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2002-09-12

For three months during the summer and early autumn of 2001, I was conducting fieldwork in Tanzania for my PhD in Anthropology and Archaeology. On 11 September I was enjoying my last day of a four day holiday to Zanzibar, taken with a postgraduate student from NYU who was on my project. We were preparing for a special supper to mark the end of our holiday, which we had taken once our supervisors had left us alone in Africa and we had gotten a handle on our work. I am an American student at University College London in the UK, so I am used to being far from my family when big events occur. What I remember the most when I witnessed what was occuring on CNN International, was the desire to be back in the States, despite the horror and fear and potential danger. It made me think back to the Persian Gulf war, when I heard on the news that a number of Americans with an Israeli background were heading back there. I thought that they were crazy to want to return to a land so fraught with danger, but when the US was attacked, I was overcome by the wish to be in the middle of the scene.

My friend and I had ten minutes to spare before our driver was coming to collect us for dinner. On a whim we decided to turn the TV on. We were on temporary resident visas, so hotels and travel were cheaper for us than non-residents and we had been able to splurge on a very posh hotel with a TV in the room. Having spent quite a while out in the bush, and then in Dar-es-Salaam in a hostel, we hadn't seen much of the rest of the world. TV was novel and almost intriguing. When I first switched it on and saw an image of the WTC damaged and smoking, I switched the channel thinking that I was watching a lame Hollywood action film. The next channel showed the same image. And then the next. And the next. And of course by that point we'd seen all of the channels on the Zanzibari TV at the hotel! I can remember growing cold in the damp heat of the late afternoon and calling my friend's name several times to get her attention. She joined me where I stood in front of the TV and we grabbed each others hands when the replay of the planes crashing into the towers was shown seconds later. The second crash had not occurred that long ago. Our knuckles turned white, but we didn't notice at first. The trembling was much more obvious. I began to whimper "Oh my God" over and over again until my friend told me to stop so we could hear what the news reporter was saying.

My family is from Connecticut and the closest city to us is New York. It has always been the city that I most affiliate with from home. My friend of course, being from NYU, has a community of her own in the city, and my sister, cousin, and numerous friends live there as well. We watched as our home of sorts was terrorized and destroyed. I felt so ill, imagining my sister getting up for class that morning and deciding to stray further afield than normal, maybe to meet a friend for coffee, maybe just to take a walk. She lived below 14th Street, in an NYU residence hall and would not normally have any reason to be in the vicinity of the WTC. But, in times like that, your brain churns through the possibilities and alarms go off with each new variation that is created. I remember in 1998 when there was a terrible train crash in London that made international news I received a number of emails from people I hadn't heard from in six months or more, begging me to respond so they would know I hadn't been on the train. It had made me snicker a bit at the time because there was simply no reason for me to ever be on a commuter train in that part of the city, but that is just what happens when a crisis strikes nearby to a loved one. Rational or not, these things enter your head.

When we managed to pull ourselves away from the TV and meet our driver, the first of the towers had fallen. We told him what happened. He became very serious and with a grave tone he told us that it sounded terrible and he would pray for our families. He told us to try to enjoy our meal and each others company and to be thankful for it. Rather than head straight to the restaurant, we stopped at an internet cafe. The people there had heard of the news and when we walked in, looking troubled and confused, they immediately sat us down at a computer and said they hoped we would hear our families were safe. Nobody needed to tell them why we were there. I emailed my family, suffering through the incredibly slow computer connections. I already had a number of emails from my flatmate who was watching the news unfold with our new flatmates who had come to London from NYC a week before. Their office at an architecture firm was three blocks away from the WTC. I asked my flatmate to call my family and see if they had heard from my sister. Minutes later I got an email from my father saying that her whereabouts were unknown. At supper my friend and I talked about what we had seen, our voiced raised a little louder than normal, perhaps in the hopes that somebody would hear and ask us to explain. We needed to share it, but were too shy to just cry in public, to scream with the rage and despair that we felt. An older English couple sitting next to us did lean over and ask us what we were talking about. It felt so good to tell them, to confide in these lovely strangers, to release the burden of our knowledge. Our conversation made me feel strangely peaceful, and the day died with a painfully beautiful sunset, soundtracked by the soulful call to prayer that projected over Stone Town, the main town on the island. We witnessed that night begin with our senses raised beyond the norm. We were at a rooftop restaurant, taller than the other buildings in town. The sunset was brighter than I would have normally noticed, the cushions upon which we sat were silkier, more comfortable, than they looked. The drinks were smoother, the food more aromatic.

Later, when we returned to the hotel, news had spread. When I explained to the receptionist that my family was American and they might try to call me, he nodded his head and promised to pray for me. That night a number of calls from people with North Americn accents were connected to my room. None of those people were my Americans, though! The phone lines to the island are dodgy at the best of times - strangely my parents tried to call me twelve times that night but always reached a private residence in Zaire. It was 16 hours later that I was able to retrieve my email back in Dar-es-Salaam, and learn that my sister and cousin and friends were all safe. My sister had seen the second plane crash from Washington Square Park, and was caught up in the chaos that followed. Because of where she lived she was stuck in the city for a number of days before they reopened the roads, just in time for her to catch the train back to CT to attend the memorial service for a young man from our hometown who was killed that day. We had gone to high school with him and his brother. That is the closest person to me who died. My youngest sister is aquaintances with a girl in the high school whose father was lost. Three others from our town died as well, a very low number considering that so many people from our town commute into NYC and work in the finacial district. People say we were lucky as a town, but there is something almost too optomistic about that, I think.

Back in Dar, people on the streets would stop me and my friend and ask us if we were American. It was obvious that I was mzungu, a white person, a foreigner. Before the 11th we were stopped a lot anyway, but they always asked where we were from. This time the question was more direct. Normally when I travel I hestitate to admit that I am American. I know that our country's policies and economics have brought hardship to many people in other parts of the world and I am ashamed of that. Because so many other regions of the world are drenched in anti-American sentiments (which for some reason many Americans don't know and don't understand), I try to be cautious. I often just say that I am visiting from London, which isn't a lie, but not quite the whole truth. After the 11th I looked everyone in the eye and said "I am American, my family lives near New York". The outpouring of love and support from every Tanzanian I spoke to was overwhelming. It got me through the rest of my stay in Africa. People would lay a hand on your shoulder and say they would pray for you, that they were sorry for what had happened, that they wished we would find it within ourselves to heal. Their openness gave me strength and helped me come to terms with a changed world. I accepted each blessing with gratitude. My parents were very worried about me after the 11th because Dar has a large Muslim population, but I felt safer there than when I returned to London. There was something about the honesty and concern of the people there that made me feel protected. And something my family wasn't thinking of at the time - the inhabitants of Dar had felt the wrath of bin Laden in 1998 when his people bombed the US embassy there. That story is always overshadowed by the bombing in Nairobi, because so many more people died, and Americans were injured. In Dar only twelve people died. All of them were Tanzanian. A memorial to the victims, constucted with salvaged materials from the site, stands in the garden of the National Museums of Tanzania, where I spent my days working with fossils held in the collections there. I was reminded every day that my country now had a certain pain in common with Tanzania.

I spent the rest of my stay in Tanzania addicted to CNN International, despite the footage and the commentary growing stale. Every waking moment I was watching the TV. I was "lucky" enough to have one available, since I had met and moved in with a woman from Kenya who was working in Dar and living in a nice flat connected to my hostel. She had a TV that received two English language channels, so we watched it together, while my fellow postgraduate student often wandered back to her room after an hour, saturated. On the other hand, I couldn't help but stay up until 1, 2, sometimes 3 am to see what new piece of information was being fed to us.

I flew back to London less than two weeks after the 11th. I'm nervous about flying on the best of days, but this flight was torture. I fought panic attacks for most of the journey, my nervousness not helped by the fact that our plane had been grounded in Nairobi for 16 hours with an engine problem. Back in London I felt like a fish out of water. I was very nervous. Some of my friends had attended a peace meeting before my return. One of the topics of conversation was how to differentiate between anti-Americanism and anti-American policy sentiments. It scared me to think that the world had felt our sorrow, but that many people had lost sight of that sorrow and had given in to a wariness towards our country's next move. The politcal arena infringed on everyone's emotional lives, and I became uncomfortable with many of the president's statements and decisions. If I had had a better solution, I would have offered it to anyone willing to listen, but I eventually grew tired of trying to explain the US's actions or position to my non-American friends. After all, I wasn't making the policy or implementing it, and I hadn't lived in the country long-term since 1995, so I felt a bit out of touch with the American mindset. I begged my friends to leave the topic alone in my presence, as I simply became upset with being forced to defend my country's actions, when I myself struggled to understand them and frequently disagreed with them. In public I began to worry about speaking out loud, lest somebody hear my accent and make a scene. I didn't go to any of the peace rallies or support meetings. All it takes is one nut in the crowd to create a disturbance. I had iamges in my head of one fervent anarchist lunging towards me screamimg "capitalist pig amongst us!". Thankfully, a month later, my paranoia calmed down and although life didn't - and won't - ever go back to normal, I began the slow process of coming to terms with what had happened on 11 September.

Right now I am in Washington DC doing some research at the Smithsonian. One year ago I was sitting in the open air, breathing in the cool Zanzibari night, mentally reliving the worst event that I had seen my country suffer - all from the comfort of a chair in front of a fuzzy TV screen. And a year later, on the one year anniversary, here I am in DC. Isn't this what I wanted? To be here, near my family, with my countrymen and women, to finally partake in the community grieving process that I had missed...? I attended the 8am service of remembrance at the National Cathedral. I was moved by Desmond Tutu's homily, by the sight of businessmen crying and holding hands, by the spiritual presence of the Buddhist monk, the calm air of the other religious leaders. I was annoyed by the six mobile phones that rang, and the people who left the service early to get to something obviously much more important. When it came time to hold hands with the people next to you for one of the prayers, nobody was left next to me. They had gone. I felt as lonely then as I did a year ago in Tanzania, and being "at home" wasn't any better than being away. I suppose I learned that there is no suitable site for grieving, there is no perfect place to mourn. It occurs in your heart and in your head, while you do or don't clasp the hand of the stranger next to you. Grief doesn't wait for the right moment or the perfect circumstances to unfold. But I think that it must be easier with a hand to hold anyway - such is human nature or, at least, this human's nature. As an archaeoligst I am always considering the past and documenting the past of others. Having been able here to document my own, to re-create a small moment of the history of my experience in this world, has been perhaps one of the best things in my own grieving process. Thank you.

This is what one of the readings from yesterday's service said: "Do not take lightly small good deeds, believing they can hardly help: For drops of water one by one in time can fill a giant pot". I hope that we, as Americans, will fill the pot to overflowing over the next few years. And as the Tanzanians said to me last September (and pardon my Swahili spelling), Mungu Akubariki - God bless you.