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On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I habitually got up early. I started reading and writing as soon as I was in bed, happily not knowing what was happening in downtown Manhattan a few kilometers away. Our Upper West Side apartment on the Columbia University campus in New York is quietly away from the hustle and bustle of downtown and commercial midtown. It is located in a pleasant residential area, just like in the Scandinavian countryside.
My landline rang (At the time, the mobile phone was just a weird thing, and we still used the old landline for communication). This is a friend, and there is concern in his voice. He asked me if I was okay, and when I told him I was fine, he asked me to turn on the TV.
When the TV screen lights up, I see that our city is under attack. The magnificent Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were crashed by a plane and were crumbling. People run for their lives. I don’t remember that hour-time has stopped.
My thoughts immediately returned to April 15th of the same year, when I took my eldest daughter Pardis to the Windows on the World restaurant on the top of the North Tower to celebrate her birthday. I remember how we watched the plane landing and taking off at the nearby Newark Airport. I remember telling her, “It’s not very strange, we watched the plane land and take off under our feet!”
Partly in disbelief and partly desperate, I got dressed, and with some other people who were afraid, I started walking towards the city center where the attack took place. The streets are surprisingly empty. There is a strange silence in this city. We, New Yorkers, are noise addicts. Too much silence will bring us anxiety. That morning, the city was too quiet. I started looking for buildings on Broadway, as if they were children who had just lost their parents downtown, but still didn’t know it.
A small group of bewildered people with me stopped on Houston Street.
I saw some Japanese tourists collecting dust from the collapsed Petronas Twin Towers as souvenirs from cars parked on the street. Strange, I thought—bricks, cement, meat, coffee cups, and the dust of the dreams of those who died.
I began to recite Omar Khayyam to myself:
Ah, make the most of what we might spend,
Before we get too dusty;
Dust to dust, lie under the dust
No wine, no song, no singer, and-no ending!
Mourning nobility
The next day, Wednesday, was a school day for me. When I got down to our campus, I saw that our students were given colored chalk, and they painted their fears and anxiety, their mourning on the steps of the lower library.
Mourning is not for the dead. To mourn is for the living. It is the art of virtue of noble life-a sacred ritual that marks precious life into eternity. When we mortals feel the immortality of our soul. What happens to a civilized and solemn culture that has lost its mourning?
Only for a day or two, people’s inner souls have a quiet canopy, and they can sit down and mourn the horror that our city has suffered. After that, the Americans were hurriedly deprived of noble room for mourning, and they hurriedly retaliated against an invisible enemy that was quickly created for them. Before revenge, people need peace. They need time to sit quietly and quietly feel the fear of the turbulent world. But the drum of war rose quickly, quieting those quiet contemplations.
On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I wrote an article piece For Al Jazeera, where I shared with my readers a brief exchange between me and the famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida in a public speech in Colombia shortly after the terrible incident. That day, Derrida was talking about “political mourning”-explaining to his audience that what we have witnessed in the United States is not just mourning for the victims of 9/11, in fact, we are mourning what we know as “political mourning.” “concept. At the end of his speech, I asked him if he thought the “politics of mourning” we witnessed in this city might precede “political mourning.” He pondered this question, but couldn’t think of a direct answer. He said he did not have a crystal ball.
However, the “politics of mourning” and the drumbeat of war soon overwhelmed this moment when Americans may have been brought into the arms of the entire human race, and in the place farthest from their feelings but still deep in their hearts. Feel the pain of losing their fighter’s range.
The so-called “war on terror” took over the politics of mourning 9/11 so quickly and violently that the country was deprived of any tragic inner feelings. Everything is external, everything is violent revenge-there is no meaningful reflection on what actually happened.
Five years later, on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, I revisited this idea in another article article For Al Jazeera. I explained in detail how the triumphalist politics of mourning has preempted the possibility of political mourning.
In fact, on every landmark anniversary of the event, the cries of anger and revenge overwhelm the whispers of a quieter space, which are necessary to internalize the suffering of others. As other people become more and more, the soul of this nation has been thinking about where it can drop its whereabouts in this world.
From Cannes to Kandahar
Afghans and Iraqis have suffered the consequences that the Americans suffered in the 9/11 events for many years. Today, they are still suffering the consequences of that decisive day. But who remembers that 10/7 (the day the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001) or 3/20 (the day the United States invaded Iraq in 2003) is the same as 9/11? Imagining the suffering of others is the beginning of a noble act of mourning one’s own loss.
At that time, there was a simple piece of art that connected the United States and the world of Afghanistan together.
In May 2001, Iranian film producer Mohsen Makhmalbaf premiered his film “Kandahar” in Cannes. Despite being well received by the critics, the film did not initially have much influence in the United States. However, in September of the same year, it had a completely unexpected importance. Soon after 9/11, I asked for permission from Makhmalbaf and screened Kandahar in Colombia, which was widely welcomed.
My goal at the time was to put the tragic events in New York into the larger context of the region by seeking to establish closeness and unity between the two cities of Kandahar and New York. But this is mainly a cause of failure. This country is preparing to declare war on Afghanistan-even the most free and progressive Americans, such as Richard Falk, believe that this war is just.
He wrote in an article published for The Nation in October 2001: “I have never supported a gun battle involving the United States since I was a child, although in retrospect, I think NATO’s war in Kosovo has achieved beneficial results. “Afghanistan’s fight against apocalyptic terrorism in my opinion is the first truly just war since World War II. “
However, the scene of violence on 9/11 is not the end of the world. The retaliatory tendency of the United States to invade and occupy Afghanistan will not continue to be restricted, as Richard Falk himself feared and admitted. Wars produce and maintain their own militaristic logic and end of the world.
National tragedies abound in American history. From the Civil War to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, to the equally painful assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, to the tragic events of 9/11, Americans have a lot of sadness and self. The opportunity for reflection runs through the history of their country.
The triumphal militarism of the “war on terrorism” and the wanton cruelty that destroyed two countries in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks did not eliminate the void left by the fate of the day. It just hides it. This country will never become a country unless it learns the wisdom and comfort of mourning national tragedies before reaching out for guns and fighter jets. Unless and until the lives of children in Afghanistan or Iraq are indistinguishable from the lives of American children, this will never happen. Revenge cannot heal the miserable hole in people’s souls. It just denies it.
Downtown Manhattan is back to the crowded and busy self. 9/11 has become a part of iconic history that people rarely remember. It became December 7, marking the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. All memorable U.S. holidays like Memorial Day or Labor Day are those that can be adjusted to Monday to turn into a long weekend, allowing people to avoid their heavy routines. 9/11 will always be an unforgettable and incorrigible Tuesday. In a short moment, this man’s soul is afraid of what the world has been afraid of.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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