September 13 & 14, 2001
two days

Thursday, 5:30

The office is still quiet, except for the sound of crispy sound of College Boy eating sunflower seeds. The Intern has started reading my journal; I'm worried on a daily basis that the Firecracker will find out about this and tear my little head off.

She almost found out today.

"WHAT, YOU WRITE WHERE YOU WRITE? WHAT YOU TALK ABOUT?"

She popped up unexpectedly around the corner while I was talking to College Boy and the Intern about some email I'd gotten regarding my last entry. It's possible I turned pale. She may be only four-foot five, but she could kick my ass from here to Mississippi and not break a sweat.

The Intern -- and really, I should call her something else because she's not really an Intern; we just called her that so Human Resources wouldn't ask dangerous questions -- asked for the URL and retreated to her cube to read. A little while later, she called me.

"Yuhri? Could you come here for a second?"

Knowing that she was reading my journal, suddenly worried that I'd written something damning about her in one of the past entries, (I swear I don't think those aren't really her breasts!), I hurried to respond.

In a hushed voice, she tapped her terminal, where my journal was brightly displayed, and informed me that she liked how I put all of the Firecracker's speech in capital letters. "At first I was sort of wondering," she whispered in deference to my paranoia about the Firecracker overhearing. "Then I thought, oh, I get it. It's funny."

Well, good.

The Firecracker speaks, oh, loudly. We love the Firecracker. The office wouldn't be as much fun without her.

Thursday, 10:00 pm

The Guy is back after a short road trip to Los Angeles, and I'm vaguely relieved, I think. We went to sushi and then went to Tower Records to mock their prices for DVDs. It's late now, but I'm feeling the need -- the same need I've had the last three days -- to redesign my web pages. This is calming, soothing work; it's relatively brainless, and I can spend hours just staring blankly at Adobe Photoshop trying to figure out what one of the little buttons does. I learned about layers yesterday, purely by accident. To date, I haven't once given in to the temptation to just read the manual. Manuals are for people who aren't masochists.

Hey, everybody needs a way to get their kicks.

Friday, 8:00 pm.

I've been reading the BBC news online, and rediscovering my faith in humanity.

I have never been so proud to be part of the human race.

I have never been so grateful.

All around the world, people are joining in to mourn the people who died on Tuesday; flowers build up outside embassies, and offers of help come pouring in. A line to sign a condolence book at the US Embassy stretches for over a kilometer. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace takes place to the US anthem. In Palestine, Arafat gives blood, All of Europe grieves; Asia bows its head, Africa prays. All through the world, life stutters to a standstill for one moment of remembrance.

One hearbeat.

Two.

Three.

And then we moved on.

I've been moved by the generosity of our neighbors across the oceans and nearby in the Americas, who have found time from their own troubles to cry with us. Terrorism isn't unknown to them; they experience it on a regular basis, losing their own children and parents to cafe bombs and machine gun spray. Some of them have experienced first-hand what genocide really means, and waited in vain for someone more powerful to do something, to care. Until now, the United States has never grieved with them as a people, and yet, they have the greatness of spirit to turn and grieve with us. Maybe they also felt that the United States was sacrosanct, preserved by the Atlantic and the Pacific. Maybe they felt a bit of complacency with us. Maybe they remember the days when America was the land of shining hopes, where the streets were lined with gold and everybody had the right to live in safety and peace. Maybe in the wake of everything, old resentments about US arrogance will die, and something wonderful will result.

Tonight, I walked home from work and saw American flags flying everywhere, draped on trucks and hanging off of car antennae. In the wireless store, every phone displayed had a flag-patterned face shield. At the train station, the everyday commuters had American flags tucked into the handles of their briefcases. A block from my house, a group of young men in wife-beater shirts were drinking heavily and lighting candles, blaring angry rock music and yelling when they received honks from passing trucks. Theirs wasn't a memorial; it was a strange, twisted celebration. I have to admit that it frightened me; fairly or falsely, I can't help but think of all the times when a flag became a rallying cry for mindless, devouring violence against reason. Some of those flags I saw were, I have no doubt, raised in anger, or hatred: us against them.

Of all the displays in Redwood City tonight, it was a small family that reminded me that patriotism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Standing on the corner of a busy intersection, they held their small candles and waved to passing cars, inspiring their honks of sympathy, or recognition, or maybe even appreciation. I didn't read the posters that they carried; it was enough that their demonstration was peaceful, and gentle, and that it was light against darkness, not nation against nation or race against race.

I don't believe we can demonize the people who perpetrated what happened on Tuesday. To do that is to distance ourselves from them: to say that they are evil because they are different, because they have crossed over some line that makes them no longer human. That makes it too easy to hate, too easy to point a finger and differentiate between one human and the next. It should never be easy to hate. The truth is, they were just like us, and that's what makes it all the more terrible. Somewhere along the line they made a choice or learned to cling to a twisted idea of love that demanded that they hate. If they had been born in a different place, known different people, gone a different path ... well.

 
I can't imagine any person -- any terrorist who believes himself to be fighting for freedom or for his belief, in Ireland, in Egypt, in Malaysia -- who could not be humbled by the world's response. I can't imagine any person who uses violence for his cause not pausing to look hard and look deep, and not start to doubt what sort of person he's become. In the days to come, maybe this will make some governments compromise, some guerillas lay down their arms and pick up their pens, make some people who sacrificed conscience in the name of expedience look at the future and wonder if it can be built on a foundation so faulty that it has created men that will do what these hijackers did.

I hope that wherever they are, the people responsible for planning and ordering what happened are watching the courage and determination of the rescue workers. I hope they're watching on the news while the rest of the world mourns with us. I hope they realize that they created a rare moment of near global unity, a moment of harmony the likes of which has never been seen. I hope they see that and are ashamed.

If I cry today, because I've paid my tithe of tears most days this week, it'll be because I'm relieved I have no reason to lose my faith in humanity. It'll be because I thought I hated, and I've found out that I don't; because yesterday I was angry, and today I'm not; and because life goes on, bit by bit, and wounds heal.

And that's how it should be.