I debated whether or not to write at all about 9/11. There just doesn’t seem to be anything left to say. I then decided to finally write about Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, the plot of which hinges on the events of 9/11. Unfortunately real events made it impossible to not write about 9/11.
I woke up this morning to learn that the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was murdered, along with three others. That attack, along with major protests outside the American Embassy in Egypt, makes it clear we are still at war. All sparked by a rumor. The thing is that no matter how hard we all try in the United States to pretend we aren’t still at war, that 9/11 didn’t change everything, there are still terrorist attacks.
Back in 2000 I studied abroad in London for a month during the summer. Every day I used the Russell Square tube station to get around the city. It happened to be merely blocks away from Commonwealth Hall, where we were all staying that July. It is precisely the same tube station attacked in 2005 after it was announced London would host the 2012 Olympics.
In 2002 I spent a semester studying Spanish in Caceres, Spain, once again through Michigan State University. Throughout that semester I made several trips via train to Madrid. Time and time again I’d find myself in Atocha Station. I can’t even begin to tell you how heartbroken I was when I learned it too was a target for terrorists in 2004. I can tell you precisely where I was when I heard the news.
While I haven’t experienced the day to day anxiety of say New Yorkers in the days and weeks following the September 11th attacks or the residents of Washington, D.C. a year later during the beltway sniper shootings, terrorism did color many aspects of my college days. To this day 9/11 seems surreal to me. At the time I was studying abroad in Ecuador (again, Spanish). It took weeks before some sort of normalcy returned to our routines as foreign exchange students. We all kept expecting additional attacks back home. I remember pleading with my Mom to tell me exactly what was going at home the evening of 9/11. We heard so many rumors I suppose I needed some reassurance that life at home as I knew it did go on.
In Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, the young protagonist of the story, Oskar Schell, uses the term “heavy boots” to describe any sadness or unpleasant emotion relating to losing his father Thomas Schell on 9/11. The term just seemed so fitting for the events of that day and everything that followed. I suppose that is the precise term for what I’m feeling today: heavy boots. It saddens me deeply to think of how many people across the globe have lost their lives as a result of terrorism since 1979. Believe what you wish, but we are still very much at war.
Wars & Rumors Of Wars
Cover of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
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