once more, for the children
And to the World Wise school, I sent yet another version of what was happening. I remember crouching on my porch with my shortwave radio, trying to get reception, trying to hear what was happening all those thousands of miles away. I remember Varton and Arkadi taking me to the post to call my friend in New York; ArmenTel was giving five or ten minutes calls to America free to Armenians, you had to bring your passport to the post and they would connect you. So they brought their passports and let me call.
And my back was getting worse all these days, but it seemed so small in comparision.
September 14th, 2001
Dear John et al -
I'm here in my apartment, listening to the Voice of America, listening to the BBC, the scratchy radio voices rolling over me. It still seems unreal to me, I can't quite believe it even as I listen to the body counts and the smoke filled voices cracking with emotion. I watched the news at a friend's house, the planes plowing into the buildings again and again, the bodies falling from the skies, the buildings themselves collapsing, the sun rising red through the clouds of smoke and ash. Twisted steel remains and the talk of war. It is all so far away, it is all so close - and I am a million miles away, so far away from home.
The country director called me Tuesday night, he called all the volunteers that night. It was movie night at my house, we were watching Mrs. Doubtfire. Six Armenians and two Americans in my living room, my director on the phone telling me of a major terrorist attack in New York and D.C. and I was stunned, in shock and disbelief. (I actually thought at first that it was a joke of some sort in incredibly poor taste - we were supposed to having an emergency evacuation drill coming up, and I thought that this was what it was; that it couldn't be real. I huddled in the hallway and called my mother, and in the living room the movie played on. Surreal.) I used to live in New York, I have friends and relatives there. My sister called, my mother as well, my host family called to tell me how sorry they were how terribly sorry. It is a hard thing, to be so far from home at times like these. Every one knows, everyone has seen or heard the news, has watched the same footage - but it is not their country, it is not the same. They talk about it in the shuka and at the post, they ask after the safety of my family, and say it is a terrible thing - but, for the most part, life goes on as normal. There isn't that overwhelming sense of catastrophe, the deep ringing shock to the system.
I feel it, though. For me, everything has changed. There has always been war during our lifetime, but it has never been on American soil, it has never been our cities burning. We grew up in relative safety - no 'duck and cover' drills and the war on TV, a safe distance away. The luxury of safety, the bravery of being out of range. Now I peer into that same screen, and watch the burning buildings and the panic in the streets - but now they are my streets, these are places I have been and places I can never return to again, for they are no more. It is strangely dislocating; I see through the glass darkly. I listen to the scratchy radio that I never listen to; morning, noon and night I listen. I am trying to sort the stream of information, to figure out what is coming next. I have been waiting for this all my life; in a very real sense I have been waiting for the day when the war came home. I knew it would happen one day, it was always inevitable - still, I am unprepared for the reality. The anxiety of waiting, crouched by the radio, listening into the darkness, hoping for answers.
I have heard of the Palestinians dancing in the streets, celebrating and shooting guns in the air; I have heard of attacks on Arabs in America and England, of graffiti scrawled on mosques and windows broken. These are not answers; they are both deeply shameful things. You must know this, and you must make sure that others know it as well. On this the future of the world depends - truly, it does. It is shameful to celebrate the death of others, it is equally shameful to hate, to persecute, a group of people based on their religion or ethnicity. The attacks, the graffiti, the broken windows - these are the acts of cowards, and their actions shame us all. Never believe otherwise. Who ever is to blame for these attacks is to blame for these attacks - not their countrymen, not their fellow worshippers, not even their relatives. If in our pain and fear we strike blindly out at others that is not justice, that is terrorism. It solves nothing, it only adds to the amount of pain and confusion and hatred in this world. An eye for an eye leaving the whole world blind.
Justice is another thing altogether, far more complex, far more difficult.
Sept. 18th
In the midst of all this, life does go on. The volunteers here in Armenia are still on standby, waiting. No unnecessary travel, stay in close contact with the other volunteers at your site, keep your ears up and your eyes open. At this point I doubt we'll be evacuated, unless war breaks out in earnest. The problems with air travel alone pretty much guarantee we'll be here for a while. The first day we kept to ourselves and our apartments; now we're slowly resuming our normal schedules. It's still hard to focus. I practice my Armenian, the new words I am learning: horrible, shock, war, unreal. I do not like the way they fit my mouth, but I am learning my lessons. I go to karate. I listen to the radio. I am in a holding pattern.
The town is still digging out from a series of flash floods that ran rivers through the town, moving cars and some small shops, dumping vast quantities of mud and debris across the roads, pulling up the layers of asphalt. The major work is done by this point, but the sidewalks, streets, and alleys are still covered with a thick layer of dried mud. It puffs up in great clouds of dust behind the cars and after every footstep, and reverts to mud every time it rains, tracking into the homes and businesses. It's a mess, and will remain this way for quite a while - I think that once the roads were passable, the organized cleanup was over.
My new sitemate has also arrived - Tiffany Sommerland, from California. She's 24 years old, a business volunteer, and this is her first time living on her own. She picked up a puppy during training, and so far her main business has been attempting to toilet train the wee beastie. Teddy (the dog) has been resistant, but we're holding out hope. Bladder control is a wonderful thing.
I'll be going to Yerevan later this week for a test of my language skills and a committee meeting. I'll send this out then (assuming the email is working), and send a hard copy out as well - though Peep alone knows when that will get there. I'm assuming the mail service has been disrupted by the disaster as well as everything else - and that's once it gets out of this country. I'm planning to put some photos in with this - assuming I remember, they're of a church near Nellie's family's garden. Armenia is studded with sites like this - small half ruined churches and temples hiding in the hillsides, always with stubs of candles in front of the hatchkars (carved stone crosses - hatch = cross, kar = stone). And almost everyone has a garden - people rely on them in a very real way for the food they eat. Because Alaverdi is built in a canyon, land is scarce enough that many people have to travel outside of the town to find space to garden. Nellie's family garden is reached by train - about an hour away, all told. It doesn't make it easy, by any means.
And my back was getting worse all these days, but it seemed so small in comparision.
September 14th, 2001
Dear John et al -
I'm here in my apartment, listening to the Voice of America, listening to the BBC, the scratchy radio voices rolling over me. It still seems unreal to me, I can't quite believe it even as I listen to the body counts and the smoke filled voices cracking with emotion. I watched the news at a friend's house, the planes plowing into the buildings again and again, the bodies falling from the skies, the buildings themselves collapsing, the sun rising red through the clouds of smoke and ash. Twisted steel remains and the talk of war. It is all so far away, it is all so close - and I am a million miles away, so far away from home.
The country director called me Tuesday night, he called all the volunteers that night. It was movie night at my house, we were watching Mrs. Doubtfire. Six Armenians and two Americans in my living room, my director on the phone telling me of a major terrorist attack in New York and D.C. and I was stunned, in shock and disbelief. (I actually thought at first that it was a joke of some sort in incredibly poor taste - we were supposed to having an emergency evacuation drill coming up, and I thought that this was what it was; that it couldn't be real. I huddled in the hallway and called my mother, and in the living room the movie played on. Surreal.) I used to live in New York, I have friends and relatives there. My sister called, my mother as well, my host family called to tell me how sorry they were how terribly sorry. It is a hard thing, to be so far from home at times like these. Every one knows, everyone has seen or heard the news, has watched the same footage - but it is not their country, it is not the same. They talk about it in the shuka and at the post, they ask after the safety of my family, and say it is a terrible thing - but, for the most part, life goes on as normal. There isn't that overwhelming sense of catastrophe, the deep ringing shock to the system.
I feel it, though. For me, everything has changed. There has always been war during our lifetime, but it has never been on American soil, it has never been our cities burning. We grew up in relative safety - no 'duck and cover' drills and the war on TV, a safe distance away. The luxury of safety, the bravery of being out of range. Now I peer into that same screen, and watch the burning buildings and the panic in the streets - but now they are my streets, these are places I have been and places I can never return to again, for they are no more. It is strangely dislocating; I see through the glass darkly. I listen to the scratchy radio that I never listen to; morning, noon and night I listen. I am trying to sort the stream of information, to figure out what is coming next. I have been waiting for this all my life; in a very real sense I have been waiting for the day when the war came home. I knew it would happen one day, it was always inevitable - still, I am unprepared for the reality. The anxiety of waiting, crouched by the radio, listening into the darkness, hoping for answers.
I have heard of the Palestinians dancing in the streets, celebrating and shooting guns in the air; I have heard of attacks on Arabs in America and England, of graffiti scrawled on mosques and windows broken. These are not answers; they are both deeply shameful things. You must know this, and you must make sure that others know it as well. On this the future of the world depends - truly, it does. It is shameful to celebrate the death of others, it is equally shameful to hate, to persecute, a group of people based on their religion or ethnicity. The attacks, the graffiti, the broken windows - these are the acts of cowards, and their actions shame us all. Never believe otherwise. Who ever is to blame for these attacks is to blame for these attacks - not their countrymen, not their fellow worshippers, not even their relatives. If in our pain and fear we strike blindly out at others that is not justice, that is terrorism. It solves nothing, it only adds to the amount of pain and confusion and hatred in this world. An eye for an eye leaving the whole world blind.
Justice is another thing altogether, far more complex, far more difficult.
Sept. 18th
In the midst of all this, life does go on. The volunteers here in Armenia are still on standby, waiting. No unnecessary travel, stay in close contact with the other volunteers at your site, keep your ears up and your eyes open. At this point I doubt we'll be evacuated, unless war breaks out in earnest. The problems with air travel alone pretty much guarantee we'll be here for a while. The first day we kept to ourselves and our apartments; now we're slowly resuming our normal schedules. It's still hard to focus. I practice my Armenian, the new words I am learning: horrible, shock, war, unreal. I do not like the way they fit my mouth, but I am learning my lessons. I go to karate. I listen to the radio. I am in a holding pattern.
The town is still digging out from a series of flash floods that ran rivers through the town, moving cars and some small shops, dumping vast quantities of mud and debris across the roads, pulling up the layers of asphalt. The major work is done by this point, but the sidewalks, streets, and alleys are still covered with a thick layer of dried mud. It puffs up in great clouds of dust behind the cars and after every footstep, and reverts to mud every time it rains, tracking into the homes and businesses. It's a mess, and will remain this way for quite a while - I think that once the roads were passable, the organized cleanup was over.
My new sitemate has also arrived - Tiffany Sommerland, from California. She's 24 years old, a business volunteer, and this is her first time living on her own. She picked up a puppy during training, and so far her main business has been attempting to toilet train the wee beastie. Teddy (the dog) has been resistant, but we're holding out hope. Bladder control is a wonderful thing.
I'll be going to Yerevan later this week for a test of my language skills and a committee meeting. I'll send this out then (assuming the email is working), and send a hard copy out as well - though Peep alone knows when that will get there. I'm assuming the mail service has been disrupted by the disaster as well as everything else - and that's once it gets out of this country. I'm planning to put some photos in with this - assuming I remember, they're of a church near Nellie's family's garden. Armenia is studded with sites like this - small half ruined churches and temples hiding in the hillsides, always with stubs of candles in front of the hatchkars (carved stone crosses - hatch = cross, kar = stone). And almost everyone has a garden - people rely on them in a very real way for the food they eat. Because Alaverdi is built in a canyon, land is scarce enough that many people have to travel outside of the town to find space to garden. Nellie's family garden is reached by train - about an hour away, all told. It doesn't make it easy, by any means.
posted by meg at 9:29 AM
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