September 23, 2001
 A Pure, High Note of Anguish
 By BARBARA KINGSOLVER, Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel is "Prodigal Summer."

TUCSON -- I want to do something to help right now. But I can't give blood (my hematocrit always runs too low), and I'm too far way to give anybody shelter or a drink of water. I can only give words. My verbal hemoglobin never seems to wane, so words are what I'll offer up in this time that asks of us the best citizenship we've ever mustered. I don't mean to say I have a cure. Answers to the main questions of the day--Where was that fourth plane headed? How did they get knives through security?--I don't know any of
that.

I have some answers, but only to the questions nobody is asking right now but my 5-year old. Why did all those people die when they didn't do anything wrong? Will it happen to me? Is this the worst thing that's ever happened? Who were those children cheering that they showed for just a minute, and why were they glad? Please, will this ever, ever happen to me?

There are so many answers, and none: It is desperately painful to see people die without having done anything to deserve it, and yet this is how lives end nearly always. We get old or we don't, we get cancer, we starve, we are battered, we get on a plane thinking we're going home but never make it.

There are blessings and wonders and horrific bad luck and no guarantees. We like to pretend life is different from that, more like a game we can actually win with the right strategy, but it isn't. And, yes, it's the worst thing that's happened, but only this week. Two years ago, an earthquake in Turkey killed 17,000 people in a day, babies and mothers and businessmen, and not one of them did a thing to cause it. The November before that, a hurricane hit Honduras and Nicaragua and killed even more, buried whole villages and erased family lines and even now, people wake up there empty-handed.

Which end of the world shall we talk about? Sixty years ago, Japanese airplanes bombed Navy boys who were sleeping on ships in gentle Pacific waters. Three and a half years later, American planes bombed a plaza in Japan where men and women were going to work, where schoolchildren were playing, and more humans died at once than anyone thought possible. Seventy thousand in a minute. Imagine. Then twice that many more, slowly, from the inside.

There are no worst days, it seems. Ten years ago, early on a January morning, bombs rained down from the sky and caused great buildings in the city of Baghdad to fall down--hotels, hospitals, palaces, buildings with mothers and soldiers inside--and here in the place I want to love best, I had to watch people cheering about it. In Baghdad, survivors shook their fists at the sky and said the word "evil." When many lives are lost all at once, people gather together and say words like "heinous" and "honor" and "revenge," presuming to make this awful moment stand apart somehow from the ways people die a little each day from sickness or hunger. They raise up their compatriots' lives to a sacred place--we do this, all of us who are human--thinking our own citizens to be more worthy of grief and less willingly risked than lives on other soil. But broken hearts are not mended in this ceremony, because, really, every life that ends is utterly its own event--and also in some way it's the same as all others, a light going out that ached to burn longer. Even if you never had the chance to love the light that's gone, you miss it. You should. You bear this world and
everything that's wrong with it by holding life still precious, each time, and starting over.

And those children dancing in the street? That is the hardest question. We would rather discuss trails of evidence and whom to stamp out, even the size and shape of the cage we might put ourselves in to stay safe, than to mention the fact that our nation is not universally beloved; we are also despised. And not just by "The Terrorist," that lone, deranged non-man in a bad photograph whose opinion we can clearly dismiss, but by ordinary people in many lands. Even by little boys--whole towns full of them it looked
like--jumping for joy in school shoes and pilled woolen sweaters.

There are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look  finally at the things we don't want to see. In a week of terrifying events, here is one awful, true thing that hasn't much been mentioned: Some people believe our country needed to learn how to hurt in this new way. This is such a large lesson, so hatefully, wrongfully taught, but many people before us have learned honest truths from wrongful deaths. It still may be within our capacity of mercy to say this much is true: We didn't really understand
how it felt when citizens were buried alive in Turkey or Nicaragua or Hiroshima. Or that night in Baghdad. And we haven't cared enough for the particular brothers and mothers taken down a limb or a life at a time, for  such a span of years that those little, briefly jubilant boys have grown up with twisted hearts. How could we keep raining down bombs and selling  weapons, if we had? How can our president still use that word "attack" so casually, like a move in a checker game, now that we have awakened to see that word in our own newspapers, used like this: Attack on America.
 
Surely, the whole world grieves for us right now. And surely it also hopes  we might have learned, from the taste of our own blood, that every war is both won and lost, and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to any empty bed. The mortal citizens of a planet are praying right now that we will bear in mind, better than ever before, that no kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

"Will this happen to me?" is the wrong question, I'm sad to say. It always  was.

 
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"And Our Flag was Still there"

by Barbara Kingsolver
September 25, 2001
San Francisco Chronicle

MY DAUGHTER came home from kindergarten and announced, "Tomorrow we all have to wear red, white and blue." "Why?" I asked, trying not to sound wary. "For all the people that died when the airplanes hit the buildings." I fear the sound of saber-rattling, dread that not just my taxes but even my children are being dragged to the cause of death in the wake of death. I asked quietly, "Why not wear black, then? Why the colors of the flag, what does that mean?" "It means we're a country. Just all people together." So we sent her to school in red, white and blue, because it felt to her like something she could do to help people who are hurting. And because my wise husband put a hand on my arm and said, "You can't let hateful people steal the flag from us."

He didn't mean terrorists, he meant Americans. Like the man in a city near us who went on a rampage crying "I'm an American" as he shot at foreign-born neighbors, killing a gentle Sikh man in a turban and terrifying every brown- skinned person I know. Or the talk-radio hosts, who are viciously bullying a handful of members of Congress for airing sensible skepticism at a time when the White House was announcing preposterous things in apparent self- interest, such as the "revelation" that terrorist had aimed to hunt down Air Force One with a hijacked commercial plane. Rep. Barbara Lee cast the House's only vote against handing over virtually unlimited war powers to one man that a whole lot of us didn't vote for. As a consequence, so many red-blooded Americans have now threatened to kill her, she has to have additional bodyguards.

Patriotism seems to be falling to whoever claims it loudest, and we're left struggling to find a definition in a clamor of reaction. This is what I'm hearing: Patriotism opposes the lone representative of democracy who was brave enough to vote her conscience instead of following an angry mob. (Several others have confessed they wanted to vote the same way, but chickened out.) Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who've spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the

Constitution through a paper shredder? Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to demolish our own ideals. It's a fact of our culture that the loudest mouths get the most airplay, and the loudmouths are saying now that in times of crisis it is treasonous to question our leaders. Nonsense. That kind of thinking let fascism grow out of the international depression of the 1930s. In critical times, our leaders need most to be influenced by the moderating force of dissent. That is the basis of democracy, in sickness and in health, and especially when national choices are difficult, and bear grave consequences. It occurs to me that my patriotic duty is to recapture my flag from the men now waving it in the name of jingoism and censorship. This isn't easy for me.

The last time I looked at a flag with unambiguous pride, I was 13. Right after that, Vietnam began teaching me lessons in ambiguity, and the lessons have kept coming. I've learned of things my government has done to the world that made me direly ashamed. I've been further alienated from my flag by people who waved it at me declaring I should love it or leave it. I search my soul and find I cannot love killing for any reason. When I look at the flag, I see it illuminated by the rocket's red glare.

This is why the warmongers so easily gain the upper hand in the patriot game: Our nation was established with a fight for independence, so our iconography grew out of war. Our national anthem celebrates it; our language of patriotism is inseparable from a battle cry. Our every military campaign is still launched with phrases about men dying for the freedoms we hold dear, even when this is impossible to square with reality. In the Persian Gulf War we rushed to the aid of Kuwait, a monarchy in which women enjoyed approximately the same rights as a 19th century American slave. The values we fought for and won there are best understood, I think, by oil companies. Meanwhile, a country of civilians was devastated, and remains destroyed.

Stating these realities does not violate the principles of liberty, equality, and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger. I would like to stand up for my flag and wave it over a few things I believe in, including but not limited to the protection of dissenting points of view. After 225 years, I vote to retire the rocket's red glare and the bullet wound as obsolete symbols of Old Glory. We desperately need a new iconography of patriotism. I propose we rip stripes of cloth from the uniforms of public servants who rescued the injured and panic-stricken, remaining at their post until it fell down on them. The red glare of candles held in vigils everywhere as peace-loving people pray for the bereaved, and plead for compassion and restraint. The blood donated to the Red Cross. The stars of film and theater and music who are using their influence to raise money for recovery. The small hands of schoolchildren collecting pennies, toothpaste, teddy bears, anything they think might help the kids who've lost their moms and dads.

My town, Tucson, Ariz., has become famous for a simple gesture in which some 8,000 people wearing red, white or blue T-shirts assembled themselves in the shape of a flag on a baseball field and had their photograph taken from above. That picture has begun to turn up everywhere, but we saw it first on our newspaper's front page. Our family stood in silence for a minute looking at that photo of a human flag, trying to know what to make of it. Then my teenage daughter, who has a quick mind for numbers and a sensitive heart, did an interesting thing. She laid her hand over a quarter of the picture, leaving visible more or less 6,000 people, and said, "That many are dead." We stared at what that looked like- all those innocent souls, multi-colored and packed into a conjoined destiny-and shuddered at the one simple truth behind all the noise, which is that so many beloved people have suddenly gone from us. That is my flag, and that's what it means: We're all just people together.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine books including "The Poisonwood Bible," (Harperflamingo,1999).

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No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak
by Barbara Kingsolver
Published on Sunday, October 14, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times

 
TUCSON -- I cannot find the glory in this day. When I picked up the
newspaper and saw "America Strikes Back!" blazed boastfully across it in
letters I swear were 10 inches tall--shouldn't they reserve at least one
type size for something like, say, nuclear war?--my heart sank. We've
answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most
war-scarred, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out.
The small plastic boxes of food we also dropped are a travesty. It is
reported that these are untouched, of course--Afghanis have spent their
lives learning terror of anything hurled at them from the sky. Meanwhile,
the genuine food aid on which so many depended for survival has been halted
by the war. We've killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four
humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the
beleaguered Afghan soil. That office is now rubble, and so is my heart. I am
going to have to keep pleading against this madness. I'll get scolded for
it, I know. I've already been called every name in the Rush Limbaugh
handbook: traitor, sinner, naive, liberal, peacenik, whiner. I'm told I am
dangerous because I might get in the way of this holy project we've
undertaken to keep dropping heavy objects from the sky until we've wiped out
every last person who could potentially hate us. Some people are praying for
my immortal soul, and some have offered to buy me a one-way ticket out of
the country, to anywhere. I accept these gifts with a gratitude equal in
measure to the spirit of generosity in which they were offered. People
threaten vaguely, "She wouldn't feel this way if her child had died in the
war!" (I feel this way precisely because I can imagine that horror.) More
subtle adversaries simply say I am ridiculous, a dreamer who takes a child's
view of the world, imagining it can be made better than it is. The more
sophisticated approach, they suggest, is to accept that we are all on a
jolly road trip down the maw of catastrophe, so shut up and drive.

I fight that, I fight it as if I'm drowning. When I get to feeling I am an
army of one standing out on the plain waving my ridiculous little flag of
hope, I call up a friend or two. We remind ourselves in plain English that
the last time we got to elect somebody, the majority of us, by a straight
popular-vote count, did not ask for the guy who is currently telling us we
will win this war and not be "misunderestimated." We aren't standing apart
from the crowd, we are the crowd. There are millions of us, surely, who know
how to look life in the eye, however awful things get, and still try to love
it back.

It is not naive to propose alternatives to war. We could be the kindest
nation on Earth, inside and out. I look at the bigger picture and see that
many nations with fewer resources than ours have found solutions to problems
that seem to baffle us. I'd like an end to corporate welfare so we could put
that money into ending homelessness, as many other nations have done before
us. I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of
Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city,
thank you. I'd like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans
do, and then go them one better. I'd like a government that subsidizes
renewable energy sources instead of forcefully patrolling the globe to
protect oil gluttony. Because, make no mistake, oil gluttony is what got us
into this holy war, and it's a deep tar pit. I would like us to sign the
Kyoto agreement today, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation
that will ease us into safer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganized lives.
If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring
about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size
of Iceland's.

How can I take anything but a child's view of a war in which men are acting
like children? What they're serving is not justice, it's simply vengeance.
Adults bring about justice using the laws of common agreement. Uncivilized
criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we
abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world
stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put
a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs,
you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding. And
I'd like to point out, since no one else has, the Taliban is an alleged
accessory, not the perpetrator--a legal point quickly cast aside in the rush
to find a sovereign target to bomb. The word "intelligence" keeps cropping
up, but I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are
all screaming at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that keep
taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's
mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot
possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."

I am somebody's mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are
getting hurt. We need to take a moment's time out to review the monstrous
waste of an endless cycle of retaliation. The biggest weapons don't win this
one, guys. When there are people on Earth willing to give up their lives in
hatred and use our own domestic airplanes as bombs, it's clear that we can't
out-technologize them. You can't beat cancer by killing every cell in the
body--or you could, I guess, but the point would be lost. This is a war of
who can hate the most. There is no limit to that escalation. It will only
end when we have the guts to say it really doesn't matter who started it,
and begin to try and understand, then alter the forces that generate hatred.

We have always been at war, though the citizens of the U.S. were mostly
insulated from what that really felt like until Sept. 11. Then, suddenly, we
began to say, "The world has changed. This is something new." If there
really is something new under the sun in the way of war, some alternative to
the way people have always died when heavy objects are dropped on them from
above, then please, in the name of heaven, I would like to see it. I would
like to see it, now.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of, among other books, "The Poisonwood
Bible" and "Prodigal Summer." This article will appear in a forthcoming
collection of essays.

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REST IN PEACE
by Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh

I am a World Trade Center tower, standing tall in the clear blue sky,
feeling a violent blow in my side,
and I am a towering inferno of pain and suffering imploding upon myself and
collapsing to the ground.
May I rest in peace.

I am a terrified passenger on a hijacked airplane not knowing where
we are going or that I am riding on fuel tanks that will be instruments of death,
and I am a worker arriving at my office not knowing that in just a moment
my future will be obliterated.
May I rest in peace.

I am a pigeon in the plaza between the two towers eating crumbs from
someone's breakfast when fire rains down on me from the skies, and
I am a bed of flowers admired daily by thousands of tourists now
buried under five stories of rubble.
May I rest in peace.

I am a firefighter sent into dark corridors of smoke and debris on a
mission of mercy only to have it collapse around me,
and I am a rescue worker risking my life to save lives who is very aware
that I may not make it out alive.
May I rest in peace.

I am a survivor who has fled down the stairs and out of the building to
safety who knows that nothing will ever be the same in my soul again, and I
am a doctor in a hospital treating patients burned from head to toe who
knows that these horrible images will remain in my mind forever.
May I know peace.

I am a tourist in Times Square looking up at the giant TV screens thinking
I'm seeing a disaster movie as I watch the Twin Towers crash to the
ground,and I am a New York woman sending e-mails to friends and family
letting them know that I am safe.
May I know peace.

I am a piece of paper that was on someone's desk this morning and now I'm
debris scattered by the wind across lower Manhattan, and
I am a stone in the graveyard at Trinity Church covered with soot from the
buildings that once stood proudly above me, death meeting death.
May I rest in peace.

I am a dog sniffing in the rubble for signs of life, doing my best to be of
service, and I am a blood donor waiting in line to make a simple but very
needed contribution for the victims.
May I know peace.

I am a resident in an apartment in downtown New York who has been forced to
evacuate my home, and I am a resident in an apartment uptown who has walked
100 blocks home in a stream of other refugees.
May I know peace.

I am a family member who has just learned that someone I love has died,and
I am a pastor who must comfort someone who has suffered a heart-breaking loss.
May I know peace.

I am a loyal American who feels violated and vows to stand behind any
military action it takes to wipe terrorists off the face of the earth, and
I am a loyal American who feels violated and worries that people who look
and sound like me are all going to be blamed for this tragedy.
May I know peace.

I am a frightened city dweller who wonders whether I'll ever feel safe in a
skyscraper again, and I am a pilot who wonders whether there will ever be a
way to make the skies truly safe.
May I know peace.

I am the owner of a small store with five employees that has been put out
of business by this tragedy, and I am an executive in a multinational
corporation who is concerned about the cost of doing business in a
terrorized world.
May I know peace.

I am a visitor to New York City who purchases postcards of the World Trade
Center Twin Towers that are no more, and I am a television reporter trying
to put into words the terrible things I have seen.
May I know peace.

I am a boy in New Jersey waiting for a father who will never come home,and
I am a boy in a faraway country rejoicing in the streets of my village
because someone has hurt the hated Americans.
May I know peace.

I am a general talking into the microphones about how we must stop the
terrorist cowards who have perpetrated this heinous crime, and
I am an intelligence officer trying to discern how such a thing could have
happened on American soil, and I am a city official trying to find ways to
alleviate the suffering of my people.
May I know peace.

I am a terrorist whose hatred for America knows no limit and I am willing
to die to prove it, and I am a terrorist sympathizer standing with all the
enemies of American capitalism and imperialism, and I am a master
strategist for a terrorist group who planned this abomination.
My heart is not yet capable of openness, tolerance, and loving.
May I know peace.

I am a citizen of the world glued to my television set, fighting back my
rage and despair at these horrible events, and I am a person of faith
struggling to forgive the unforgivable, praying for the consolation of
those who have lost loved ones, calling upon the merciful beneficence of
God/Yahweh/Allah/Spirit/Higher Power.
May I know peace.

I am a child of God who believes that we are all children of God and we are
all part of each other.
May we all know peace.

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A Time of Gifts
By STEPHEN JAY GOULD
September 26, 2001


The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the "ordinary" efforts of a vast majority.

We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior. I have stood at ground zero, stunned by the twisted ruins of the largest human structure ever destroyed in a catastrophic moment. (I will discount the claims of a few biblical literalists for the Tower of Babel.) And I have contemplated a single day of carnage that our nation has not suffered since battles that still evoke passions and tears, nearly 150 years later: Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor. The scene is insufferably sad, but not at all depressing. Rather, ground zero can only be described, in the lost meaning of a grand old word, as "sublime," in the sense of awe inspired by solemnity.

In human terms, ground zero is the focal point for a vast web of bustling goodness, channeling uncountable deeds of kindness from an entire planet ‹ the acts that must be recorded to reaffirm the overwhelming weight of human decency. The rubble of ground zero stands mute, while a beehive of human activity churns within, and radiates outward, as everyone makes a selfless contribution, big or tiny according to means and skills, but each of equal worth. My wife and stepdaughter established a depot on Spring Street to collect and ferry needed items in short supply, including face masks and shoe inserts, to the workers at ground zero. Word spreads like a fire of goodness, and people stream in, bringing gifts from a pocketful of batteries to a $10,000 purchase of hard hats, made on the spot at a local supply house and delivered right to us.

I will cite but one tiny story, among so many, to add to the count that will overwhelm the power of any terrorist's act. And by such tales, multiplied many millionfold, let those few depraved people finally understand why their vision of inspired fear cannot prevail over ordinary decency. As we left a local restaurant to make a delivery to ground zero late one evening, the cook gave us a shopping bag and said: "Here's a dozen apple brown bettys, our best dessert, still warm. Please give them to the rescue workers." How lovely, I thought, but how meaningless, except as an act of solidarity, connecting the cook to the cleanup. Still, we promised that we would make the distribution, and we put the bag of 12 apple brown bettys atop several thousand face masks and shoe pads.

Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned something important that I should never have forgotten ‹ and the joke turned on me. Those 12 apple brown bettys went like literal hot cakes. These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and soul, from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he inserted one of our shoe pads. And he said, with a twinkle and a smile restored to his face: "Thank you. This is the most lovely thing I've seen in four days ‹ and still warm!"

Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of zoology at Harvard, is the author of "Questioning the Millennium."


--"It has become clearer to me that love is what it is all about.
Not only at this time, but throughout our relationships...
My hope is that you will hold onto this love and build on it in your
life." Irene Pierce Stiver, Founding Scholar/Stone Ctr. Wellesley College--
 

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SCATTERED THOUGHTS IN A SCATTERED TIME
Copyright İ 2001 David Steinberg

This isn't going to be a regular column, but then this isn't exactly a

regular time.

I don't know if I really want to write about sex or not just now. I mean, in

one sense, sex is the perfect antidote to trauma -- celebrating life in the

face of death -- but it's hard to get my cognitive mind to go there. In fact

it's been hard to get my cognitive mind to go anywhere for more than a few

minutes at a time, which makes the idea of writing a column particularly

daunting.

One effect of the events of the last three weeks for me has been that I find

it hard to concentrate, hard to focus on any one thing in particular. It

seems there are always ten different thoughts going on in my head, all

claiming importance, all wanting attention. The result is that I don't seem

to have any good attention for anything. For me, that's unsettling. I think

we are all going to have to get used to being more unsettled than we've been

used to.

* * * * *

I live in Santa Cruz, California. We had a big earthquake here in 1989 that

more or less destroyed the center of town, and did serious damage to lots of

people's homes as well. Only a few people actually died, but we had the

experience of the entire community going through major emotional trauma at

the same time, which is what New York, on one level, and the entire country,

on another, is experiencing after WTC.

Community trauma is different from personal trauma. When it's just you, or

you and the other people in your family, that's traumatized, you can turn to

some grounded, non-traumatized friend or lover for perspective and support.

These days there's no one who's outside of the trauma, no one who's really

grounded, so there aren't any outside reference points that offer a

comforting sense of stability and orientation. We all have to make it up as

we go along, the dazed leading the dazed. We've gone from being on solid

ground -- or at least thinking we were on solid ground -- to being on a vast

rolling emotional ocean, with no land in sight. Everyone's in the process of

getting their sealegs at the same time. Lots of people are throwing up over

the rails. As Americans, we're uniquely unfamiliar with this sort of thing.

No one bombed our cities during World War II. Not during Korea or Vietnam

either. Certainly not during the Gulf War.

Michael Moore puts it well. War is where we bomb them, then they bomb us,

then we bomb them, then they bomb us. That's how it works. That what you sign

up for when you decide to go to war. We aren't used to that simple truth. For

a long time now war, for Americans, has been where we bomb them and then it's

over and we feel like we've accomplished something. True, some of us die, but

very few compared to how many of them die, and besides, all of us who die are

soldiers. Now we know, just a little, that this war is different.

* * * * *

I believe you can tell a lot about people by how they drive. Silly maybe, but

that's what I believe. Immediately after September 11, people were driving in

a fog. Going through red lights and things like that. Everyone was

distracted, dazed -- hardly surprising. People were also being unusually

courteous in their driving, which I did find surprising. No, you go first;

it's ok. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. that sort of thing. Michael

Moore noted that there was a strange quiet on the streets of New York after

WTC: No one was blowing their horns.

It was as if, all of a sudden, anger and aggression weren't quite as chic as

they had been before. Like the feeling of being pissed off was leaving a bad

taste in everyone's mouth for once, instead of when it had somehow felt more

satisfying. I've been looking pretty hard for something to hang a hopeful hat

on, so I turned this glimmer of reflexive non-violence into something of a

silver lining. Maybe the humility of discovering we were not all-powerful,

the humility of feeling our collective vulnerability and mortality, would

lead us out of the kind of collective arrogance that got us into this mess in

the first place. Maybe something good and useful could rise out of the ashes

of WTC.

Three weeks later, I'm beginning to fear that I was just being naive. It's

beginning to look like everyone was just in shock for a while there, just not

being their real selves. That feeling of compassion and gentleness seems to

have been nothing more than a moment of temporary insanity. Sort of like the

1960s.

Now that the initial shock is wearing off, the old behaviors seem to be

returning. People are driving more aggressively again, and faster, though not

with quite the same certainty as before. Horn-blowing is back, though again

not full strength perhaps. Maybe some of that humility stuff will last more

than one historical instant. Maybe not. God knows there's a lot of diffuse

anger floating around everywhere, looking for some place to land. Under that

what I see is a whole lot of diffuse fear.

We don't do well with fear. It's another thing that, as Americans, we're not

used to. One cyanide pill in a bottle of Tylenol and we're all ready to

struggle with safety-seal jars for the rest of our lives. If we could put a

safety-seal over the U.S., would we do it? Throw out everyone with a Muslim

name or look, let the government wiretap anyone they please, divert hundreds

of billions of dollars from social programs to the military? It would cost us

our way of life, and it could provide a modicum of safety. But a lot of

people are thinking it would be worth it.

Several years ago our house was burglarized. We felt violated, angry, afraid.

We wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again. The guy who came by to show

us security systems was a terrible salesman, but a wonderful human being. He

told us we could install motion detectors, dozens of window and door alarms.

He also told us that the alarms were a pain in the ass, going off at all the

wrong times, when you get up to go piss in the middle of the night. He

encouraged us to wait a few weeks, calm down, and then decide what we wanted

to do. A few weeks later, our fear had subsided. We decided we'd be better

off without the alarms. We saved ourselves a lot of money. We have not been

burglarized again.

* * * * *

I've written a lot, over the years, about Otherness. About how people tend to

respond to otherness out of fear and distaste -- in contrast, say, to

responding out of a sense of intrigue or curiosity. In the sexual realm,

otherness tends to be dismissed as perversity. If you like to do sex in a way

that's very different from me, there must be something really wrong with you.

Right now, we're all being inundated with radical rejection of Otherness,

with how different We (the good people) are from Them (the bad people), a

blatant appeal to our reptilian feelings of fear and distrust of difference,

and attempt to use those feelings as a springboard to galvanize public

opinion behind a specific list of policies and priorities. This sort of thing

has been known to work very well in the past. In the 1930s, when Germans were

exceptionally confused and afraid (they, like us, being unfamiliar and

unamused by that sort of thing), Hitler laid the whole problem at the feet of

Jews, Gypsies, and gays -- playing on the very same suspicion of Otherness.

It worked really well for him and for the priorities he wanted the public to

support. It's easy, like taking candy from a baby. Fear is perhaps the

easiest of emotions to manipulate.

We're hearing lots of dismissive words -- like "evil," "fanatic," and

"extremist" -- these days, words that play on our total ignorance and fear of

something called Islam and something else called Islamic radicalism. These

dismissive, ultimately misleading, words encourage us not to take Otherly

people -- people who see the world very differently from the way we do --

seriously. One particularly offensive ditty that's been circulating on the

Internet talks in the style of Dr. Seuss about weird people who have their

turbans wrapped too tight (ha-ha). Ah, yes, those weird Muslim

fundamentalists with their funny dress habits, long beards, and crackpot

notions of going to heaven.

We have racial/racist notions about Muslims that are lodged in our collective

Judeo-Christian unconscious with all the power that a thousand years of

reinforcement offers. Do you know, by the way, that the Crusades (the

original jihad) was basically about consolidating the political power of the

church of Rome over Europe? Millions of people throughout Europe were whipped

up about the heathen infidels as a result. The consequence was that Rome

solidified its power in Europe and hoards of crazed Europeans visited wave

after wave of previously unheard-of brutality throughout the Middle East.

It's too much to go into here, but it's a story with consequences that we are

very much dealing with this very day. And Bush instinctively used the word

"crusade" before his advisors jumped on him and told him to can that

particular word.

Robert Bly has noted that it's only by dismissing other human beings as

Other, only by convincing yourself that other people are entirely unlike

yourself and therefore somehow less than fully human, that you get to the

point where you can bring yourself to kill them. It's easier to kill a fish

than a dog, easier to kill a dog than a chimpanzee, easier for a white guy

from Kansas to kill a Vietnamese than a Canadian, easier to kill an Afghan

with a long beard than someone who looks like the boy next door. The farther

away from Us the target appears to be, the easier it is to do to destroy

it/them. We destroyed the profoundly beautiful city of Baghdad, with all its

centuries of history and tradition, without so much as batting an eye. Not to

mention 113,000 innocent civilians directly killed in those bombings.

Here's what I think: I think that people on the other side of the world,

people with cultures so different from our own that we can barely comprehend

how they conceptualize the world, that these people are, in many ways, also

very much like us. They love their children, are proud of their traditions,

are angry when they feel they are being treated unjustly, are extremely angry

when someone they know and love is unjustly hurt or killed. If millions of

Americans are now so angry that they are ready to go to war to avenge the

death of several thousand innocent strangers, how angry must the millions of

people be who have witnessed -- year after year after year -- the violent,

premeditated killing of their own innocent children, parents, spouses,

brothers, and sisters?

I am not saying this to justify in the least what happened at WTC. I know

that some people who read this will actually have lost someone they knew or

loved in the World Trade Center building. One person in my own family is

alive today only because he happened to be late for work that day. But Osama

bin Laden is no more of a madman than Ariel Sharon. He is rather, like

Sharon, a person who believes that his people have been treated like dirt and

that the only way to fight injustice is through retribution, through making

the price of continued injustice more than the perpetrator will be willing to

bear. I don't like bin Laden's political strategy any more than I like

Sharon's, but I think it's important to acknowledge that they are just that

-- political strategies -- rather than insane rantings. You treat political

adversaries differently than you treat crazies. For one thing, you treat them

with respect.

My friend Michael Hill once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be from

Guatemala. Since Michael had traveled in Guatemala, the two of them got to

sharing stories about the Guatemalan people and countryside. Michael liked

this man very much, found him to be a person of generous spirit, humor, and

insight. As it happens, he also had been a right-wing terrorist in Guatemala

-- one of those guys who visit unspeakable horrors on leftists, suspected and

real, as part of Guatemala's continuing, brutal civil war.

How could it be that this man full of good cheer could also torture and kill

people fighting for freedom and justice in Guatemala? Well, it happens that

the leftists had themselves killed most of the people in this man's family

right in front of his eyes. Who knows why? Maybe they had their own rage

about injustices they had witnessed. Maybe it was part of a larger political

reality. Whatever the underlying politics may have been, this man was, you

might say, understandably enraged after witnessing the slaughter of his

family. Of course, committing acts of terror as a way of working through

understandable rage is not acceptable. Not for him; not for us. But if I had

any illusions about the Otherness of right-wing Guatemalan terrorists, those

illusions pretty much evaporated when Michael put a human face on this man's

story.

Human faces are much harder to dismiss and demonize than abstract

stereotypes. That's why CNN will give us the political biographies of the

people involved in the WTC attack, but we will never get to hear their

personal stories, the horrors they witnessed that led them to get involved in

the organizations they joined, that led them to embrace a politics of

retribution, that led them to take what turns out to be a substantial place

in world history.

If we feel outrage at what happened at the World Trade Center, let that be

outrage at the condition of the world that understandably, even inevitably,

leads to days such as September 11. Much, perhaps most, of the world lives

with much greater outrage than this every single day. People who live and

breathe and love and fuck and suffer just like we do. America, in its way,

has been as isolated from the real International Community, from the real

condition of the human race, as Afghanistan. Perhaps if we understand that

Otherly people are just as human, just as intelligent, just as worthy of

respect as we are, we will begin to understand more clearly, and more

sympathetically, why they feel and act as they do.

Back to the top

 first writing since
by Suheir Hammad

1. there have been no words.
i have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and dna.
not one word.

today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh.

fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life in a way never
before. and then, and now, i fear for the rest of us.

first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart failed, the
plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger
i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.

more than ever, i believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most americans do not know the difference
between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.

2. thank you korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn tea and the
genteel smiles of the wait staff at wonjo the smiles never revealing
the heat of the food or how tired they must be working long midtown
shifts. thank you korea, for the belly craving that brought me into
the city late the night before and diverted my daily train ride into
the world trade center.

there are plenty of thank yous in ny right now. thank you for my
lazy procrastinating late ass. thank you to the germs that had me
call in sick. thank you, my attitude, you had me fired the week
before. thank you for the train that never came, the rude nyer who
stole my cab going downtown. thank you for the sense my mama gave me
to run. thank you for my legs, my eyes, my life.

3. the dead are called lost and their families hold up shaky
printouts in front of us through screens smoked up.

we are looking for iris, mother of three. please call with any
information. we are searching for priti, last seen on the 103rd
floor. she was talking to her husband on the phone and the line
went. please help us find george, also known as a! ! del. his family
is

waiting for him with his favorite meal. i am looking for my son, who
was delivering coffee. i am looking for my sister girl, she started
her job on monday.

i am looking for peace. i am looking for mercy. i am looking for
evidence of compassion. any evidence of life. i am looking for
life.

4. ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yuca, "i will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there. and my
friends feel the same way."

on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and stranded in hurt.
i offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she said,
"we"re gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad." my hand went to my
head and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead iraqi
children, the dead in nicaragua. the dead in rwanda who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america's attention.

yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to happen, lets
! ! not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i felt
resentful.

hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and we"re not bad
people, do not support america's bullying. can i just have a half
second to feel bad?

if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.

thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and blinking back
tears. she opened her arms before she asked "do you want a hug?" a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the
warmth of flesh can offer. i wasn't about to say no to any comfort.
"my brother's in the navy," i said. "and we"re arabs". "wow, you
got double trouble." word.

5. one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers.
one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.
one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed.one more person
assume they know me, or that i represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a
flag and words on a page.
we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed oklahoma.
america did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to
church. or blame the bible or pat robertson.

and when the networks air footage of palestinians dancing in the
street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with
sweets that turn their teeth brown. that correspondents edit images.
that archives are there to facilitate lazy and inaccurate
journalism.

and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do we
never mention the kkk?

if there are any people on earth who understand how new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the gaza strip.

6. today it is ten days. last night bush waged war on a man once
openly funded by the
cia. i do not know who is responsible. read too many books, know
too many people to believe what i am told. i don't give a fuck about
bin laden. his vision of the world does not include me or those i
love. and petittions have been going around for years trying to get
the u.s. sponsored taliban out of power. shit is complicated, and i
don't know what to think.

but i know for sure who will pay.

in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will
have to bury children, and support themselves through grief. "either
you are with us, or with the terrorists" - meaning keep your people
under control and your resistance censored. meaning we got the loot
and the nukes.

in america, it will be those amongst us who refuse blanket attacks on
the shivering. those of us who work toward social justice, in
support of civil liberties, in opposition to hateful foreign
policies.

i have never felt less american and more new yorker, particularly
brooklyn, than these past days. the stars and stripes on all these
cars and apartment windows represent the dead as citizens first, not
family members, not lovers.

i feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are only going to
get darker. the future holds little light.

my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and praying five times a
day that the orders he will take in a few days time are righteous and
will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he deserves.

both my brothers - my heart stops when i try to pray - not a beat to
disturb my fear. one a rock god, the other a sergeant, and both
palestinian, practicing muslim, gentle men. both born in brooklyn
and their faces are of the archetypal arab man, all eyelashes and
nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair.

what will their lives be like now?

over there is over here.

7. all day, across the river, the smell of burning rubber and limbs
floats through. the sirens have stopped now. the advertisers are
back on the air. the rescue workers are traumatized. the skyline is
brought back to human size. no longer taunting the gods with its
height.

i have not cried at all while writing this. i cried when i saw those
buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart. i have never
owned pain that needs to spread like that. and i cry daily that my
brothers return to our mother safe and whole.

there is no poetry in this. there are causes and effects. there are
symbols and ideologies. mad conspiracy here, and information we will
never know. there is death here, and there are promises of more.

there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it will
shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.

affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.

Suheir Hammad is the author of Born Palestinian, Born Black and other books.

Back to the top

A MESSAGE FROM HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

Dear Friends Around the World,

The events of this day cause every thinking person to stop their daily

lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger

questions of life. We search again for not only the meaning of life, but

the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have

created it - and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate

ourselves anew as a human species, so that we will never treat each

other this way again. The hour has come for us to demonstrate at the

highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are.

There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first

comes from LOVE, the second from FEAR.

If we come from fear we may panic and do things - as individuals and as

nations - that could only cause further damage. If we come from love we

will find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others. This is

the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you

teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will

remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives

you touch, both now, and for years to come.

We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this

moment. Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause.

Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience, we will

never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates. Instead, we will

forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family

who feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek retribution from them. To us the

reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic human lessons. We

have not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not understood

the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to

God, and because we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly things.

The message we hear from all sources of truth is clear: We are all

one. That is a message the human race has largely ignored. Forgetting

this truth is the only cause of hatred and war, and the way to remember

is simple: Love, this and every moment.

If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to

understand why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet

if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with

attack, what then will be the outcome? These are the questions that are

placed before the human race today.

They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of

years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer

them at all. If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created

to be experienced by our children and our children's children, to become

spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause that to happen. We

must choose to be at cause in the matter.

So, talk with God today. Ask God for help, for counsel and advice, for

insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep wisdom. Ask

God on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way that

will cause the world itself to change. And join all those people around

the world who are praying right now, adding your Light to the Light that

dispels all fear.

That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person

today. Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to

preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the

anger and hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes it - in that

part of the world which I touch. Please seek to answer that question

today, with all the magnificence that is You. What can you do

TODAY...this very moment?

A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to

experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish

to experience-in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is

another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to

experience peace, provide peace for another.

If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they

are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible

things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own

sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those

others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for

guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and

for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for

love.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Dalai Lama

Back to the top

Gotham Chopra

My name is Gotham Chopra and I am Deepak's son. I work with Channel One
News, an educational news broadcast that is seen in an estimated 12.5
thousand secondary schools, as a TV reporter.

On Tuesday September 11th 2001, at 8 am I boarded a flight in New York
headed for Los Angeles. Shortly we rolled out onto the runway, lurched
back, fired down the runway, and soared into the sky. It must have been
almost 8:30 AM when I looked over my shoulder and gazed out at the New York
skyline noting the clear view from Columbia University, my alma mater, all
the way down to the World Trade Center. "What a beautiful day," I thought
to myself. "I wish I wasn't leaving."  I then closed my eyes and drifted
off to sleep.

A little over 90 minutes later I awoke when the pilot's voice came over the
loudspeaker. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced in a calm voice, "we are
making an emergency landing in Cincinnati because of an apparent terrorist
attack in the New York Area. Please stay calm "

There was a nervous murmur throughout the cabin. The journalist in me
demanded immediate information and I reached for the phone. I quickly ran
my credit card through the phone, waited for the dial tone, and dialed our
News Desk in Los Angeles. The phone cackled but when the other line picked
up, there was no mistaking the panicked tone in one of my colleagues.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"I am."  I asked for further information.

"Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. They've come down. They've
come down "

The phone cut off and went dead. I frantically redialed.

No luck.

I tried my sister in Los Angeles.

No luck.

I slowly sat back in my chair and began to panic. I knew my father had
flown out of New York on a different flight about an hour before me. I knew
my mother was on a flight originating in London destined for San Diego. I
tried to meditate and tell myself that everyone would be okay. Tears burned
my eyes.

When we touched down twenty minutes later, the pilot instructed us not to
turn on our cell phones. He gave us instructions to immediately evacuate
the plane and follow the instructions of security personnel. We did.

Finally in the terminal, I reached for my phone and turned it on. There I
stood huddled with hundreds of other interrupted passengers and gazed up at
the television. The fresh images of two smoldering stumps - the remains of
the towers of the world trade center - played on the screen. Finally I got
in touch with my sister, Mallika, who was sobbing on the other end of the
phone.

"I'm okay where's papa where's mom?"

Mallika supplied all of the answers - everyone was safe. I placed my next
call again to the office. I knew that there was work at hand. Sure enough,
I already had a car reserved and was destined back for New York. At the
rental agency, there was a great shortage of cars. People in line started
shouting out their destinations and everyone began carpooling. I joined two
other men from the New York area and we were off. Over the next 12 hours we
listened closely to the radio as details of the terrorist attack emerged.
Every five minutes the name of another family member or friend popped into
my head and I dialed the number frantically. Most New York numbers were
jammed or out of service. One friend I was able to contact informed that a
he was unable to contact a mutual friend of ours. He worked in the 105th
floor of one of the towers. He was scheduled to attend an 8:30 meeting.
Someone from the meeting had called to say they had survived the initial
attack and were waiting for a rescue team. No one had heard from any of
them since.

Finally just after midnight we made it just to the edge of New York City,
in Fort Lee New Jersey.  There would be no crossing into Manhattan Island -
all the bridges and tunnels had been sealed. I spent the night in New
Jersey unable to sleep much and by 6 am, I was dressed and ready to get in.
The only way to get across was via the commuter train which was offering
limited services. As we pulled toward the station in Hoboken NJ, the trains
slowed to a stop. There on the other side of the river they stood, like
ashen smoking gravestones, the ruins of the twin towers. The train car was
silent and as everyone stood hushed and gazed out the window. A young woman
beside me began to whimper. Another man lowered his head into his hands and
muffled his sobs.

Back in the city, people walked around in a daze. The streets were empty of
cars but full of wandering pedestrians, walking directly down the middle of
Broadway and Fifth Avenue. As we made our way downtown (I had already
hooked up with a TV crew) we noticed small cafes open and people filling
the outside sidewalk seats. People sat mostly in silence gazing upwards at
the thick plume of white smoke still snaking its way westward. At west 4th
street, a group of kids played basketball. At one point the ball rolled out
of play. A young shirtless boy ran after the ball and bent down to pick it
up. When he lifted his head he looked up at the air at the same thick trail
of smoke. He shook his head and wiped away something from his eyes - either
sweat or tears - and turned away.

Walking home, I stopped and talked to a police officer. After chatting a
few minutes, the officer asked me if I would like to see ground zero. I
agreed to stay just at the edge away from the workers. The pictures on
television of the devastation caused by Tuesday's attack do the scene of
the crime absolutely no justice. In real life it appears as if an asteroid
has hit the lower part of Manhattan. There are charred, twisting slabs of
metal and concrete in every direction. It is unfathomable, unspeakable,
incomprehensible. The tragedy today is in its infancy. For the thousand who
lost their lives, there are thousands more - friends and family - who will
never sleep a restful night. There are parents, children, siblings,
friends, and neighbors who walked out of their buildings one morning and
have not returned. This is a national tragedy but also a very personal one.

On Wednesday night while in cab returning from work to my apartment, I
noticed the Muslim name of my driver. He noticed the tone of my skin in the
rear view mirror. He nodded at me. On the radio, the commentator was
relaying a warning to all men of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent -
to be wary of unwarranted violent reprisals from agitated residents of the
city.

The taxi driver again looked at me through the mirror and smiled
ironically, "We love America. It is our home." He shook his head, "but I
think we're fucked."

*    *    *    *    *

About a month ago, I rode up with two colleagues to the Northwest Frontier
region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. We were covering a story on
Islamic militancy training grounds based in Pakistani religious schools.
In the west they have widely been reported to be ground zero for the
grooming of young Muslim boys into hostile anti-western terrorists. In
Pakistan, both the government and the men at the school hotly contested
these claims, castigating the west for generating such racist propaganda. I
traveled to this lost area with as little bias as possible - but with a
certain and undeniable fear in my heart.

In the school itself, the chancellor was most kind and hospitable. He had
us tour the grounds of the school, meet teachers and some of the boys -
though at first we weren't allowed to talk to them. We were then escorted
into his private residence. The first thing I noticed on the center table
was a bowl of big yellow mangoes and a picture. The picture was of our host
- an older Muslim Mullah wearing a traditional white turban and a stained
orange beard and his friend - Osama Bin Laden, the number one man on the
FBI's list of Most Wanted. I asked our host if we could interview him. He
agreed but insisted first that we share mangoes with him. I agreed and he
took out a long knife and proceeded to slice the fruit for me. We slurped
and chatted for a while and finally were permitted to turn on the camera.

I asked the Mullah a wide array of questions. "Did he hate the US? Why is
there such Anti-Americanism in this part of the world? Should Americans be
afraid?"

He answered them all eloquently and without hostility. He talked about the
history of the US and Afghanistan, how during the Cold War, they were
allies, united fighting a war against the Soviets.

"You gave us weapons and trained our men. You built our roads, fed our
people. Do you realize young man that your government helps to create and
to fund the Taliban because it was their interest to use Guerilla warfare
and terrorist tactics against the Russians? You made us your friend."

"But then your Cold War ended and you deserted us." At this point, there
was a hint of animosity in his voice. " Because it was no longer in your
selfish interest to have us as your allies, you abandoned us, left our
people, hungry, and hateful. You turned your friends into foes because you
used us like whores."

There was a silence between us.

Finally I asked him about the picture, about the nature of his relationship
with Mr. Bin Laden.

"He's an old friend. And a good man."

I shook my head. "Is he a terrorist?"

"We don't call him that here." The Mullah made it clear he was not
interested in talking any more. We shook hands. I thanked him for his
hospitality.

On the way out I thought about that hospitality. I knew that the Mullah
himself had endorsed a fatwa, or religious order, by Bin Laden several
years ago urging Muslims to kill American civilians. But here was this man
cutting mangoes for us and being very gracious.

"Today you are our guest. If we were not hospitable, we would be very
ashamed. But in times of war, yes you would be an enemy and we may kill
you. Today a friend, tomorrow, inshallah (God willing), there will not be
one."

*    *    *    *    *
Today Friday September 14, 2001, four days since the terrorist attack, it
appears we may be on the threshold of war.  Our President has called it the
First World War of the 21st century. I am not sure whom we will be
fighting. I would like to go to my favorite caf?n the city - a small
Egyptian place on the Lower East Side that I have been going to since
college. The waiters - mostly young Middle Eastern guys who like to talk
about basketball and soccer, who come and sit at your table and share a
puff on the sweet tobacco hookas they serve there - they are my friends.
But I'm not sure when it will open again, if it will open again. There's a
Mosque next door that has been closed since the attack.

The weeks and months and perhaps even years ahead promise to be complex and
wary. Hopefully our leaders will be judicious, precise, and compassionate
in the difficult decisions that lay ahead. But it is each of us that now
must rise up and be the true warriors in this difficult time. Does that
mean seizing weapons and braving the threat of death out on a battlefield?

Precisely not. Because the battlefield is invisible. The enemy is elusive.
The web of evil too complex. Today there are no answers. It is too early
for solutions for remedies. For now we each have our stories - where we
were on the day that the twin towers toppled. Each one is dramatic; each
one is tragic. From this day forward, everyday I shall observe a quiet
remembrance for the victims of this calamity. Each one of us may choose our
own way how to memorialize this moment but I believe we are all obligated
to reflect for a moment, to care about our neighbor, to meditate for peace
and tolerance because ultimately the only forces that can defeat such
profound evil are compassion and hope.

I ask everyone on this board to join my father and me in prayer for the
healing of our wounded civilization (if we can call it that). Let us pray
every day to our Gods remembering, as my dad has taught me since childhood,
that Christ was not a Christian, Mohammed was not a Mohammeden, Buddha was
not a Buddhist, and Krishna was not a Hindu.

Love,

Gotham
 

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Poem after 9-11
Molly Saccardo

Concrete Dust and Cell Phone Calls

Bits too light to be caught in gravityıs grasp

float in the sky.

³I love you, I love you, remember I love you²

collided with concrete dust and smoke

on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The air was full,

but not overcrowded because

the towers were gone;

the planes all down.

Grief and knowledge have added

tremendous weight to those words

and that dust.

They have settled on the earth,

upsetting the balance.

The mail is delivered each day.

Grocery store checkers ask me:

³Paper or plastic?² My children

havenıt missed a day of school.

But, itıs the normal of a world

a few degrees off from where it was,

as if the elevators wonıt stop level

with the floors, or the floors themselves

will be missing. The fallout has formed

a film of uncertain evil.

That is what I fear.

Thirteen days later,

surrounded by countrymen and snapping flags,

I know I must rise from this collecting dust.

Still, I hesitate, unsure how wash it away.

-- Molly Saccardo

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On Trying to Write a Poem After 9/11/01
Cate Marvin

Can it not be a workable piece of art,

a whole with its parts and a heart, with

a part for those I think of when dining

alone, walking alone, sitting in theatres

with myself? Because I know each has

a heart whose residence is not far from

my own, in that grander scope, in that

fibrous link of sleep, and each allows

me with their hands and hearts to have

a part with my own heart, so that when

I see no one today, I know my friends

of this shackling world.

A morning glory

grows over and over itself, forces bloom

after violet bloom in the alley. Black spots

hop at my foot’s step in twilight: crickets.

We arched ourselves to see it coming down.

A thousand times slowed to agony, or furious

in the background, or still yet, it’s toppling

brought into sharper focus: the coming

down unspeakable. Yet, the thing has

made me, alone, call upon the arts of

their hearts, has called all their parts back

to me, to tell me that a who did not end.

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Director, The Shalom Center

In 1984, when the nuclear arms race was in speed-up mode, The Shalom Center built a sukkah between the White House and the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

We focused on the line from the evening prayers -- "Ufros alenu sukkat shlomekha" -- "Spread over all of us Your sukkah of shalom."

And we asked, "Why a sukkah?" -- Why does the prayer plead to God for a "sukkah of shalom" rather than God's "tent" or "house" or "palace" of peace?

Because the sukkah is just a hut, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, where it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, where its roof must be not only leafy but leaky -- letting in the starlight, and gusts of wind and rain.

For much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness. Pyramids, air raid shelters, Pentagons, World Trade Centers. Hardening what might be targets and, like Pharaoh, hardening our hearts against what is foreign to us.

But the sukkah comes to remind us: We are in truth all vulnerable. If "a hard rain gonna fall," it will fall on all of us.

Americans have felt invulnerable. The oceans, our wealth, our military power have made up what seemed an invulnerable shield. We may have begun feeling uncomfortable in the nuclear age, but no harm came to us. Yet yesterday the ancient truth came home: We all live in a sukkah.

Not only the targets of attack but also the instruments of attack were among our proudest possessions: the sleek transcontinental airliners. They availed us nothing. Worse than nothing.
 
Even the greatest oceans do not shield us; even the mightiest buildings do not shield us; even the wealthiest balance sheets and the most powerful weapons do not shield us.

There are only wispy walls and leaky roofs between us. The planet is in fact one interwoven web of life. I MUST love my neighbor as I do myself, because my neighbor and myself are interwoven. If I hate my neighbor, the hatred will recoil upon me.

What is the lesson, when we learn that we -- all of us -- live in a sukkah? How do we make such a vulnerable house into a place of shalom, of peace and security and harmony and wholeness?

The lesson is that only a world where we all recognize our vulnerability can become a world where all communities feel responsible to all other communities. And only such a world can prevent such acts of rage and murder.

If I treat my neighbor's pain and grief as foreign, I will end up suffering when my neighbor's pain and grief curdle into rage.

But if I realize that in simple fact the walls between us are full of holes, I can reach through them in compassion and connection.
 
Suspicion about the perpetrators of this act of infamy has fallen upon some groups that espouse a tortured version of Islam. Whether or not this turns out to be so, America must open its heart and mind to the pain and grief of those in the Arab and Muslim worlds who feel excluded, denied, unheard, disempowered, defeated.

This does not mean ignoring or forgiving whoever wrought such bloodiness. Their violence must be halted, their rage must be calmed -- and the pain behind them must be heard and addressed.

Instead of entering upon a "war of civilizations," we must pursue a planetary peace.

Shalom, Arthur
 
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Director, The Shalom Center
<www.shalomctr.org

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What I Wish the President Had Said

I wish that the President had said, "My fellow Americans. The catastrophe
this morning is unimaginable - but real. The intent of the terrorists was
obviously to kill as many Americans as possible, and specifically to kill
civilians. This was not an attack by military personnel on military
personnel. This was an attack by secretive terrorists on civilians, on
non-combatants, on men, women, and children whose lives were no threat to
their own. They were willing to sacrifice civilian lives by the thousands
for their own ends. Our anger is righteous. Our sorrow is boundless. And our
challenge is great.

The terrorists have made hatred their weapon in their war. If we, too,
respond in hatred, they will have won. They will have defined how the war
will be waged.

There is already too much hatred in the world. Indeed, any hatred is too
much hatred. The challenge for us is to turn our anger and our sorrow into a
more gentle kindliness with each other instead of into hatred. To grow from
our grief into a greater compassion for each other instead of
self-righteousness. And most courageously, instead of insisting on vicious
vengeance, to extend our compassion and our sorrow to those so-sick souls
who plotted and carried out this mission. We know that normal human beings,
civilized human beings, do not do such things. What pain, what teachings,
what situations, what lack of love could have led them to such a decision?
What can we do to help heal the pain in the places where such hatreds
fester?

Our losses are huge, both our collective losses and our individual losses.
It is hard beyond measure to find words to express my profound sympathy for
the death of any one person. It is totally daunting to try to adequately
express the grief of a nation for the deaths of so many, for children,
parents, husbands, wives, for friends, for the young lives of promise cut
short, for the loss of productive, skilled, and creative lives of working
people, for the lost wisdom and knowledge of seniors, for the individuals
they were, for the loss of the love and support they gave those around them.
They leave an unfillable emptiness. We share a deep and lasting grief at
their deaths.

Our challenge, together as a nation, is to discover whether we can turn this
unspeakable sorrow into a national mission to enlarge our hearts and our
compassion, to increase our patience with each other, to pursue justice
without being vengeful, to turn the energy of our anger at this outrage into
a more gentle kindliness with each other. If we can do this, if we can grow
in our hearts, then hatred will not have won.

That's what I wish the President had said.

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