WTC Attack Reaction on the Street, Africa

by Aamera Jiwaji

G21 Africa Staff Writer

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Aamera Jiwaji

Immediately after the attacks of 11 September, American President Bush gave the world an ultimatum. Either you are with us (the US) or you are with the terrorists, he said. With this statement, he drew a line in the dust with a stick and forced every country to choose a side: either his side or the terrorists' side.

The world is definitely divided into two camps, but they are not those stipulated by Bush. On one side is the US; on the other is the rest of the world. The assumption is that the US is mourning and the rest of the world is rejoicing in America's tragedy. The reality is different.

Yes, there are those who don't care about the tragedy that devastated the US a few weeks ago. They are glad that "the US finally got its butt kicked". Seeing a First World power devastated by a supposedly Third World country is worth celebrating for them. On the other side is the world that mourns for and with the US. They mourn the loss of human life and the pain of human suffering. But everyone needs counselling whether they mourn or not.

Someone living outside of the US may not have actively walked past the ashes of the WTC but the image is embedded in their minds too. The world watched with the US when the towers collapsed. Without group counselling, however, the trauma has escalated. One group has resorted to an irrational desire for revenge, for war. Another has put its faith in some of the newly developed conspiracy theories.

One belief, for example, is that the Jewish world planned the entire terrorist attack knowing that the US would automatically single out the Islamic world as guilty, and punish them in so thorough a manner as to wipe them off the face of the earth, thus doing Israel a favour.

This is backed up by the story that the terrorist Jewish groups alerted its fellow countrymen working in the WTC. So the Jewish people did not attend work that day and did not suffer any casualties.

Another less sinister theory (and less loaded with religious prejudices) says that President Mugabe of Zimbabwe orchestrated the attacks to draw attention away from the chaos in his own country.

One group of people has chosen to deal with its pain by sharing it. The Internet is pulsing with first-person accounts from people who were either in the building or outside it and managed to survive.

And, the most popular outlet (or rather method for suppression) for trauma: escapism. In the US, they chose to leave the city, others to bury themselves in movies and videos. The online community, meanwhile, resorted to the black humour that often follows tragedies like this. Many probably remember the morbid jokes that came out in the wake of the famine in Somalia. With the support of the Internet, these jokes have progressed from insensitive one-liners to digitally manipulated pictures, textual jokes, and hi-tech flash images.

I laughed when I received a particular e-mail that looked into the future New York if Afghanistan won the war against the US. The Statue of Liberty was veiled from head to toe and rather than a torch, she carried a Quran. President Bush had a long white beard and a scarf wrapped round his head in the typical desert-nomad fashion. And the New York skyline was a mini-Turkey with domed mosques and other colourful quasi sci-fi buildings.

Stand-up comedians have also begun incorporating the event into their repertoire of jokes. The most memorable ones mention the Pentagonıs name being changed to the Rectangle, the new United Airlines slogan of "We fly you straight to your office", and a "Fly-through" McDonalds located on one of the top floors of a new WTC.

Such humour, I suppose, allows one to distance oneself from the immediacy of the present situation. But an American I know was horrified by these images, as Iım sure are the Americans reading this article. For her, it was too close to home, too likely an event to joke about. Her wounds were still raw ­ the salty humour stung too much.

For many, the initial reaction to the attacks was the question "Why?" What could possess man to destroy so many human lives just to make a point? Maybe the extreme range of people's reactions to the attacks goes some way to explaining why some people are so different from others, why resorting to such extreme forms of violence and hatred is the answer for them.

Such people have confused the American people with the American government. They have transferred their disapproval of American foreign policy to the punishment of the American people. They have forgotten that at the end of the day, any human life taken is a life lost. And the loss of a human life is always tragic - whichever country the life may be lost in.

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AAMERA JIWAJI is a 21 year old student currently reading for her Bachelor of Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa. She has written for the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the South African National Science Festival, the multi-media conference Highway Africa, and the National Sanlam Business Festival. She has freelanced for iafrica.com, and was one of a group to represent her university at the recent UN Racism Conference.

She is also a published short story writer and her interests include travel, language, and writing for the marginalised communities of the world.

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