Monday, September 11, 2006

Notes from an Italian Train

Sept. 12, 2005

Sept. 12 and my thoughts are of America. This morning’s Italian papers spoke briefly in front-page articles about remembrances of Sept. 11 at Ground Zero, but the day itself passed in Florence and Rome without a public nod. Why should it?

Silly, isn’t it, to think anyone here cares? The Italians know from terrorism from the days of the Red Brigade, when the Carabinieri -- the Italian police paramilitary -- was ridiculed as stupid and ineffectual. An Italian friend tells us there were jokes at the time poking fun at the organization when the Red Brigade struck without warning or punishment. I wonder how long it will be – if ever – until there are jokes about the CIA or military intelligence in this country, if there aren’t already and I just don’t know it. Wounds are still too close to the surface for that, I think.

We know the face of fear, if not the faces of our enemies. But even if we don’t know who the attackers will be, they are familiar to us, as the Italians know. They can be us – or the British in London or Spaniards in Madrid or Balinese in Bali or Michiganders in Oklahoma City.

My type of fear is that of a worried traveler on a crowded subway in Rome on Sept. 11, pressing the flesh unwillingly with that seems like a thousand strangers packed into shiny metal boxes in a tube deep in the ground. I wear my backpack on my chest and my money and credit cards in a little cotton pouch against my chest under my shirt.

I feel for hands touching me, but feel none probing for my wallet in what the travel guides call “a city of 24-hour entertainment…restaurants, bars and petty thievery.” Every face is a suspect to me. The fellow by the door was a wandering eye, I notice. The old woman next to me as a light hold on the handrail, ready to let go and fall against me and steal me blind if the train comes to a sudden stop.

I grip my bag tightly against me and pray I’m not victimized when the flood of passengers pouring off the train meets the river flow of bodies trying to get on before the doors close.

Assume you are being stalked, our favorite travel book says. The same one says thieves have taken to disguise themselves as tourists with sport sandals and maps or as businessmen in suits. I look over thoroughly the people around me. Any one of them would be ready to take from me. Any – or none.

I notice that none of them looks at me. Do they notice me at all? Is my fear conspicuous? Does their guilt bring me shame? Do they mean harm? Or are they just silent Americans heading off to the local tourist sites or Romans off to dinner, taking notice of the day? It is hard to know where danger lies, camouflaged in the uniform of everyday clothes; not in the garments of evildoers, but in ourselves.

Posted by Unclejbird @ 9:48 PM