Violent Changes

“The movie had awesome special effects. It was really cool.”

“Really? How?”

“They did this one shot where a plane crashes straight into this tall building. And then another one. And then the buildings collapse. And you can see people jumping out and stuff. Amazing!”

“Wait, that wasn’t a movie. That was real.”

“Damn! It seemed so real it was almost like a movie.”

No, this conversation did not really happen, but it could have.

It is a strange phenomenon of our intensely visual age when, things that are so real that they are horrifying can only be explained by using analogies derived from a medium, which is the epitome of fakery and contrivance. As the tragedy of the terrorist attacks played before my eyes, at one point I had to do a reality check to convince myself I was not watching a movie. All around me as people coped with this monumental thing that had happened, I heard the same comment, ‘it was like a movie.”

Living in a generation where pictures rule, this was a sobering reminder of our reality. A reality that is still being shifted and changed, forever blown out of its orbit when planes full of real, flesh and blood people, tore through monuments of steel, full of other people. The clash of technology and real human tragedy.

On Wednesday, I, along with other Americans, awoke in a world much different than it had been twenty-four hours ago. The carefree, innocent days of the 90’s were truly gone, leaving behind the images of real monsters that inhabit all our childhood nightmares. Except these monsters are real. And so are the fears.

We all take for granted the real fears of living and working in this world. From airplane crashes to the imminence of war, even in times of peace, from bombs in cars and vans, to people who hate enough to kill. Yet, for the first time, these fears have all collided on American soil.

Our military defenses can track missiles and intercept enemy aircraft. They can respond to declarations of war. But how can we look into the heart of the intentions of the person sitting next to us in an airplane and know what he might do? How do we stop ourselves from looking with suspicion at any person who looks different and believes in different things? How can we judge in what esteem someone else holds human life, until he guides us and himself into a tornado of fire and sure death?

How can we go to work in a tall building and not look out the window in trepidation every time we hear the roar of jet engines? How do we step into an airplane, set off to fly and not wonder if we will arrive alive? That we will not make a mid-air phone call to a loved one? Or perhaps, even more traumatically, receive a call from a doomed husband, wife, child, sibling or friend?

This terror has infiltrated our lives in more ways than we can imagine. America, where we prided ourselves on our strength and power, we now bolster our courage with defiant displays of flags and patriotic songs.

And strangely, for the first time, I can unequivocally call myself an American. Once America dwelt in my mind and part of my heart and India held my soul alone. Today as my heart and eyes overflow when I hear stories of those whose lives were horrendously altered, my soul too is shared. I feel truly American. Or at least, truly human, uninsulated from horror, touched by terror and imminently vulnerable.

I know of a husband aboard one of those doomed flights whose wife is seven months pregnant. I know of a brother who called his sister to say goodbye. He was going to jump from the 103rd floor because he was too afraid of fire. I hear of wives and husbands who called home from flying traps. I think of the brave men who took on their murderers, thwarting their most horrific intentions.

As I cry in burning anger against those who wounded my country so, it is with sadness and a resolve I see echoed all around me. I will go back to work in a tall building. I will fly. I will let life go on. I will live life. Because they might kill me and those I love, but they shall not own my life while I am still alive.