Laguna Coastline News - 9/12/2001

 

“43,600 Panes of Glass”

by Catharine Cooper

 

43,600 panes of glass showered down on New York City this morning.  There is no count of the weight of the concrete, the steel, the furniture, the papers or the human toll.  Every airport in America is shut down.  The Pentagon is on fire.  The White House has been evacuated.  The borders are closed.  My life, as was every American’s, was irrevocably changed.

 

I was in the midst of completing a column on the luxury of living in Laguna Beach, in America, when the news broke.  I had just written a statement about how incredibly fortunate I was to have lived my life free from fear of war on my shores.  Suddenly, my words were no longer true.

 

In the past month, I have been gifted with long conversations with people from foreign nations who had fled their countries with the clothes on their backs, the money in their pockets and their children in their arms.  I listened, incredulously, to stories that felt more like films in their foreign nature.  My life, for the most part, has been lived in plenty against the benevolent breezes of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Nadia (not her real name), escaped to the United States eight years ago from Bosnia.  She had lived in the same town with the same next-door neighbors for twenty-two years.  Their children played together.  They ate together, shared food and stories, and cared for one another in sickness.  One day, they woke up, and the government had decided, based on their religion, that they were enemies.  Shortly, the bombing started, followed by soldiers and everyone went into hiding.  There was no way to know whom to trust.  Neighbor no longer a friend, but a suspect. 

 

Her husband, along with most of the men, was taken to the concentration camps.  The women were left to hide from the soldiers in the darkness.  One day, she was pulled from her house along with her aged father-in-law and her son.  A soldier asked her to choose which one he should kill.  She could only sob and plead.  She said, “War changes everything.  You do what you need to do.  Who cares what others think.”  She said, “I told them, ‘take me, not my daughter.’”

 

She smuggled sugar cubes and small bits of soap to her husband who lost 75 pounds in three months.  She said that on sugar, a man could live a very long time.  When the final assault came on her town, she grabbed her two children, and strangely, under the eye of an enemy soldier (a second cousin of her husband) she ran through gunfire across a bridge, carrying her eight-year-old son.  “Are we safe yet, mommy?” he asked from the middle of the bridge.  She thought that she might never know safe again. 

 

Nadia says that miracles brought her to America.  She says it has nothing to do with God, or whether or not you believe in him.  It was simply a series of miracles.  About never ceasing to ask for help – from anyone and everyone.  And that pride is not a condition that can exist in war.

 

Javad (not his real name) walked out of Iran twenty years ago, fleeing the Great Islamic Revolution and the leadership of Imam Khomeyni.  He carried his two small children, walking in the darkness of night, sleeping in darkened buildings or behind bushes in the day.  He left his home, his job, everything upon which he had built his life. 

 

A network of fleeing citizens formed an underground.  They falsified papers, paid off guards and suffered degrading conditions to walk toward freedom.  His journey to the America was through Russia, Greece and Spain, where after several months, he was able to buy his visas to the United States. 

 

Javad’s children are medical students and know nothing of what their lives might have been, should they have been lucky enough to live.  Nadia’s son remembers only a little, as he plays baseball and studies in an area high school.  Her daughter doesn’t speak of the events and focuses on her college education.  She is also a medical student.

 

Both of my new foreign friends discussed with me the remarkable freedom and liberty we have in America.  Freedoms, they say, that we take for granted.  But that had we their experiences, we would know how cherished they ought to be.

 

The news continues to build.   Senseless and cowardly acts of terrorism have thrown America into a whirlwind of debate, of agony and of questioning the very freedoms that upon which we have built this strong nation.  An act or war has been committed, without a warring nation.

 

I will sleep less comfortably – if at all – tonight.  My borders are not safe.  My country is not free from attack.  What I have taken for granted must now be examined carefully, and with respect.  We’ve turned another page in our history, and none of us really knows what tomorrow morning will bring.