Old September Wounds

By Ann

To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy. ~ Sun Tzu

On this unusually warm September morning, I sat on the park bench and stared at the water.  I tried to ignore the skyscrapers behind me because I couldn’t estimate how they would fall or if the debris could reach me.  I looked across the river at NJ and prayed that if a piece of shrapnel were to fall that it would fall beside me so I could use it to float.   I was still out of breath from running and I knew two planes had already crashed into the world trade center.   There would likely be more and I assumed the city was going to be bombarded with suicide planes just like Pearl Harbor.

After that day, I would be with  friends  and family as we tried to maintain normalcy in a world that was no longer normal.  Over breakfast, one  friend told me how she watched people jump hundreds of stories to avoid burning to death.  She plainly stated that she just pretended that the people in the building were getting too hot so they would open the window and throw out their clothes.   She didn’t have to tell me that the “clothes” she saw fall were human beings and we simply didn’t say much after that.  I sipped my coffee and thought about how I was just in the towers the week before.  There was a very elegant restaurant where they had big bands and swing dancing and lots of glamour.  You could see the entire city from your table.  I listened to the big band in my head and remembered the faces of the waitstaff that I knew personally and blocked out the thought that none of them existed anymore.

I moved shortly after that.  It wasn’t just that day that got to me.  It wasn’t even the little things the days and weeks afterwards.  It wasn’t  the earthquake from the incident.  It wasn’t the plane that fell out of the sky in Queens.  It wasn’t the empty chairs held for the missing people at work and school.  It wasn’t the smell.  It wasn’t  the hundreds of pictures of missing people plastered to anything that could hold them.  It wasn’t even the anthrax panic that threatened the city and the buildings that I worked in.  

It was the sense of helplessness that got to me.  

After I moved, I watched in horror as an angry mob overseas burned  an American in the street.  They cheered and sang and danced as this man desintegrated in an unnatural pose.   I was perplexed at how animalistic, cruel, and inhumane they were.  How can these people dance on the grave of another, even a hated enemy?  They must be less than human.  They must be.   I was consumed by fear because we were now faced with a war with a people who obviously lacked the capacity to appreciate the value of human life as they were all clearly less than human.

I thought about that mob today.   Osama bin Laden was killed and people celebrated and laughed and danced and chanted in the street.  Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that people  who were victimized by 911 can find some peace in the fact that a mass murderer is no longer alive.  But I am appalled at the hateful glee that has infected the nation. I mourn the fact that we are dancing in the street and celebrating the death of a human being. A death is a death and our collective reaction makes us no better than the mob that celebrated the murder of an American.  If Sun Tzu were alive today, we could tell him that we now know our enemy because we are one and the same.