David Nora lived near the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem, and last Saturday, very early in the morning, he started hearing sirens. I thought that, as was customary, the sirens announced a Jewish holiday. “We arrived at the balcony and saw three rockets fall to the ground and others were intercepted by the iron dome. [a cúpula de ferro]”he says. “We were desperate and went to the bunker because we realized it was an attack,” he adds.
David, 29, completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Algarve and applied for a five-year PhD in archeology at the Hebrew University. He lived in a house with two other companions, a Greek man and a French woman, who, upon realizing the seriousness of the situation, easily managed to contact the authorities of their respective countries to understand how they should act and what means they had at their disposal to Leave the country. country.
However, with the Portuguese embassy everything was more difficult. “Toward [embaixadas] “They responded automatically and were aware of the situation, the emergency numbers of the Portuguese embassy did not work all day,” guarantees David Nora, speaking with TSF.
He later managed to contact a member of the consulate who advised him to leave the country on his own. “The guideline at that time was that the priority was the tourist,” he notes.
“Anyone who was a resident or student with a temporary visa would have to look for commercial flights to leave Israel and that is what I did, with the help of my friends in Portugal,” he reveals. The doctoral student managed to get a flight to Prague and will only have a connection with Lisbon on Wednesday the 11th.
“It cost me my eyesight,” he says, laughing. “For my Greek colleague, the embassy was available to pay for everything,” she laments. Last night, when he had already bought a flight and was at Ben-Gurion airport, they contacted him to tell him that a military plane was going to pick up Portuguese.
“I told them to give my place to someone else,” he concludes.
As for the future, in the near future David Nora prefers to keep his doctorate on hold. Although Jerusalem is far from the most dangerous area of the conflict, rockets have already arrived and several places have been bombed. “Yesterday, when we were already in the air, the Ben Gurion airport was attacked and today [segunda-feira] In the morning the surrounding area was hit,” he says.
For this reason, the young man does not want to think about returning to Israel for now. “He’s not in my plans for now,” he says.
Source: TSF
