The business of never forgetting.

There are two children. Sasha and Corvid, and they are friends.

 Sasha is from a rough neighborhood, he has been around the block a few times. He knows what it is like to take a punch. His people have been in that same neighborhood for generations.

Corvid comes from a nice neighborhood. It’s relatively safe and sheltered. She is secure, in a manner of speaking, and her family has lived in the same place for generations.

They meet on the playground everyday. They are friends.

One day, another kid from a rough neighborhood comes to the playground. He sneaks up behind Corvid, jumps on her, and beats her up. Then he runs away and hides.

Corvid cries. This has never happened to her before. She is scared, but most of all she doesn’t understand why.  Sasha isn’t too concerned, this kind of thing happens all the time, and Corvid should pick herself up, dust herself off, and get over it.

She keeps asking, “but why? I don’t understand why this happened?”

Sasha says he doesn’t know. It happens. Where he comes from it happens every day.

“But why?” Corvid says…

But why?

The more Corvid asks why, the more irritated Sasha gets. Why didn’t she understand, this happens? This happens to everyone else a lot more than it happens to her so why can’t she just shut the fuck up about it? All the other kids on the playground get irritated with Corvid. Why is she so special anyway?

And she still asks. “But why?”

For the past week and a half we have been going through the business of never forgetting.

We won’t “never forget.” It doesn’t work like that. What we need to do is ask why. And keep asking why, until we get an answer.

I wanted to write about 9/11 because it happened, and it affected me... and,  I didn’t want to write about 9/11 because I am tired of career politicians using it as a political weapon. I am tired of cable news commentators hyperbolizing it. I am tired of flags, and eagles, and heroes, and 9/11 commemorative plates with hand painted gold piping for only $9.95. Radio specials, TV specials, bad made for TV movies, etc.

 I thought of several different approaches, analogies, analysis. But in the end, I can only tell one story. My own.

The Event.  9/11. some men got on some planes, and they made the planes fly into buildings, and the buildings fell down. And a whole fuckload of people died.

People.

Regular people. Just people. Not heroes, just people.  3000 people. Moms, dads, kids, husbands, wives. People.

People, most of whom didn’t know much more in life than getting up, feeding their kids, going to work, going home, paying bills, doing homework, sharing dinner, going to bed. Getting up and doing it all over again. Just like me. They were just people.

Those people in those buildings didn’t do anything wrong. They were just like people all over the world, just trying to live. Just trying to get by.  Just people.

But their story isn’t my story.

The most indelible image of two skyscrapers burning and falling to the ground 1,800 miles away from where I lived, were of the people jumping from the top floors of the towers because they didn’t want to burn alive. I stood there, watching, because I didn’t know what else to do. I cried. I wanted to run, to catch them, to cradle them, to save them. I wanted to do something, but there was nothing I could do. I wanted to know why.  I cried out, “why.”

It is the same question that the women and men who run out into the street after a car explodes in their marketplace ask… as they cry, and press hands to wounds, and try to do something.

Why.  We all ask why. I am just an ordinary person living my ordinary life. Why?

The rest of it didn’t happen to me. I didn’t smell the smoke or have the buildings crash down on my head. I didn’t dig my hands bloody and stagger in exhaustion trying to save my neighbors.

My story went more like this…

It was an ordinary day. Then I saw the news and watched in disbelief. I was afraid and did not know what was going on. I had never heard of the Taliban. I did not know who Osama bin Laden was. We thought, at first, that it was an accident.

Then we knew it wasn’t.

My home town is basically a small civilian pocket in the midst of several military installations. On the day, and for many days after everything shut down. It all came to a screeching halt. The roads all closed, the bases shut down, and the civilians who worked on them were not allowed to leave, they could not go home to their families for days. There were armed soldiers everywhere. The major highway I used to drive 75 miles to the next town where I went to university was closed.

People were frightened, frantic. There was a strange, pervasive silence everywhere… as if we were collectively at a loss for words.

We wondered what else was going to happen. We wondered why?

When the roads opened up and I was able to go back to school everything was different.

The day before, I met with Khadija and Johnathon. We went to the little Moroccan café where they gave Khadija and all her friends the royal treatment because she was from their home town. Johnathon  would make sure that we understood he was Guatemalan, and didn’t do any of that Mexican shit. Julio, who was a basketball player and as loud as he was tall, had just converted to Islam the month before and was filled with excitement about it. He loved to come to the café and yell “Assalaamu 'alaykum,” in his big, cheerful voice. All the Saudi boys played endless football games on the mall, the kids from India and Sri Lanka sat on the tables in front of the engineering building and studied together. Professors from all over the world were teaching classes, imparting philosophies, exchanging information.

On coming back, Khadija was gone. Her family brought her home. Johnathon had tried to go home to Chicago, and was approached by security, thrown to the ground, frisked, and detained because he looked like an Arab. Professor Singh was assaulted three times in a single day because he wore a turban. The Saudi families had to go register with the FBI and report to them on a weekly basis. Julio never shouted his cheerful greeting again, he never went back to the mosque because he was afraid to. We were worried how it would affect business at the café and tried to patron it as much as possible, showing our support for a family who had been in the US for over 20 years. Suddenly, everyone was from someplace else. Everyone was different.

The ROTC Batallion at the campus did a tribute to the fallen. They fired a howitzer. I remember how everyone at the student union center fell to the floor when they heard it. It was quite possibly one of the most terrifying sounds I have ever heard. Later that year there were fireworks at the stadium across from campus housing. Instead of running outside to watch when I heard the BOOM BOOM BOOM,  I freaked out until I figured out what was happening.

These are the things I remember. Ordinary things. The things that keep coming back to mind whenever someone mentions 9/11. I remember the change. The difference. We lost something. We never thought about how easy and free we all were, and then it was gone.

When I was a kid, I liked to run. I ran over the grass as fast as I could go, and the world was big, and wide and endless with possibility and wonder. And I loved it. I loved the world, and I loved being in it. The world was beautiful.

On 9/11 strange men I never knew and had no understanding of, tried to take that from me. For reasons unknown to me. I still ask why.

Why they tried to take my freedom.

You see, freedom is not about national security, or the right to vote, or civil liberties. Freedom is not about symbols, or patriotism, or politics, or democracy. Freedom is not about what country you live in, what nationality you claim, or what philosophy you hold.

Freedom is running and running and never stopping, because the world is endless, and it’s beautiful.

When that comes under attack, we have to ask why. And we have to keep on asking why until we find out. We have to question it. Not just the crazies, the fundamentalists, the jihadists.. but the militarists, the nationalists, the religionists... all of them. All of them.

I will not lose my freedom. I will cling to it tenaciously. I will love the world. I will look at it with a sense of wonder. I will be hopeful. I will never let anyone take that from me.

I am Corvid. I am an American. I may be naive, but I will never stop asking why.