9/11 and beyond - from an outsider's eye

| by Thrishantha Nanayakkara

(September 10, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) September 2001. Green city of Saga was blushed with the first spell of fall in the Japanese Island of Kyushu. After five years of graduate studies, I was preparing to leave Japan to start the next phase of my academic life in US. In evenings, I often drove to Furui-unsen to enjoy a final taste of natural outdoor hot-water springs watching stars glittering above silent silhouettes of mountains. I was trying to come to terms with my next jump with mixed feelings. I was excited about the next academic life at Hopkins, but I was told that I had to pay a little more attention to safety in Baltimore than in Saga.

Back in the laboratory, I was arguing with myself about crime, terrorism, and safety in the night of Sept 11, 2001 when suddenly international news websites started to report this horrible attack on the twin towers in NY. Internet seemed to be shutting down. Nothing was loading. I was planning to meet my future research advisor in a conference in Hokkaido, but all flights from US were canceled. Foreigners in Saga started to get together in the only Irish pub we knew and did our small bit to contribute money to help victims. I wrote short messages to my American friends to console them. All what I could do was to remind their national anthem, and the story of the star spangled banner surviving a night of motar attacks. Dust settling down, me and my wife flew to Sri Lanka, and after two months flew to US in November 2001.

The NTC's adopted flag is seen in front of Libyans performing the weekly Friday noon prayer in Tripoli's Martyrs Square on September 9, 2011 as the country's de facto premier Mahmud Jibril warned that the hardest battles still lay ahead as fighters loyal to the new rulers closed in on Moamer Kadhafi's hometown. - Getty Images

First touch down on US soil was at Newark airport. While awaiting the next flight to Baltimore, we were approached by a TV crew to ask few questions. I was baffled! The question was about some security issue and they wanted to see my view as an American. I said, I just landed, and was not an American citizen. He went on "now that you are here, what do you think?". I don't know if what I said made any sense to him and he went to another. It was a hard reminder that we had in fact landed in America, where it is hard to distinguish a foreigner from a native. But things started to confuse me. If people don't know a way to distinguish a native citizen and a foreigner, how do they handle security?, how to give priorities like elsewhere? But on the other hand I noticed my inner transformation too. I was beginning to feel more belonged in this confused state of affairs than in a more regimented setting.

With the bliss of academic experience at Hopkins, I began to dive deeper and deeper into this mysterious land. Apart from core academic work, I attended talks given by experts in political science about post 9/11 America. I was quite surprised to witness open criticisms of the Government's approach to counter terrorism. Sometimes, I got so confused about the notion of "patriotism". First I didn't want to believe that a great part of patriotism involves one's courage to criticize the Government's direction. Somehow I had been given the impression that covering up is patriotism. It made me ask "how dare these people criticize the Government after such a huge terrorist attack?", "why do some say that one motive behind 9/11 attacks was to crack open America from inside out by making us hate certain religions and ethnic groups that make our own social fabric?", I began to read the founding documents and what early American leaders say to unify people...it became an interesting adventure. Everywhere I went, I could see people trying to analyze what happened. While waiting for my turn in a hair saloon, one customer read out a newspaper headline and that started a 9/11 discussion in the saloon. The master hair-dresser held a strong opinion that the rest of the World is jealous about America for "the wealth we have, that they don't have. So they want to destroy us!". I kept silent but kept on thinking about how best these people should be convinced that jealousy on wealth may not be the main reason. When my turn came, the hair dresser noticed my accent and immediately recognized that I was not native to the land. Both of us went though pitch silence before finding a way to start a communication. Started with my job at Hopkins, talked about why it is important to human understanding about how the brain and muscles work together to make better robots, and finally to politics! I made the point that Bin-Laden was richer than most middle class Americans. However, it could be that he is troubled by the way people of different colors, religious beliefs, and ethnicities give a broader definition to citizenship in America. Surprisingly, the hair dresser was open to think about this alternative possibility.

Walks in the memorial mall reading what leaders had to say gave some answers to my puzzles too. One at the Roosevelt memorial said "they (who) seek to establish systems of Government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order" another statement made by President Roosevelt on an adjacent wall read "we must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization". President Abraham Lincoln had once said, "Let us discard all this quibbling about this man or the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land...."

Life was not without 9/11 after-shocks too. In a restaurant near inner harbor, somebody came to a discussion about population growth problem in South Asia. He said Americans will solve that issue. When asked how, he bluntly told me that "we will nuke'em next time they attack us!". For that man "they" meant whole of South Asia. An Indian guy with me replied swiftly, "Oh, then the whole World population will drop to a few in no time!". It confirmed me that the irony of terrorism is that terrorists actively perpetrate only a part of the damage, but the voluntary contribution from victims like this man does the rest of the bigger damage, which the terrorists get for free. When I told this to one of my American friends back in the lab, he laughed and sprouted out "welcome to America! this place is full of such crack heads!". I noticed the sense of ease prevailed on my friend's face to say that. Subsequent terror attempts like the one using a student of African origin, made me wonder if the hidden target of these terrorist groups might be to get Americans themselves to inflict the disaster by agitating sensitive seams of ethnicity in the fabric of citizenship. On another day, I took my family to walk near the White house. I was just about to park my car near the Canadian embassy, when a woman who was jogging yelled "see! there is police over there!". Bewildered, I checked with another gentleman who passed by if it was wrong to park there, and mentioned about that woman's warning. I was told "yes I heard that. Its OK to park here. Just let her ass jog a little more!". Beauty of diversity! it counter-balances!

After returning to Sri Lanka in 2003, I went back to do some research at Harvard in 2007. I drove down to Baltimore a couple of times to update myself. It had become a different World! I felt much safer in downtown inner harbor, and I didn't hear any paranoia about the rest of the World. However, at Harvard, the debate about humanity continued. Again, I attended these discussions as much as possible, whenever I could take a break from my core scientific work. Then, in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, how the Harvard democratic caucus worked astonished me. They were the biggest critics of the democrats! And they had broader things to talk than narrow race issues. No doubt a man like Bin Laden would see this as a threat to unity along religious beliefs!

Ten years later, here I am in UK mentoring my own graduate students enjoying my dream academic job. Still bits of my memories run back to Kyushu and its hot-water springs, at other times it flies back to Baltimore inner harbor, capitol hill, Boston, Charles river, and the yards of Harvard. Very often it flies back to the tropical Island of Sri Lanka, its beaches, corals, hill country and its fresh water streams. But today, it keep going back to ground zero, a place I didn't spend for more than ten minutes. So I sat down to write this note. After ten years, I can say this much about America. Your strength is in the unconditional love and respect of all immigrants on the founding principles of the union that gives rise to the strong notion of citizenship, justice, and freedom. In addition, people like me have a deep respect for your insatiable thirst to explore for the fundamental secrets of nature and the drive for innovation. These subtle but rare dimensions will give a different flavor to your wealth. Fundamentalists will keep trying to shake your foundation. But they can not do it unless you contribute by responding with stereotypes and broad brushes. And remember, a good part of the World is with you today reflecting upon 9/11. We are citizens of different countries, unified around one axis of humanity.