At the Los Angeles airport I watched as an elderly, arthritic man was forced to remove his buckle shoes and send them through the carry-on baggage X ray. In Ontario, California, a friend was meeting me at the airport. Of course he couldn’t wait at curbside. He had to circle through the arrivals lane while slugs (slugs with valid photo IDs!) delivered my checked bags. On the forth go-round a policeman stepped into the road and told my friend that if he drove by one more time he’d be arrested.
What caused the giant python lines at airport security checkpoints remained a mystery. An acquaintance, a plastic surgeon who specializes in cranial reconstruction, was returning from a conference on head injuries shortly after September 11. His hand luggage contained three human skulls. These passed unnoticed through the X-ray screening.
Doubtless all sorts of civil rights must be sacrificed temporarily in times of crisis. But there is no ACLU for comfort and convenience. A generation hence we’ll be living in a world of metal detectors in nudist colonies.
Traveling around the country did, however, allow me to see how different regions of America were coping with current events. On October 9 a local TV anchorman in Washington, D.C., called Islam (using an adjective perhaps left behind by the sudden journalistic shift away from celebrity obsession) “the second most popular religion on earth.” It has an amazing Q factor, too, that Islam.
At about the same time, aided by the Internet, there was a cheerful realization nationwide that “Taliban” scans perfectly in “The Banana Boat Song”:
Come Mr. Taliban, rid me of Osama.
Air Force come and it flatten me home.
Cruise missile,
Tomahawk,
Half-ton bomb.
Air Force come and it flatten me home.
On October 16, in Austin, Texas, local TV reported that the Austin fire department had responded to a call from a household concerning a “suspicious package.” The sole suspicious thing about the package was that it had been mailed from New York City.
On October 19 a chipper announcer for KFWB radio, in southern California, said, “Anthrax news certainly has Orange County people talking …” Later that day, at a lunch in Simi Valley, I was sitting next to someone from the Ventura County district attorney’s office. He said anthrax alarms were coming in at a rate of one every three minutes, and that the only practical decontamination response would be to have people get naked and be hosed down. That evening, on the set of a public-television book show, T. C. Boyle talked about how he had a certain admiration for acts of “ecotage,” but in his fiction he tried to show both sides of the story. He managed never to mention September 11.
I can remember when powdery white substances of sinister origin were doing a lot more damage to America than anthrax had done so far. Circa 1980 America’s elite was suffering “nasaltage.” It emptied bank accounts, wrecked marriages, ruined thousands of careers, and brought the nation to its knees (with a soda straw over a glass coffee table). But Attorney General John Ashcroft was very firm in stating that anthrax threats are no laughing matter. Pranks and jests concerning anthrax would be treated as serious criminal actions. Thus various larval jokes with “You’ve got mail” punch lines had to be allowed to die before maturation. And the heavy-metal band Anthrax was said to be considering changing its name—presumably to Chicken Pox.
Were we as a nation forgetting what our international critics have been saying about us for years? Aren’t we supposed to be a big, terrifying country, a Godzilla of capitalism wrecking the globe? Since when did Godzilla flip out because he might have brushed against something in the mail room while he was devouring Trenton, New Jersey? Since when did Godzilla turn (devastating) tail and scamper to Mexico to buy Cipro over the counter? I trusted this was a momentary lapse. And I hoped that Osama bin Laden was discovering, amid smart bombs and Delta Forces in Afghanistan, that America isn’t scared, America is scary. The members of al Qaeda had gotten dressed up in their holy-warrior costumes and gone trick-or-treating at the wrong house.
NOVEMBER 26, 2001
Lo! The intrepid Afghan Taliban fighter of warrior lineage ancient. He who had vanquished countless foes, unassailable in his mountain redoubts, imbued with fanatical resolve, possessed by suicidal courage—and who was now running around Mazar-e-Sharif getting his beard shaved, playing Uzbecki pop music on his boom box, and using Mrs. Afghan Warrior’s burka for a bedspread in the guest room, soon to be rented to foreign aid workers.
The fighting in Afghanistan was so brief that CNN Headline News had to delete three bars from its “Target: Terror” score to keep the theme music from outlasting the hostilities. The Soviet Union fought the Afghans for ten years and gave up in ignominious defeat in 1989. What were the Soviets using for weapons—cafeteria buns and rolled-up locker room towels? The United States dropped a lot of cafeteria buns—or emergency food aid that is very like cafeteria buns—on Taliban-controlled areas. Exposure to American school-lunch fare may have been the deciding factor in the radical Muslim demoralization. A country that can make something that dreadful from mere flour, yeast, and water is a country not to be defied.
However it was that we achieved victory, achieve it we did, although to what end remains to be seen. One effect of victory (though very temporary) was to make America’s elite even more sanguine about armed conflict than they had been during the 1999 air war on Serbia. SURPRISE: WAR WORKS AFTER ALL, read the headline on the Week in Review section of The New York Times for Sunday, November 18, 2001. That same day The Boston Globe Magazine ran a cover story titled “The New Patriots: College students support a country at war—and so do their Vietnam-era parents.” Of course, there was the possibility that the revived fighting spirit among America’s elite had nothing to do with Afghanistan but was a collateral result of Harvard’s first undefeated football season since 1913. I believe Harvard played Mount Holyoke, Smith, Li’l Dickens Day Care Center, and several Pop Warner League teams, but I didn’t check that.
Meanwhile, what next for our nation? Would we do, after the Afghan war, as we did after the Gulf War and just go home, have a recession, and elect some creepy Democratic governor of an obscure state as the next president? Or would we finish the War on Terrorism? The U.S. Department of State publication Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000 seemed to offer ample opportunities for pursuing the latter goal:
Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism. … It provided increasing support to numerous terrorist groups, including the Lebanese Hizballah, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ). … Iraq continued to serve as a safe haven and support to a variety of Palestinian rejectionist groups. … Syria continued to provide safehaven and support to several terrorist groups. … Sudan continued to serve as a safehaven for members of al-Qaida, the Lebanese Hizballah. … Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the PIJ, and HAMAS. …
We mustn’t forget that this was not a war between Western civilization and the Muslim world. The Washington Post certainly hadn’t forgotten. The Post made absolutely no comment about the real or apparent ethnicity of the person quoted in the following item about anthrax, which ran in the Post’s November 1, 2001, issue:
“In hindsight, this has been an escalating event,” said Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “We will continue to see new cases of anthrax disease.”
I was proud of The Washington Post and meant to write a complimentary letter to the editor, but I was too busy phoning in my tip to the FBI.
This was not a war between Western civilization and the Muslim world. There was, nonetheless, interesting reading to be done in Freedom in the World, a survey of political rights and civil liberties issued annually since 1955 by the nonpartisan organization Freedom House. Among countries whose populations are predominately (60 percent or more) Muslim, only remote Mali and tiny Benin were rated as “Free.” On a scale of 1 (Canada) to 7 (god-awful), no other Muslim country received a score better than 3 in political rights and 4 in civil liberties.
&
nbsp; Would we have to fight all those countries? Or could we just give them a hug? A peace vigil was being held each Saturday at noon outside the town offices in Peterborough, New Hampshire, a few miles from the house we own there.
According to the November 15, 2001, edition of the local newspaper, the Monadnock Ledger, “One week, when it was rumored that CBS might cover the protestors, 45 people showed up.” By Saturday, November 17, the peace protest had, in effect, turned into a victory protest, and eight people were present. There was one sweet-faced, white-haired old lady, and then another who was so much older that she looked as if she might have been doing this sort of thing since the Hitler-Stalin Pact. There was a middle-aged man with hair that was both very long and gone from the top half of his head, a middle-aged woman upon whose features smugness had made an extensive and permanent settlement, a young man whose devil-may-care sideburns clashed with his go-to-hell golf pants, and a tweedy professor type who spent the whole vigil reading The Nation. Plus there was a mom in hand-knits trying to keep an eye on a rapidly fidgeting eight-year-old, and an Asian woman of college age who carried a sign reading RETALIATE WITH WORLD PEACE. Considering how world peace has gone for people in many places since the end of the Cold War, that’s a harsh sentiment. After a while, the Asian woman wandered off to window-shop.
Most local New Englanders were ignoring the vigil with the perfect obliviousness to all incongruity that has been a New England hallmark since Henry David Thoreau went off to live a hermit’s life at Walden Pond but continued to have his mother do his laundry. Only one fellow, flannel-clad, stopped to argue with the pacifists. “What do you do,” the fellow asked, “when they strike the homeland? What if they roll right in here with tanks?” I was about to think “Good for you” when the fellow went on to say, “But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve refused to get the anthrax shots they’re trying to give everybody.”
So we see at what level debate about a just war and the natural right of self-defense was being conducted. The next morning, in a further sign of the times, Boston’s WBZ Radio played a recorded segment by Martha Stewart detailing the intricacies of flag etiquette. The New York Times Sunday Styles section could not resist a bow to the New Seriousness—or an Afghanistan hook—even when reviewing the stupidest possible television show:
First, network news programs broadcast images of Afghan women removing their burkas. … A few hours later … models had peeled away their clothing and were showing off thong panties as ABC broadcast the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. …
And the November 20, 2001, issue of The National Enquirer had a feature headed “EVEN PETS ARE STRESSED OUT FROM TERRORIST ATTACKS.” Here are some of the signs that your dog, cat, or hamster was suffering from the aftereffects of 9/11:
• Sadness or glumness.
• Constant fighting with other pets.
• Lapses in toilet training.
• Pet is more needy and constantly seeks attention.
Speaking of constantly seeking attention, Bill Clinton showed up to give a talk at Harvard on November 19, perhaps to share anecdotes about his being a star quarterback on the undefeated Crimson gridiron squad of warrior linage ancient. The Boston Globe didn’t mention his football heroics but did give Bill two fulsome stories and a teaser: “Fans flock to Clinton in Hub visit.” According to the Globe, Bill “blamed himself for not building stronger ties with the Muslim world during the 1990’s. … He said he should have worked harder … to support overseas ‘nation building.’ “ In those days of flux and transformation there was comfort in knowing that some things stayed the same. It was still all about Bill. “America can exert influence, he said, by admitting its own faults.” Interesting source for that advice. “We cannot engage in this debate,” Bill was quoted as saying, “without admitting that there are excesses in our contemporary culture.” Whether the ex-president was referring to himself or to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show was not made clear.
During a question-and-answer period Clinton said that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. It’s a good idea. Islamic fundamentalists will need someplace to go. Having them all in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would allow the War on Terror to be conducted in a compact area with well-mapped terrain and an excellent road system. As long as the Israelis don’t get involved. We wouldn’t want anybody on our side who was guilty of premature antiterrorism.
5
EGYPT
December 2001
Hatred between Palestinians and Israelis abides. Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines. The threat of terrorist attacks by al Qaeda continues. Also, our cars need gas. It is important to understand Arab culture.
Egypt seemed a good place to start. Egypt is by far the most populous Arab state. And although Egypt is a poor country in per-capita-income terms, its economy is larger than Saudi Arabia’s. Historically Egypt has been the most westward-looking of Arab countries. A Napoleonic invasion, an Albanian pasha named Muhammad Ali, and a British takeover gave Egyptians plenty to look at. The modern Islamist movement can be dated from the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood by an Egyptian schoolteacher, Hassan al-Banna, in 1928. Two of Osama bin Laden’s closest aides, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the late Muhammad Atef, came from Egypt, as did Mohammed Atta, who led the September 11 hijackings. And there is this thing called the “Arab street,” which various serious people take seriously. In the November 11, 2001, New York Times John Kifner wrote, “It is on just this Arab … street that President Bush must fight in his war against Osama bin Laden.” On January 24, 2002, Chris Matthews said on the television program Hardball, “America’s been fighting another kind of war to win the hearts and minds of the Arab street.” And on November 16, 2001, NBC Nightly News reporter Martin Fletcher, broadcasting from Cairo, declared, “The battleground isn’t only in Afghanistan; it’s here in the Arab street.” Well, Cairo has thousands of miles of street.
But there’s a problem with Egypt. It’s been around for five millennia. America is only three human life spans in age. I’m an American born and bred, so were my folks, and … How could the same small part of America vote for both Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton? How could any parts of America elect action-figure toys as governors? Why haven’t they been noticeably worse than other governors? Why is the fastest-growing spectator sport in America watching cars turn left? How come I’ve never heard of anyone—Linkin Park, Ludacris, OutKast—on the Billboard Top 50? Why can’t they spell? By what means did the Amazon.com list of best-sellers in 2001 come to contain The Widsom of Menopause, Self Matters, Look Great Naked, and Body Change— the last by someone called Montel Williams, who is on daytime TV? Have you ever watched daytime TV? Who are these people taking DNA tests to see which one molested the Rottweiler?
I don’t understand anything about America’s culture. What could I hope to learn about Egypt’s? In fact, quite a bit—before I’d been officially in the country for more than a minute. Coming through passport control, I was detained by a solemn fellow who showed me a badge. In his well-ironed dress-down Friday clothing, clean grooming, and chilly politeness, he was the exact counterpart of a Mossad agent who had detained me at Ben-Gurion Airport eight months before. “I would like to ask you a few questions about why you are visiting Egypt,” the solemn fellow said.
My tour operator, carrying a placard with my name completely misspelled, swooped in with a great bustle: “We are a prominent Egyptian tourism company! Government-licensed! This man is a valued client! Tourism is in a ruinous state! Do you even see another tourist?! What will become of Egypt’s foreign-reserve situation?!”—although that was all body language. I believe the only thing my tour operator actually said to the intelligence officer was “He’s with me.” Away we went. Have your travel agent try that with the Mossad or the FBI.
There was another lesson in just the drive through Cairo from the airport, on the far east side of town, to my hotel, by the pyramids in the west. It’s the lesson of a
ll swollen capitals in societies with uncompetitive economies. “In a competitive society,” the economist Friedrich Hayek once said, “most things can be had at a price—though it is often a cruelly high price we have to pay … The alternative is … the favor of the mighty.” The mighty have their seat in the capital. Better stick close to their chair legs and napkins to get a crumb from the mighty’s table.
Cairo is the largest city in the Middle East and Africa, with more than 16 million people, most of whom were offering to carry my luggage at the airport. And they were more persistent than the secret police. Annex Damascus to Beirut, Baghdad, Kuwait City, Jerusalem, and Riyadh (what a war you’d have!) and you still wouldn’t get Cairo. Almost a quarter of the people in Egypt live in the city, a long haul from the sea, on the site of an old fort of middling strategic importance, distant from natural resources or any traditional means of creating wealth except the Nile farmlands now under Cairo pavement. Think of a capital of the United States located in a Maryland swamp with 70 million Americans gathered there to be close to Medicare benefits, Fannie Mae, and Small Business Administration loan originations.
After ninety minutes in my tour van I realized: so vast is Cairo, there really is no way across it. At least no way with my eyes open. The traffic is too scary. We Americans, who invented traffic, are always being startled by the forms into which it has evolved around the world. (God, if He’s a Darwinian, may be similarly aghast at life.) But most foreign driving has the advantage of either brevity, in its breakneck pace, or safe-if-sorry periods of complete rest, in jam-ups. Cairenes achieve the prolonged bravado of NASCAR drivers while also turning any direction they want in congestion worse than L.A.’s during an O.J. freeway chase.