9-11-02

I’m stranded in Amsterdam, my country’s on fire, and I can’t stop crying. I couldn’t wait to get here, and now I can’t wait to get out, get back, get home. I’m from the cynical generation, distrustful of our government and imperialist military madness. But today I’m all red white and blue as the shock rocks through me in waves. Four thousand miles away, and I’ve never felt more American in my life. Not American in a let’s-nuke-‘em-back-to-the-Stone-Age way, but like a wounded animal tends its own, licks its wounds, and faces a future suddenly thrown into violent uncertainty .

Everyone in Holland is glued to CNN, shaking heads, mouths open, watching the world go insane. Every front page of every newspaper in every language shows the exploding Twins. Every channel: Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, it’s all America at war. In the streets, in the pubs, on the buses, strange to hear in that thick Dutch tongue, “Gushlogrom winkleztrg blwertyuis dofhgjkxy Vorld Trade Center…” I have no idea what they’re saying but I know exactly what they’re talking about.

After the collapse, watching Americans stream in to clear the rubble in the thick black nightmare, I want to be two of those hands down there, hauling out the disaster one bucket at a time as the clock ticks on those buried below. Gallons and gallons of blood is being given, hospitals packed with donors. They have to turn people away, I hear a reporter say. I want my blood to flow into the heart of America.

Every time I see the fire chaplain’s picture I cry. Giving last rites to a dying man when the Devil claims him, donating his life in an act of kindness and love. We can’t forget that, or him, we have to honor him every day by acting with kindness and love, even in the face of evil, because if we don’t, the Devil wins, and the chaplain dies in vain, an eye for an eye until everyone is blind, I find myself thinking stranded in Amsterdam four thousand miles from home.

I’ve always been the guy who leads the little old lady out of the burning building. In my mind, at least. As I watch the slumped shoulders of ash-covered rescue workers numbed from the crumbling smoldering mayhem, I wonder, could I be a hero? Could I be the one who rushes in while everyone rushes out? The one who’s cool calm and collected while all those around me lose their minds, no hesitation as I bolt into the jaws of the apocalypse, knowing I might never come back. Could I?

Some guy is being interviewed. Just a regular guy. Thirty. Brown hair in a regular American haircut. Khakis and a blue button-up shirt. Could be me. He was working in the first tower. Just another Tuesday. He heard an explosion, windows breaking, walls shaking, a small wall of sheet rock falls on him. A fireball shoots straight at him. He woulda been dead, he says, if that wall didn’t fall on him. The smoke so thick he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, he crawled to the hall, stood up, didn’t know where he was in this place he’d been working for a year and a half. He and this other guy raced down the stairs and toward the front door. There were bodies lying around, he said, it was like a movie. They saw a guy who was in trouble, so they picked him up and carried him out. Then they went back in and grabbed another guy. We didn’t even think about it, he said, we just did it. It was the thing to do. As I sat and watched this totally ordinary American guy tell his war story that was more chilling than any story you could make up, I was overcome by the nonchalance of his heroics. It was the thing to do. No big deal. Would I be a hero? I wonder, four thousand miles from home.

The next day I’m at the United States embassy sitting on a bench surrounded by expatriates in Amsterdam. When I first got here I shied away when I heard a US accent, but now, just hearing people speaking American soothes me. I can see my yellow house, my sunflowers, my cat, the Golden Gate Bridge. There are flowers everywhere at the American embassy. An old wrinkled Dutch grandmother walks over slow with her little blond granddaughter and an armful of tulips. The woman sitting next to me starts crying. Another guy puts his arm around her. I don’t think they even know each other, but it doesn’t matter now. Signs are hanging everywhere on the fence of the embassy: “Ve luff you USA!” “Our harts are with you United Staites!” and “God Bles Amerika!”