, who had been an athlete in Ukraine, suffered damage to her lungs and spinal cord; she is now paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Galina Vishbin escaped without injury, but has assumed an intolerable mental burden: "It is my fault because I persuaded them to come with me to work," she says. Her pale features reflect nights without sleep. "I ruined their lives," she says. In the first days, she left her husband and son and rushed back and forth between her two friends, Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava and Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer. "When I heard that they removed Anna's eye, I became hysterical. I cried and screamed," she recalls. "I went to the hospital and sat next to her for a while. I talked to myself, not to her. She was unconscious and I was wiped out." …Galina Vishbin shifted her focus to Tel Hashomer, where her sister-in-law was fighting for her life. It was only then, a week after the event, that she allowed herself to collapse…"I felt like I was drowning. Over and over I kept thinking that I came out of it without a scratch, that I can go on with my life the way it was, but that she - the mother of a baby - would not be able to." During one of her visits to Tel Hashomer, she caught a glimpse of a young man who left a wallet on the counter of the reception area and disappeared. All the tension and pressure that had built up inside her erupted. "I screamed 'Bomb!' and ran," she relates. "I said good-bye to life." A few nurses caught Vishbin, who was crying uncontrollably. One of them referred her to psychological help and she is now in therapy. It was five full weeks before Vishbin returned to work. Ivragimov, whose eye underwent a lengthy rehabilitation, also went back to work five weeks after the event. Five months later, Vishbin has still not recovered. She asked to work half time, though this seriously affects the family's income. She functions out of habit. And she has new limitations: buses are out of the question; she leaves the house only to go to work; sleeplessness has become the norm; by day every noise rattles her. A month ago, her feeling of helplessness induced her to send her only son, Vladimir, to her parents in Ukraine. "I am very irritable these days," she explains. "I didn't have the strength for him, and I felt that they could look after him better than I could. … She thinks she would have been better off if she had been injured in the attack: "I look normal. No one knows what is happening to me inside. If I had been wounded, everything would be different."… Anna Vishbin, handsome and aristocratic, sits in her wheelchair at Tel Hashomer, where she is still hospitalized. Astonishingly, she seems to have recovered, though she has no illusions: "I know it is for always," she says. "But I have a child who needs me. I will keep going." She received tremendous support from her husband and her mother, she says. No, she is not envious of Galina, nor is she angry with her, she insists. Can she understand what Galina is going through? Anna stares out the window and reflects a bit before she says - hands resting on the arms of the wheelchair, on her way to another round of punishing treatments: "You have to understand that Galina suffered the most serious wounds." © Copyright 2002 Ha`aretz
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