Another thunderclap, another earthquake, another fireball.
Lourdes received an SMS from an automated news service telling her a second plane had crashed into the adjacent tower. And so it was not an accident but a terrorist attack. Who was responsible? It could be so many people. It’s insane, the number of people who hate America. Including Americans. And yet I don’t hate the rest of the world. I just think it’s filthy, ancient and complicated, that’s all. Sheer madness…Jeffrey breaks down again, Anthony takes him aside. My kids are sensible, better behaved than I’ve ever seen them. But they can’t help asking awkward questions.
“Dad, when are we gonna leave?”
“Is Mom gonna come and get us?”
“Even if it is a ride, it’s way too long, isn’t it?” And so it happened: all those things I didn’t understand, that I didn’t want to understand; the foreign news stories I preferred to switch off, to keep out of my mind when they weren’t on the TV; all these tragedies were suddenly relevant to me; these wars came to hurt me that morning; me, not someone else; my children, not someone else’s; these things I knew nothing about, these events so geographically remote suddenly became the most important things in my life. I didn’t want the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of foreign states, but events in the outside world had just exercised their right to interfere in mine; I didn’t give a shit about wops and their homeless, drugged, raped kids with disgusting dung flies all over them, but they’d just forced their way into my house, they’d killed my fucking kids, MINE. I have to explain something: I was raised in the evangelical, Episcopalian, Methodist Church of “Born-again Christians”—70 million members in the United States, including George Walker Bush, former Governor of Texas, currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Our credo is that Americans are the Chosen People. Europe is our Egypt, the Atlantic is our Red Sea and America is Israel, you get the picture? Washington = Jerusalem. The Promised Land is right here. “One Nation Under God!” We don’t give a shit about other people.
You didn’t want them to be part of your life?
They’ll be part of your death.
Lourdes collapses, she’s gone to pieces. She repeats the SMS newsflash over and over: “Breaking News: a second plane has crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center;” she hands the cellphone round so all of us can read the message on the screen. Each of us reacts differently: most people let out a bewildered “Fuck!”, some sit down, take their heads in their hands. Anthony takes it out on the wall, kicking it so violently he winds up kicking a hole in it! Jeffrey cries harder, dribbling on his pink shirt. And I just crouch down, pressing my babies’ heads hard against my forehead so they don’t see me losing hope.
“Jerry, Dave. Look, I have to come clean. This isn’t a game.”
“It’s okay, Dad. We already knew, don’t get upset.”
“It’s not okay, Jerry. This isn’t a game, d’you get it? It’s all real.”
“Don’t worry, we worked that out ages ago,” says David, between coughing fits.
“Oh Jesus. Guys, listen to me. Maybe it’s not a game, but we’re gonna win anyway, together, deal?”
“But why are planes flying into the towers? Are they crazy or what?”
Looking at David’s bewildered face, I can’t hold back my tears anymore. I become Jeffrey. I fall to my knees. I grit my teeth, I wipe my eyes, I bend, I am a curve.
“Fuck, how can people do this kind of thing to other people?”
“You shouldn’t say ‘fuck,’ Dad.”
Jerry turns away. He’s ashamed to see me like this.
For more than half an hour now we’ve been at the top of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. But it’s only now that I start feel dizzy.