A friend of mine called me very early. (We were in California.)
“Turn on the news,” she said in a dead voice.
“Which network?” I asked.
“I don’t think it matters,” she said. So I turned the TV on and watched an airplane crash into a New York skyscraper.
My mind went blank for several seconds before I came up with any words at all.
“This is war,” I finally said, numbly.
And for the rest of the day and for a long time afterward, all I could think about was how many people must have died that morning, and how thousands more would inevitably be killed in retribution. As nothing but an ordinary person, I felt utterly powerless to prevent what I feared and guessed would be a tsunami of deadly rage.
I remember that day.
A friend of mine called me very early. (We were in California.)
“Turn on the news,” she said in a dead voice.
“Which network?” I asked.
“I don’t think it matters,” she said. So I turned the TV on and watched an airplane crash into a New York skyscraper.
My mind went blank for several seconds before I came up with any words at all.
“This is war,” I finally said, numbly.
And for the rest of the day and for a long time afterward, all I could think about was how many people must have died that morning, and how thousands more would inevitably be killed in retribution. As nothing but an ordinary person, I felt utterly powerless to prevent what I feared and guessed would be a tsunami of deadly rage.