Omri and the volcano

Omri told me a story while we were traveling on a bus about a year ago, and I was reminded of it recently when I heard about the hotel bombing in Pakistan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7627791.stm).
I'd asked him what living in Israel was like, and this is what he said:
"There was a period of about a year, when I was 22, that I would go out every Friday and wonder if I would make it back home at the end of the night." He told me about losing friends, and what it was like to live in an atmosphere of impending death. "Did you know that every year, more people in Israel die on the road from traffic accidents than from suicide bombings? We have PSAs on the radio and they say things like 'Slow down, relax, it's ok. You're daughter who you love so much is waiting for you at home, and your spouse as well.'"
"So people drive crazy over there?" I asked. "Why?"
"It's because everyone is nervous and frustrated. You never know when or where the next bombing is going to take place." As I thought about it, I slowly realized just how much sense that made. I could only imagine what driving in Tucson would be like under imminent threat of attack, a constant thumping in the back of everyone's head on the road, saying "The sooner you get home, the sooner you'll be safe."

Omri told me about a friend of his who works in Israel's equivilant of the FBI. Omri said how a Muslim extremist's attempt to blow up a shopping area had been foiled, and the detonator taped to his body had blown up without triggering the real explosives. It knocked the extremist out cold, but did no damage to anyone else.
Omri's friend was one of the people in the interrogation room, waiting for the extremist to regain consciousness. As he slowly came back to reality, the extremist began saying, "It's ok, you can bring them in now." Omri's friend just sat there, unsure what the guy was talking about. "Bring them in, I'm ready," the man said.
Omri's friend asked the man what he was talking about. "The virgins," the man said. "Isn't this heaven?"

"Can you believe that?" Omri said. "The guy actually believed - fully believed - that because he had died in the service of Allah, he was in heaven, and his virgins were just past the door of the room he was in, waiting for him."

Omri and I walked around a volcano that day. When he looks back on that day, he probably remembers the acid lake, the coconut cookies and mangos we ate, how we stood in the rain for hours on end, just waiting for the fog to clear so we could get one good shot of the basin, the college kids we met from Indiana, and the hot cocoa we drank to warm our shaking bodies. I remember that stuff too. I also remember wondering what it would be like to live in his society, the constant reminder of death ever present, ever clear.