How the Tsarnaev brothers sparked my interest in journalism and global politics

I was too young to remember anything on the day the Twin Towers were attacked. I was six years old, just a little kid. But when the Tsarnaev brothers detonated two explosives along the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people on April 15th 2013, I was 17 years old. In high school I was more concerned with messing around with my friends than politics. The two perpetrators were Chechens; I didn’t even know Chechnya existed.

By the time my dad got home from work the attack was, of course, still on the news. He compared the attack to those on 9/11. On that morning, my father was laying duct at a job site. His friend James rushed up to him and told him, “We’re under attack.” They went to a nearby Radio-Shack and watched the footage of the towers on TV.

My dad spoke of the “disbelief” he felt at what happened, followed by the “horror” and then “anger.” Being six at the time of the September 11 attacks, I did not share his feelings then, but watching the broadcast of the aftermath of the bombing in Boston, I understood.

One thing that differed between my reaction and my father’s was oddly enough, that I didn’t feel much anger. Horror and disbelief? Absolutely. Grief and sadness? Of course. But anger wouldn’t be an entirely accurate term for what I felt.

It was more curiosity that consumed me.

Instead of anger at the culprits, the only thing I thought was… why? In that sense, I shared my father’s utter “disbelief” in the aftermath of the attacks. Where that disbelief eventually led to anger in his case, it led to questions in mine.

I wanted to understand why someone would ever decide to detonate explosives in what seemed like a random place and without reason. None of it made any sense to me. Nor did anyone else seem to understand, regardless of the common held belief that many thought they did.

I think sometimes, that I owe much of my personality to the Tsarnaev brothers. Those despicable human beings who chose to ruin so many lives. My father’s anger did not lead to much. But my curiosity led to a complete change in my entire lifestyle and personality.

I began reading whatever I thought held some answers as to why something like that could happen. Before the bombing I didn’t own a single book besides some childhood stories gathering dust somewhere. Now I have around 200, the majority of which give insight into the questions I had following the attack.

One of the earliest questions I had regarding the issue of terrorism, was the uniqueness of Islam. So, I expanded my curiosity to envelop the history of peoples, movements, and nations in general in hope of clarifying that. So, what started as a focused attention on terrorism, and particularly terrorism with an Islamic veil, turned into a general and great interest in history as a whole.

The relevance of seemingly unrelated histories, such as that of the Spanish Civil War, the history of Vietnam, or of the ancient Greek City States to modern Islamic terrorism, is surprisingly strong, and was one of the most interesting discoveries of mine. Over time, whether or not Islam is unique in regards to terrorism, becomes clear. It isn’t. Not in the historical or modern sense is Islam significantly unique enough to warrant its isolation in this context.

Reading is my life now. It helps me understand these sorts of things. I want to understand not just why five Americans had to die that day in Boston and why the Tsarnaev brothers felt they had to take their lives, but the entire picture. So I chose journalism. I didn’t know about Chechnya three years ago before the bombing. Now I want to travel to the war-torn country and see how the Chechens try to survive and what drives desperate people to take seemingly purposeless and desperate actions, such as the ones taken in Boston in 2013, which proved to be one of the defining moments of my life… and so many other lives I would assume.

Hopefully by some time after I graduate from Miami University in Ohio, I’ll soon be on my way to Syria or some place in Lebanon or Chechnya, taking the next steps I must take to fulfill this curiosity I have.

But it’s not just that anymore. As I understand more about terrorism, I realize that there’s an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering in the world. And the places these terrorists come from are usually the spots where you’ll find this suffering.

I believe a journalist can help alleviate some of that suffering, whether through shedding light on it or effecting the policy decisions which create it. In that sense, it’s by no means just curiosity that motivates me, but sympathy as well.