The horrors of the previous day dominated conversation at my workplace as I imagine they did all around the world. As we sat in our lunchroom drinking our coffee (or tea in my case), a colleague from another department stopped by to drop something off. I don't remember the specifics leading up to this, but this person said, "Those arrogant Americans, they deserved it." I was speechless, a condition I've regretted ever since. I suppose I was waiting for my Swedish co-workers to say something, but nobody did. A few looked a bit uncomfortable, but the others didn't react as if this was anything out of the ordinary. So there I was, surrounded by people I thought were my friends, and I've never felt more out of place.
I spent a lot of my time trying to verify that everyone I knew was alright. As it turned out, I did not know any of the victims. I was really worried about my friend who was a pilot for American Airlines who frequently flew between LA and New York. As it turns out, he was preparing for take off from LA when air traffic was halted. Good friends had flown through New York the day before. They recalled looking down at the twin towers as they were leaving and commenting that they really should spend some time to see the WTC next time they were there. Another good friend sat in an airplane in Denver wondering why his flight home from vacation wasn't allowed to take off.
Things were a bit different for my husband. He was away on business at a US army base in Germany together with his American co-workers for a defense subcontractor. The base went into lock down as soon as they received the news, so they were all stuck in the one building until well into the evening. When they returned the next morning, the now heavily armed guards at the gate laughed when they saw his Swedish passport. Only critical personnel were being allowed on base, and that couldn't possibly include foreigners. Eventually they were persuaded to check the list, and much to their surprise, he was on it (the Coca-cola delivery guy who came at this time to fill the vending machines was not--probably a big mistake). He was still one of the guys, but in retrospect, that was the beginning of the end. It became increasingly difficult to be a foreigner in the defense industry, no matter how valuable his skills were.
Weeks earlier I had ordered plane tickets to spend a long weekend with my husband and his co-workers in Germany. So I got to experience first hand the joys of air travel just a few days later.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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1 comment:
Your international take on 9/11 is really interesting.
For me, it's hard to think about 9/11 without dwelling too much on the knee-jerk revenge-filled military actions, the platitudes of "God Bless America", and other such things. It's too bad, because I don't think they really ought to be connected. But somehow they are.
I want to try and remember it as a sad day for our country, as the national tragedy that it is/was. But it seems to have been co-opted into something else by so many, and that is a shame.
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