On the way to work today, I listened to NPR’s interview with book author Garrett Graff. Many people called in or left online comments about their 9/11 experiences (or lack thereof, in the case of younger people). As usual, it made me think of my own experience on 9/11: I was riding my horse that morning, in Panama. When the planes struck the towers, I was in my favorite bakery in Panama City, Pita Pan.
Visit my horse-oriented blog: Wild Horses
I saw the plane first plane hit on a small TV screen hanging from the ceiling (or maybe on a high shelf). Like everyone else in the bakery (I knew many), I got up and stood beneath the screen and watched the coverage. While we were watching, the second plane hit.
From the first moment, I thought it was terrorism.
I don’t remember exactly why I looked up, who noticed first and exclaimed. I vaguely remember the speculation… but there was never a doubt in my mind.
And yet, on NPR this morning, the overriding message seemed to be that the US was innocent before 9/11. Even Robert Mueller, they claimed, assumed it was a pilot mistake.
Maybe because I had lived in Spain when ETA was still active, maybe just because I had lived abroad for over eight years at that point, but I never thought it could be anything but terrorism.
Of course, I could have adjusted my memory, we all do it… I should go back and read my journal from the time!But this is what I remember. That is all any of us are doing, now. Relying on mutable memory.
I do know I had been riding the morning of 9/11.
I was a little over four months pregnant with my second son. Having come straight from the riding club at Clayton, I was wearing my breeches. I had ordered my usual, coffee and croissant, and was reading the paper. My usual morning routine before going home, showering, and taking charge of my oldest son so our maid could go on with her work.
The power of traumatic events is such that I will probably remember standing in Pita Pan in my wine-colored breeches my entire life. I’ve already forgotten the name of the trainer at Clayton who gave me riding lessons (but I remember talking with him about 9/11 on 9/12/2001). I remember my horse–Pancanal–but then, my memory for horses is better than my memory for people. I am, first and foremost, a horseperson.
It looked different from abroad
Or so I was told by my mother every time I had an opinion that varied from her own. “You don’t know what it’s like here any more.” I was far too critical of the Bush Administration for her taste… even though my mother is a staunch Democrat. But the nice thing about the USA then was that in the face of adversity, everyone stood united. Who was it that said “Politics stops at the border?” It did seem to do so in the aftermath of 9/11.
Now of course we’ve opened our borders completely in that respect, what with the current administration’s frequent refusal to condemn or even acknowledge Russian interference in the 2016 election. The use of Israel as a political tool. I could go on and on, but I won’t.
Politics never really stopped at the border anyway. Of any country. The first thing opposing groups do (more so when civil war looms) is appeal to foreign powers for support.
Things do look different from abroad. For those of us who have lived abroad, things continue to look different when we come back home. I’ve been back in the US for ten years now, but I am not yet at the point when I’ll have lived most of my adult life here. Since I turned 18, I’ve lived 13 years in the USA, 18 years abroad. Since 9/11, I’ve lived eight years as an expat, ten years now here, split between California and Oklahoma (which feel like two different countries for that matter).
I do not feel safer in my own country than I did abroad (which means Spain, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, and travel to other places). If anything, I feel less safe, and it’s not because of 9/11, or Al Qaeda, or refugees.
It’s because of the United States of America.
So maybe it is, in fact, partially because of 9/11… if there is an argument to be made that the events of 9/11 shaped our country. Did the immediate fear of Islam (and people who looked–to the ignorant–as if they were Muslim) lead to permanent xenophobia? Did 9/11 lay the seeds in the minds of a subset of the population, leaving them more susceptible to manipulation with anti-immigrant rhetoric? Could it provide an excuse (or a reason) for perversion of precedent and sanctification of the second amendment? (Note that I am not taking issue with said amendment; I even believe we should always have the right to own guns, with certain restrictions and licensing, etc.)
Can 9/11 in any way explain greater nihilism or despair that leads some people to mass murder, others to join ISIS, others to increasing fear of immigrants? I should say, resurgent fear of immigrants, because xenophobia has always existed, and always been used by politicians to manipulate public opinion. My instinct is to say that 9/11 (and the resultant political machinations and popular mythos) is just a small part of this story.
It certainly explains how air travel has become so much more tedious. But people don’t really seem to think about that. Those born right before or since 9/11 have no memory of another world of fewer travel restrictions. Those of us who remember and were travelling frequently enough before and after to compare have learned to accept it. And there are those who complain about every security glitch and holdup and seemingly cannot understand the reasons behind the inconvenience.
Interesting how every year we revisit people’s experiences with 9/11
What were you doing at the time? How did you react then? What does it mean to you now? Heard on multiple outlets all day long. I enjoyed the contrast between post-9/11 memories (the younger generation) and those of us who remember with varying degrees of fallibility. I still wonder why it feels like a terrorist act is being celebrated as much as a great loss is being commemorated.
In the end, the one thing I will remember is that on 9/11 I was riding my horse in Panama.
