Reflecting on terrorism today as a native of Arlington, VA

Those of us who study history know that terrorism is not new. Those who suffered the barbarity of the ETA, the Red Army Faction, the IRA, and so many more can attest to that. And yet, most of us in the West did not think of terrorism as the world-defining phenomenon that it has become until the dark day two planes rammed into the Twin Towers, another into Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and yet another into the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia – my hometown.

First, as a loyal son of Arlington, I must correct the news organizations and spokesmen and national leaders of all stripes who refer to September 11th as hitting Washington. This is demonstrably false. The Pentagon is nestled along the Potomac River in the Commonwealth of Virginia, gazing upon, but not within, the capital of the nation. The District of Columbia was not hit that day – Arlington was.

I, personally, have no memory of the day, but growing up I could see that the scars were there. In school, the moments of silence were longer on the anniversaries, and my high school would fly a banner given to it from a school in New Jersey as a show of empathy. One anniversary, which fell on a Sunday, the church choir sang America the Beautiful as a recessional.

My parents have told me what happened that day to them. My father was the first parent to arrive at my preschool to pick me up and break the news to them. My mother was calling relatives in New York to see if they were alive, and Wisconsin to tell them that she was alive. She was horrified that there were people, innocent and carefree people, on these planes turned missiles. Snooping around in my father’s online ‘diary,’ if you will (actually public to those who looked hard enough on the family home page), some years later, I read his own words:

“If I was going to die, I wanted to die with my family.”

As such I have a sense of reality of terrorism that I can only imagine that New Yorkers, Shanksvillers, and the residents of other places hit by such atrocities have. Yes, people say that the United States is not at serious risk from terrorist attacks, but seeing the aftermath and the lingering scars, I can only believe that so much. Most Americans don’t have the feeling of knowing that the the plane that rammed into the Pentagon followed the path of a street they crossed as a child to go to a Toys ‘R Us to buy lego sets. I do.

My high school

And yet it is troubling that I cannot remember the day. I was too young, only in preschool, probably entertaining myself with whatever children do at that age. For the longest time, through middle and high school, as the gravity of the event made its significance known, I felt as if I was absent, as if I had failed a portion of the test to certify myself as an Arlingtonian of the Twenty-First Century, and yet I did not have the words until recently.

It was when I read Art Spiegelman’s Maus, my first semester at William & Mary, I got those words, that conception. To make a long story short, Maus revolves around Art, the son of Holocaust survivors, trying to come to terms with his status as the descendent of victims of a crime that he could not witness. It is a graphic novel about identity and experience, about what his elders have seen and what he has not. For once it seemed as if someone spoke my language.

As beautifully as Spiegelman can speak that language, it is a language that I hope – to whatever higher power there is – will no longer need to be spoken. And yet, the world over, it is a language whose fluency has promulgated to thousands. The trauma of terror still increases its speakers.

Fast forward to November 2015. The shots had rung out at the Bataclan, and the bombs had gone off at the Stade de France. I was horrified. The first thing I did was to look at as many news sources as I could to get the most accurate information possible. I eventually found the reddit live thread, and saw the terror unfold right before my eyes.

It took me back to when I had stumbled upon a Fark.com thread from September 11th. It was the same sense of dread, the same sense of anguish and helplessness, that I felt then and for Paris. I knew that I was beholding something that would bring misery and loss to hundreds. The language of terror would have more speakers.

And so the same was with Brussels.

And so the same was with Lahore.

From the hopefully safe confines of sleepy Williamsburg, I look upon massacres such as these with a combination of pity and fear. Pity and the most heartfelt of condolences for those who have lost their loved ones, and fear for home.

Because home, for me, has already seen such violence. The slaughter at the Stade de France and Zaventem International Airport first gave me images of what could happen at home, of familiar places covered in blood.

Of bombs at Courthouse, Rosslyn, Ballston, and Virginia Square metro stations, which I’d pass as I rode the subway to work.

Of gunmen at Ballston Common Mall, where I would eat after high school at their Noodles and Company on Wilson Boulevard.

Of cars rigged to explode in Bailey’s Crossroads, where I would go for saxophone lessons, upscale food from Trader Joe’s, and nice dinners from the German Gourmet shop.

Of another plane soaring down Columbia Pike, towards the Pentagon, as one did in 2001.

But there is the feeling that my command of the language of loss is not fluent, that my empathy comes from a false groundwell, as I do not remember the plumes of smoke rising from the Pentagon. It is a language that is obfuscatory and unclear, and woefully inadequate.

I had read Maus for a class about narrative recollections of the Holocaust. The big takeaway, more than anything else, from that class, was that language is woefully inadequate, but it is all humans have.

I do not claim to be fluent in the language of trauma, only being at best a second-generation speaker of this foreign yet familiar tongue. And here I am, trying to speak as a learner with those who know it natively. I am in this awkward position between those that have not truly suffered, and those that truly have, the novices and the fluent, trying to understand what cannot be truly understood, or expressed.