The Traveler’s Contribution
September 19, 2001
In April 1995, I was traveling in Europe when the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Coverage of the incident was minimal in the French press and only slightly more on the English-language European Sky network. Dissention within the EU topped the headlines. I remember story the that dominated the news was that a Canadian naval destroyer had fired on a Spanish commercial fishing vessel that it believed to be violating Canadian waters. The British, at the time opposed to EU membership, had supported the Canadians, angering the Spanish. The issue was economic, not military. No lives were lost and minimal damage done. I remember being somewhat shocked that so many lives were lost in a terrorist attack in the United States, and it was no more than a blip in the European consciousness.
The friend I was staying with at the time explained to me, “You have to understand, we in Europe have lived with this sort of thing all of our lives. You in America are lucky and have been shielded from such things.”
Just a month before there had been several people killed by a terrorist’s bomb aboard a crowded Paris Metro. Of course, my friend was right, we have been shielded; shielded by military power, by geography, by ignorance and arrogance.
I returned to the United States shortly afterward and spent the rest of the summer of 1995 in relative isolation from current events. Working in Upstate New York, living in a cabin on a lake with no television, no radio, and never picking up a newspaper, I remained ignorant of most of the details surrounding the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When I emerged into the broader American civilization that autumn, the incident had taken a back seat to other fresher headlines. I continued in my daily life, largely unaffected by those events.
In February 1996, I went to work in Oklahoma City for six weeks. Upon meeting my local colleagues, it was apparent that all of them still carried those events in the front of their minds. I quickly discovered that everyone had a story. Each person I met had a remembrance of where they were when the blast occurred, how it felt, or what they initially though it might be. Most were personally acquainted with at least one of the victims. They were shocked and sometimes angered at my lack of knowledge of the events. Everyone I spoke to was eager to educate me. I felt guilty for having ignored it for so long. The performing arts center where I was working was no more than two blocks from the site of the bombing, so I began making frequent visits. I read the cards and looked at the photos that were lining the entire perimeter of the barricade set up around the remains of the building. The abstractions were beginning to take on faces and names. At the beginning and end of each workday I passed the prison where Timothy McVeigh was being held. There was always a group of people outside the facility with bullhorns and signs demanding “justice.” Their anger, pain, and sense of righteousness was palpable and I struggled to make sense out of it all for myself.
Out of my Oklahoma City experience I learned that the best thing I could do for myself was to stay informed. I began taking an interest in world events in a deeper, less superficial way. To try to understand the myriad and complexity of issues in the world seemed daunting. When I was in college, choosing an issue and picking a side was pretty clear-cut to me. It was easy to be self-righteous about apartheid and offshore oil drilling. Even the Gulf War seemed unambiguous at the time. Traveling beyond the borders of the United States, the lines began to blur. Trying to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Kurdish situation, the Shining Path guerillas in Peru, Rwandan genocide, and the Balkans War was more than complicated. It was a challenge to refrain from making quick judgments. I had to learn to be discriminating about the source of the news and the manner in which it was reported.
It is easy to become overwhelmed by the volume of news and information that is available to us these days. The constant barrage and the nauseating repetitiveness of the biggest stories can desensitize us to the relative importance of events. I often look for those opportunities to disconnect from the “information machine.” Traveling can present such an opportunity. (I recall a recent survey on the BootsnAll website about how we decide to stay informed when we travel.)
Such was my own experience of the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. My wife Wendy and I had been camping on the island of Kauai the week before and had remained intentionally ignorant of current events. We were more concerned with finding the best snorkeling spots around the island. That Monday afternoon we caught a Hawaiian Airlines inter-island flight to Kona on the Big Island. Arriving in the late afternoon, we were not very interested in searching for a place to set up camp in the dark, so we decided to spend the night in a cheap hotel. In Honokaa on the north side of the Big Island is a wonderful old place called the Hotel Honokaa Club. A comfortable bed, a hot meal, and a shower were all we really wanted. We also had the pleasure of meeting the Hotel’s caretaker, Annelle. Gracious and friendly, Annelle was a wealth of information about the area. She had gone to college for nursing at Seattle University and knew many of the neighborhoods of our home city. Annelle made us feel perfectly at home. Rising early on Tuesday morning I walked down the hall toward the hotel’s office. Annelle greeted me, took me by the arm, and eased me into a chair in front of the television.
“Come in and have a seat, you need to see this.” She said.
I watched the televised coverage from New York and Washington, DC trying to understand what I was seeing. We see these kinds of images on movie screens quite often. Destruction of the most recognizable American landmarks has been the subject of many Hollywood movies and X-Files episodes. As I watched, Annelle brought me up to date on the details that had been reported so far. She was clear, concise, and grounded. Annelle offered a dispassionate and balanced reaction and made no snap-judgments.
During the next few days, Wendy and I sporadically heard the news on the radio, listening to the saber rattling and the calls for revenge. In the United States military power and geography can no longer protect us, but our ignorance and arrogance seems to have remained. I thought of the people outside if the prison in Oklahoma City demanding “justice”. I thought of Annelle and her thoughtful responses. In my mind she became the voice of reason in the midst of the rising fury. I began looking for more of these examples to balance the rage on which the media was fixating. We spent a night at the Buddhist Temple in Wood Valley. As the Tibetan Lamas’ chanting echoed down the valley I realized that it was possible to grieve for the tragedy, work for a broader justice, and contribute in a positive way by not succumbing to the war rhetoric.
Upon returning home to Seattle, I was heartened to hear more united voices urging tolerance. A man in his anger dousing a local mosque with gasoline was stopped by passers-by on the street. As a result of that incident the Jewish and Christian communities in the area have organized a 24-hour watch to guard local mosques. Candlelight vigils and services continue across the world. I have heard journalists, scholars, and George W. Bush himself make the distinction between the millions who follow Islam and the terrorists who kill and destroy in Allah’s name. Millions are resisting the desire for indiscriminate retribution. Millions are finding the words to articulate the difference between people and governments or organizations.
So what can you do? We in the traveler’s community can put our best common asset forward: our desire to know and experience the world as it is. Write or email your friends in Thailand, Turkey, and Indonesia. Tell your story and ask them to tell theirs. Keep the cultural dialogue going long after the next headline replaces the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Check your assumptions. And listen.
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