An all-encompassing rage

I haven’t wanted to comment the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 last week that killed 298 people before now, mostly because the news is filled with reports about the plane, the crash site, the bodies decomposing in the sun waiting to be transported for autopsy, the search for the black boxes, the confusion about whether the crash site has been tampered with—all those things. It is unrelenting coverage, as well it should be. But I have thought about it every day since it happened. And instead of my rage against the perpetrators of this atrocity abating as time passes, it has only increased as I read about the horrors that this flight and its passengers must have endured, and what family members and loved ones are enduring as they wait for information about when the bodies will be transported home to the Netherlands and to other countries. I need only read about the type of missile that was allegedly used to take down the plane, one that explodes under the plane, facilitating the destruction of the plane via shrapnel that pierces the plane’s skin in multiple places, causing the plane to shear apart, and my rage intensifies. I realize that this tragedy, like the destruction of the Twin Towers in Manhattan on September 11, 2001 that killed almost 3000 people, and the murders of 92 people on the island of Utøya and in Oslo by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik three years ago today, are versions of hell that are beyond our most horrific nightmares and imaginings. Hell exists, make no mistake about it. Unfortunately, it seems as innocent people are the ones who experience this hell on earth, not the evildoers who rightly deserve it. 

There is a lot of evil in the world. We cannot close our eyes to it. We cannot pretend that it does not exist. Endless dialogue and peace conferences are not enough to convert evildoers to good people. That’s a fantasy. Evildoers must be punished. To ignore the existence of evil, to explain it away, or to feel sorry for the evildoers only allows for more of it. The downing of a civilian plane is an act of war; the perpetrators need to be brought to trial in an international court of law, found guilty, and sentenced. Whether or not that sentence is life in prison or death does not bother me. When you drag 298 innocent people into your war, you may pay with your life. That is justifiable, in my book. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. I don’t know how this particular case will be handled. I only know that there has to be swift and hard retribution so that the families and loved ones of those who died get justice.

But what does one do with the rage that one feels when faced with dealing and absorbing the impact of these events? I did not know anyone personally who died in any of these terrorist attacks, and yet, I have a rage inside of me that scares me. I don’t know what to do with it. It is an all-encompassing rage, an absolute rage, a rage that desires annihilation of the evildoers. It is a rage without end; years can pass, and suddenly I can watch a TV report about 9/11 or read an article about it, and the rage returns. If I have this kind of rage, what do those who lost family members and loved ones in these attacks feel? If they feel rage like this, how do they deal with it? I don’t consider myself an evil person, but certainly some of my thoughts are evil, in terms of the afflictions I hope the perpetrators of all these attacks will eventually suffer.

A Decade of Mourning

Ten years ago today, around 3pm Norwegian time, I was at work and one of my colleagues met me in the hallway of our research institute and told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I remember standing there in the hallway looking at her for a few moments in disbelief, and then I quickly ran into my office to check the internet for news. And then I called my husband and asked him to pick me up earlier than usual so that we could go home and watch the TV news. That was the beginning of a long period of nearly uninterrupted TV watching—where the news became something to dread rather than to look forward to in the evenings after work. But I sat there glued to the TV anyway—my connection to my home state and to the country of my birth. No matter where I turned, 9/11 was there. After the disbelief came shock, then tears, more tears, an explosion of emotions I never thought I had, grief, and then more shock when I talked to those people I know in New York who had lost someone or who knew of someone who had lost someone or many people. My sister knew a man who had lost most of his employees who worked at the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. My brother knew several people who had witnessed people jumping from the Towers and who were forever haunted by that sight and by the sounds of bodies hitting the pavement. Besides the sheer tragedy of horrific deaths that smashed into us that day and destroyed whatever feeble walls of defense we had, the sight of the Towers themselves crashing down is a sight I will never forget. To this day, I cannot watch this footage without becoming emotional. I guess this was how it was for our parents’ generation when Pearl Harbor was bombed. All I know is that the unthinkable became reality on 9/11. It changed me forever, and I was thousands of miles away from the tragedy that unfolded. So I can imagine how it must have been for those who experienced it firsthand or who lived in the area around the Towers or who lost friends and family on that day. My first instinct was to want to take the first plane back to the States to help, in any way possible. But I couldn't do that for economic reasons--that was the same year my mother passed away (in March) and I had already flown back and forth to New York several times in connection with her illness and death. I remember my sister and me talking after 9/11 and saying that it was best that my mother had passed before the events of 9/11. She was spared that atrocity. I still feel that way.

The American Embassy here in Oslo had a small memorial celebration today to honor the tenth anniversary of the events of 9/11 and to pay homage to the dead. I wanted to go and then I didn’t want to go, was very ambivalent right up until it happened, and ended up not going. I am not sure how I would have reacted to being there, and I was not sure that I wanted to feel again all the feelings of that day and the time afterwards. I feel sometimes like we have been in mourning for ten years, as a country and as individuals. I know that I feel that way personally. That day had a momentous impact on me, in part because I was not there when it happened, and that made it all the more poignant and intense. It was also the year that my mother died, and the grief of that year will stay with me for always, indelibly imprinted on my mind and soul. Although the news coverage of 9/11 faded in Europe sooner than in the USA, it was intense enough so that my feelings were always right on edge. It was impossible to get distance from the happenings, and that’s a good thing. But now that a decade has passed, it is a good thing to have some distance, without having become blasé.  It would be impossible for me to become blasé because I am very much wrapped up in what happened that day in New York and in what happens in the USA generally. I may live abroad but I never think of myself as anything other than a citizen of the USA, for better or for worse. And now that Norway has experienced its own 9/11 (the terrorist attacks of July 22^nd), I understand even more how it must have been for those I know who witnessed the events of 9/11 firsthand. The past decade in the USA appears to have been characterized by a focus inward—trying to figure out the whys and the meanings of that fateful day in September 2001. For my own part, I don’t know if the whys will ever be answered. There is evil in the world, and each generation has seen it—seen the atrocities resulting from the specific evil, be it world wars, or the Holocaust, or the destruction caused by the atomic bomb. Every time I think that evil does not really exist, I need only think of these events, and then I know that it does. After ten years of trying to come to some understanding of evil, it is time to move toward the light again, to focus outward. Because too much focus on trying to understand evil will not lead to much good. It is the same in Oslo after 7/22—there is no point in trying to understand the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s twisted views about immigration and the world—they will only drag us deeper into despair about what is happening in the world, and despair can immobilize us. That is why it is heartening to read the stories of 9/11 heroes like Jeff Parness who reached outward—starting an organization like ‘New York Says Thank You’, which sends volunteers from New York City to disaster-stricken communities every year (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/04/21/cnnheroes.parness.new.york/index.html), or which has gathered volunteers to help sew back together the tattered American flag that flew at the site of the Towers (http://national911flag.org/?page_id=37). These are positive and uplifting endeavors that move us toward the light—for those actually working in these organizations but also for those reading about them. As I read about these efforts across the ocean here in Oslo, I am filled with hope, hope that the decade of mourning will evolve into quite something else—a new spirit of empathy and activism and a real desire to eradicate hate and pain in the world. It is, as the old Chinese proverb says, ‘better to light one candle than to curse the darkness’.

A City of Flowers--Oslo after July 22nd

We were in Amsterdam on July 22^nd when the madman who is Anders Behring Breivik put into action his evil plan—something he had been plotting to do for nine years according to news sources. This by itself would boggle the mind; the fact that he went after children and teenagers on the island of Utøya is something that no one can or should ever forget. Watching and hearing about what unfolded there is like watching a horror movie, only with the knowledge that it is for real. I cannot imagine what went through the minds of those who experienced this horror, only that I would like to reach out my hand with a magic wand to obliterate the images that the survivors will live with for the rest of their lives. My brother, who worked in the Twin Towers in NY and who lost colleagues and friends on 9/11, says that many of those he knows who survived suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder ten years later. He was fortunately spared—first in 1993 when a car bomb went off in the parking lot under the towers, and then in 2001 on 9/11—both times he was away from his office. But even for those of us who were not physically present in NY when 9/11 occurred, the images of the Twin Towers being hit by the planes and then disintegrating have engraved themselves on our memories for always. To this day I cannot watch video footage of this happening without falling apart. So I know it will be the same for many of the survivors of July 22^nd in Oslo and in Norway generally.

We watched the terror unfold in Oslo on a TV in a hotel room in Amsterdam. Minute for minute, hour for hour—updates, pictures, interviews, more updates. Shock and more shock. Stillness, deathly quiet—that is how the public’s reaction was described following the bombing in Oslo. That is shock. That is disbelief, horror, and sorrow. It is hard to believe that a huge car bomb went off in Oslo. It is hard to believe that a mass murderer mowed down so many young people on an island that is only accessible by boat. It is hard to fathom that it happened in peaceful Norway. And yet it did. It is hard to imagine that this society could have ‘grown’ such a person; that such a person could be the product of a free and democratic society. And yet he is. Norway in that respect is no different than other free and democratic countries. We pay a high price for our democratic philosophies and for our freedom of expression. But we must ensure that the price that both homegrown and external terrorists pay is even higher. What Breivik did is treasonous, and if it was wartime, he would be tried as a traitor. But it is not wartime. This is peacetime. So he will be tried as a mass murderer. He will go to prison for the rest of his life. But he goes to prison knowing that the families of those he murdered are in a prison of their own, of his making. They have lost their children or their spouses or their friends. This is the prison of death and sorrow. For some it is a lifetime sentence, for others it may not be so. But it is impossible to say what it will be for each person affected by this tragedy, because each person is an individual.  

We joined the huge numbers of people who found their way into downtown Oslo yesterday. We placed flowers in front of the Oslo Cathedral like so many others. The front of the church has become a sea of flowers, spreading out in all directions. We were there at 3pm; by 7pm the sea had doubled in size, both horizontally and vertically. There are layers upon layers of flowers, interspersed with lit votive candles. Many people circled the sea—just standing and reflecting, taking pictures, others explaining to their children what had happened. What they could not explain was why is happened. No one will ever really know why evil happens. But it does. Evil exists. Hate exists. Darkness exists. Sometimes the darkness tries to obliterate the light. But the sea of flowers is a symbol of compassion and love for the victims and their families, and really for all those affected by terror and tragedy. I remember the flowers and candles and flags that people in Oslo placed in front of the American embassy building after 9/11. People reached out, like they do now, with compassion and thoughtfulness, and I hope these feelings and emotions last and lead to a more empathetic world society.