Because I have heard that even in Italy some are rejoicing, like I saw the Palestinians rejoice on TV the other night. “Victory, Victory!”. Men, women, children. Admitting that one who is capable of such an act can be defined a Man, Woman or Child.
I have heard that some fat cats, politicians or so-called politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, and other individuals that do not deserve the classification of being a citizen, have been acting substantially in the same manner as those in Gaza. They say: “Good, the Americans deserve it!”.
And I am very, very, very angry. With a cold furious anger, lucid and rational. An anger that eliminates every obstacle, every indulgence. That compels me to respond to them and above all to spit on them. I spit on them. As angry as I, the American poet Maya Angelou yesterday roared: “Be angry. It’s good to be angry, it’s healthy.” I don’t know if it is healthy for me to be angry, but I know it is not going to be healthy for them, the admirers of Osama Bin Laden, and for those who express understanding or sympathy or solidarity for him. You have lit a fuse which for too long has been harboring the desire to explode. You will see.
You also ask me to tell how I have lived this Apocalypse. To give my story. I will therefore start with that. I was at home, my home in the center of Manhattan, and at nine o’clock on the dot, I had a sensation of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but certainly concerned me. The sensation that one feels in war, as a matter of fact in combat, when with every pores of your skin you feel the incoming bullet or rocket, and your ears perk up and you scream to those next to you: “Down! Get down!”.
I pushed the sensation aside. I was not in Vietnam, I was not in one of the innumerable fucking wars that since WWII have violated my life! I was in New York, by gosh, on a marvelous September morning, in the year 2001. However, the sensation continued to assail me, inexplicably, and I did something I never do in the morning, I turned on my TV. The audio was not working. The video yes. On every channel, and I have almost 100 channels, it was the same scene, you saw a tower in the World Trade Center that was burning like a gigantic match. A short circuit? A lost small plane? Or else a premeditated act of terrorism?
Almost paralyzed, I stared and while I stared, I posed those questions, while on the screen appeared a plane. White and big, an airliner. It was flying very low. Flying low it was going towards the second tower like a bomber aiming at it’s objective, and throwing himself on it. I understood. I understood also because in that instant, the audio returned and transmitted a chorus of savage screams. Repeated, savage, “God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God, GOD!”
And the plane buried itself in the second tower like a knife entering a butter cake. It was 9:15 now. Don’t ask what I felt during those 15 minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember if certain things I saw on the first tower or the second. People, who in order to escape the flames, threw themselves from the windows of the 80th and 90th floors, for example. They broke the window panes, climbed out and jumped, like parachuters out of planes. And they came down so slowly. Moving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they looked like they were swimming. And they seemed to hang there forever. Around the thirtieth floor, they accelerated. They started gesticulating desperately, I suppose, regretting their action, almost as if they were screaming help, help. And perhaps, they really were screaming it. Finally they hit with blunt force and paf!
You know, I thought I had seen it all in the wars. I considered myself vaccinated from wars and war atrocities, and in substance I am. Nothing surprises me any more. Not even when I get angry, not even when I become disdainful. But in wars I have always seen people that get killed. I have never seen people who die by killing themselves, that is by throwing themselves without a parachute from the 80th, 90th or 100th floor.
In wars, furthermore, I have always seen things that explode. That explode like a fan. And I have always heard a great deal of noise. Those two towers, instead, did non explode. The first one imploded, it swallowed itself. The second one fused, it dissolved. Because of the heat, it dissolved just like a pat of butter placed on a flame. It all happened, it seemed to me, in deadly silence. Is it possible? Was the silenze really there, or was it inside of me?
I must also tell you that in wars, I have always seen a limited number of casualties. Every battle, 200 or 300 dead. At most 400. Like in Dak To, in Vietnam. And when the battle is over, the Americans began gathering them and counting them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, where I was wounded, they gathered at least 800 bodies. Thinking I was also dead they threw me in the morgue, the cadavers that soon piled up around and on top of me, soon seemed like a deluge.
Well, in those two towers worked almost 50,000 people. And very few had the time to evacuate. The elevators didn’t work, and to descend from the top floors one needed an eternity, flames permitting. We will never know the number of dead. (forty thousand? Fifty thousand?) The Americans will never say, in order not to underline the intensity of this apocalysm. To deny Osama Bin Laden satisfaction and encouragement for other apocalypses.
Further, the two abysses that have absorbed the tens of thousands of creatures are too deep. At best, workers will dig out pieces assorted pieces, a nose here, a finger there. Or else a piece of slime that seems like ground coffee and instead is organic matter. The residue of bodies which where pulverized in an instant.
Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani sent another ten thousand body bags, but they’re unused. What do I feel for the kamikaze that died with them? No respect. No pity. No, not even pity. I, who in every case, end up with giving in to pity. I have always found kamikaze unlikable, that is, those that suicide to kill others, starting with those Japanese of WWII. I never considered them par to the Italian patriot, Pietro Micca, who in order to block the arrival of enemy troops, ignited the ammunition storage and died in the explosion at the Citadel in Turin.
I have never considered them soldiers, and even less do I consider them martyrs or heroes, as Mr. Arafat, hollering and spitting saliva, defined them to me in 1972. (That is when I interviewed him in Amman, where his Marshals trained the terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof). I considered them fatuous and nothing else. Fatuous because instead of searching for glory by means of the movies or politics or sport, they seek it in the death of themselves and others. A death that, instead of an Oscar or a Minister’s seat or a trophy, will bring them (they believe) admiration. And, in the case of those that pray to Allah, a place in the Heaven described in the Coran: "the Heaven where heroes screw the virgins (Uri)".
I bet that they are also physically fatuous. I’m looking at the photo of two kamikaze of whom I spoke in my “Insciallah”: a romance novel that begins with the destruction of the American base (over 400 dead) and the French base ( over 350 dead) in Beirut. They had these photos taken before they went to die, and before dieing they had been to the barber shop. Look at what a gorgeous hair cut. What creamed mustaches, groomed little beard, flirtatious sideburns…
Eh! Who knows how Mr. Arafat would fry if he heard me. You know that between him and I there is little or no love lost. He has never forgiven me neither for the heated differences of opinion that we had during that encounter nor for my judgement of him expressed in my book “Interview with History”. As for me, I have never forgiven him anything. Including the fact that an Italian journalist, imprudently introducing himself as “my friend” found himself with a gun pointed at his heart. Therefore, we don’t speak anymore. It’s a shame. Because if I were to meet him again, I would scream in his face who the martyrs and heroes are. I would scream: Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the passengers of the four hijacked planes that were transformed into human bombs. Among them the four year old child that disintegrated in the second tower.
Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the employees that worked in the two towers and at the Pentagon. Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the firemen who died trying to save them. And do you know who are the heroes? The passengers of the flights that should have landed on the White House and that instead crashed in a Pennsylvania countryside because they rebelled. For them, yes there should be a Paradise, Illustrious Mr. Arafat. The problem is that now you are the perpetual Head of State. You are acting like a Monarch. You visit the Pope, affirm that you do not like terrorism, send your condolences to Bush. In your chameleon ability of inconsistency, you would be capable of replying that I am right.
But let’s change topic. I am very ill, it is known, and talking with the Arafats I get a fever. I prefer to talk of the invulnerability that many, in Europe, attribute to America. Invulnerabilty? But how invulnerable?!? The more a society is democratic and open, the more it is exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more one risks hijackings or massacres that occurred for many years in Italy and Germany and other regions of Europe. And that now occurs, giant size, in America.
Not for nothing the non democratic governments of the police regimes, have always hosted and financed and helped the terrorists. The Soviet Union, the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, and China, for example. Gadaffi’s Lybia, Iraq, Iran, Syria. Arafat’s Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and all the Muslim countries of Africa. In the airports and planes of those countries I have always felt safe. Serene like a sleeping newborn. The only thing I feared was being arrested because I wrote about terrorists. In European airports and planes, instead I always felt a little nervous. In American airports and airplanes, I’m outright nervous. An in New York, twice as nervous. (Not in Washington, however, I must admit it. I truly did not expect the plane on the Pentagon).
For me it has never been a question of “if” but rather one of “when”. Why do you think that Tuesday morning my subconscious picked up on the sensation of danger? Why contrary to my habits, did I turn on the Tv? Why, among the questions I asked myself, while the audio did not work, did I include the one on premeditated attack? And why do you think that as soon as the second plane appeared, I understood? Since America is the strongest nation in the world, the richest, most powerful, most modern, many fell into the trap of believing it invulnerable. Even the Americans themselves, at times. But America’s vulnerability is born from it’s strength, it’s riches, it’s might, it’s modernity. It is also born from it’s multi-ethnic essence, it’s freedom, it’s respect for the citizens and for it’s guests.
Example approximately 24 million Americans are arab-muslims. When a Mustafa or a Muhammed comes let’s say from Afghanistan to visit his uncle, no one prohibits him to take courses in a school to learn to pilot a 757. No one stops him from taking university courses to study chemistry and biology ( I hope this will stop). No one, Not even if the government fears that that son of Allah may hijack a 757 or throw a vial of bacteria in the water reservoir and unleash a massacre.
all right I formatted this far and thought I'd read enough.
Many, many Fifth Columnists!