(The Book of Jonah, 4:4) dedicated to Stephanie Yan
Into that infamous Tuesday inferno of fire and structural collapse, a humbling number of men and women fell to a horrifying death. And now the rest of us remain, stricken by fear, stricken by grief.
We have become a wilderness of jeopardized loved ones, and terrifying strangers.
I am an American.
I listen to our leaders calling for "the eradication of evil," and I am wondering, who among us is without evil?
What nation, what people, what stretch of my own personal history is good without blemish, without blame, without crimes of inertia, at least?
Was our firebombing of Dresden a terrorist attack?
Or Hiroshima?
Or the bombing of Beirut?
Or our bombing of Baghdad?
Is there anything for which we, as a nation, need to atone?
Is there anyone I have not recognized as equal to myself?
What will help?
I am an American.
What will comfort so many other Americans, so suddenly bereaved?
And how shall we arrange for safety, anywhere?
I am an American.
And my leaders reach for an unparalleled, international, military mobilization towards an extremely dangerous, an extremely ambiguous goal: "the eradication of evil."
For one thing, it appears that some religious multitudes may truly believe that we are, that I am, in fact, that "evil."
In the sixty-seventh surah of the Qur'an, it is written:
And We have,(from of old),Adorned the lowest heavenWith Lamps, and WeHave made such (Lamps)(As) missiles to driveAway the Evil OnesAnd have prepared for themThe PenaltyOf the Blazing Fire. (verse 5)They will say: "Yes indeed;A Warner did come to us,But we rejected himAnd said, 'Allah neversent down any (Message):Ye are in nothing butAn egregious delusion!' " (verse 9)They will further say:"Had we but listenedOr used our intelligence,We should not (now)Be Among the Companionsof the Blazing Fire!" (verse 10)
I am an American.
And I believe we are all "Companions of the Blazing Fire."
There can never be any exemptions from any absolutist view of "good" and "evil."
More than 5,000 have perished here. And, in turn, tens of thousands will perish elsewhere. And, in turn, there will be more and more thousands perishing from the universal arrogance of our universal propensities to judge, and to identify, other human beings as the ones to be "eradicated."
I am an American.
I am the daughter of peasants who begged and borrowed their way to these United States.They wanted an escape from no-shoes-no-drinkable-water poverty.
They wanted the freedom and the justice that a nation separating church from state could offer, realistically.
They wanted to belong to the always possible undertaking of equality.
They wanted to seek and find refuge in a country ruled by law. They thought themselves equal to the challenge of equality: not better than anybody, not good, but equal to that.
And I am proud to strive with such sweet hope for such fundamental need.
I do not believe I am good. Or that we share a national legacy of innocence to protect and perpetuate.
Who is more violent than we?
We now confront huge questions, in extremis, questions exploding from the tattered soul of our imperfect, interconnected destinies.
Where in the world did those suicide pilots come from?
Why are we cozying up to the self-appointed military rulers of Pakistan?
Why are we relying upon close collaboration with the only government that deems the Taliban legitimate?
Why do our crisis managers persist in bypassing and/or second-rating India, the world's largest democracy--which happens to exist less than 800 miles from Afghanistan?
What's going on?
Or, why, exactly, did George W. Bush give the Taliban $43 million, only four months ago?
Who is eradicating what?
Nineteen years ago, Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister, invaded Lebanon, and that invasion murdered more than 17,000 human beings, and that invasion culminated in the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Who is not a terrorist?
At the beginning of September, the United States of America walked out of the World Conference on Racism. It seems that an apology for the "barbarities" of slavery was one especially contentious issue. And so there was no apology, no acknowledgment of responsibility: The subject came up. The USA walked out.
And who is "the Companion of the Fire"?
What is the "Message"? What was the "Warning"?
The atrocity of September 11, 2001, is a crime against humanity. No atrocity is less than that. And such a heinous crime should be prosecuted, and duly punished, with all possible speed.
This summer, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reported (Christian Science Monitor, July 30, 2001) to be facing "the prospect of setting an international legal precedent by becoming the first serving prime minister to stand for crimes against humanity," he was not, thereupon, hunted down, or victimized by efforts at assassination.
I am an American.
I believe we can do no less than cling to the rule of national and international law.
In response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001, I hold to our American principles of due process.
Let us move to identify, and apprehend, whoever has done this terrible deed. Bring him, bring them to an international court of justice--there to be tried, and, if the evidence warrants, there to be convicted and punished, accordingly.
We, Americans, must not allow ourselves to become what we abhor: a terrorist force, furiously striking out at the known and the unknown poor peoples of Central Asia and the Middle East.
We must not permit ourselves to act as a terrorist people!
We must love and promulgate equality of human rights with everything we've got!
No one hates America because American is free, America is just. Those who hate Americans, those who hate you and me, hate us whenever we have failed to respect the self-determination and the reaching toward the equality those other human beings desire, and deserve. Double standards deriving from avarice and/or racial or religious supremacist "ideals"--of whatever race, of whatever religion, theirs or ours--these are the origins of rage and self-immolating violence that will destroy an unpredictable, vast number of human lives.
As of September 11, 2001, the world we thought we knew went down.
And how shall we rebuild?
And should we reconstruct, or should we dare ourselves into an unforeseen millennial recovery, a millennial upholding of our best ambitions, a millennial declaration of a slow kiss dedication to equality and justice?
I am an American.
And I want to join a multi-national and a multi-religious and a multi-racial, secular coalition to stop all the violence!
It is not bin Laden's jihad but the greater jihad that we should embrace: the interior struggle against egotism and supremacist notions of every kind.
Ours is a struggle to fathom and to assume responsibility--for justice, and for the rapid demise of double standards of all degrees, all forms.
I am an American.
And I respond to the alleged summoning by Osama bin Laden with another idea, another story some millions of people may truly believe: It's the Old Testament story of Jonah.
The Lord wanted Jonah to travel to Ninevah--a wicked city--and to warn the inhabitants that they must change their ways. But Jonah was afraid, and he tried to flee the Lord. So the Lord caused Jonah to end up in the belly of a whale. And there Jonah stayed for three days and three nights.
And then the whale delivered Jonah out of the sea and back to the land because Jonah called to the Lord out of his distress.
And then, a second time, the Lord asked Jonah to travel to that wicked city, and make known the Lord's displeasure with their ways.
And Jonah went. And the king of that city "removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." And then the king decreed: "Let everyone turn from his evil ways and from the violence which is in his hand. Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not."
And God repented. And Jonah was annoyed, "exceedingly": Why would God redeem them? And the Lord asked, "Do you do well to be angry?"
And the Lord asked Jonah, "Should I not pity Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?"
Who among us knows his right hand from his left?
I am an American.
And I hope we will learn, soon enough, that sometimes there is no difference.
Sometimes I am the terrorist I must disarm.
Sometimes I am the Penalty, and sometimes I am the Companion of the Fire.
Berkeley, 11:04 p.m., September 25, 2001
-June Jordan is a professor of African American studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Her latest book is "Soldier: A Poet's Childhood" (Basic Books, 2000). Special thanks to Alison Harrington and Charlotte Lagarde for research inspiration, and enablement.