Learnings From Abroad

Jane Ariel, Ph.D

On 9/11/01, I arrived alone in Bastia, Corsica. I had never been there. I was to meet friends in two days time to hike in the mountains. After a four hour ferry ride from Nice, I had taken a walk to become oriented to this small sea-side city and then had an early dinner with good French wine. When I returned to my hotel, the clerk asked me if I was an American. I felt the question a little intrusive, but said, "yes". He anxiously brought me to the television. The picture that I saw on the French emergency news was a plane crashing into a tall building. It made no sense. Where was it?

All conversation, all information was in French. Although I speak the language adequately, it took me a while to comprehend what was happening. It just couldn't register in my mind, particularly through a foreign language. When I finally understood, I realized with a jolt that my mother lives at Union Square, quite close to the World Trade Center. Was she home? Was she okay? I sprinted to the telephone. No lines. I didn't want to miss the news, so I kept running between the television and the telephone. I called my partner in California. She didn't know what I was talking about, but, shocked, she turned on her radio. She quickly understood, and I asked her to keep trying to call my mother. At midnight the phone finally rang in my hotel room, interrupting the quite loud silence. It was my mother. She said it was terribly frightening in New York, She was furious in some illogical way that I was so far away. She said she couldn't believe the world could turn upside down in this crazy manner. At 86, it felt too much to tolerate so close to her.

How to continue to take a vacation? How to understand? How not to be afraid of all the ramifications? How to know what to do? Through an act of will, I decided that it was still important to find beauty, It took a number of days of being close to the ocean, out in the woods, to settle in to pleasure where there was no television and no newspaper.

My schedule for the month was to go to Israel after Corsica and then on to Kosova, where I would join the team of AFTA members collaborating with local mental health workers. Israel was continually being torn apart by violence, and the Israeli friends who had joined me in Corsica were very frightened of what the next move of terrorism would be. Would an even larger than usual deadly event happen in Israel? Were their children safe? Would the Jews be blamed? How could any of us make enough of a difference to eradicate the hate that causes such horrific animosity?

When I arrived in Jerusalem two weeks later, a city very beloved to me, I was worried about what I would find there. I was hearing continually of the deteriorating relationships between all Arabs and Jews. I took a taxi when I arrived at the bus station driven by a Palestinian born in Jerusalem. I braced myself. As we began to speak, it became slowly clear we were both on the same side. We both hated the Occupation, and we were able to talk about the difficulties for both factions. He ended our ride by saying," my father taught us that Islam was a religion of tolerance and peace. I have enduring relationships with Jews in this city, and I want to maintain them." We left each other with gratitude and respect. I was amazed to have entered the city in this spirit.

Six days later, I met our team in Zurich, each of us arriving from some different place. One of the Americans was still visibly shaken from 9/11. She had been very unsure whether to come, and the leader of our group had contacted the State Department for advice. They had cleared us for travel, saying that it was peaceful now in Kosova. We continued on to Prishtina to begin our work there. Our hosts were immediately incredibly warm and welcoming, and each one gave us heartfelt condolences about what had happened in the United States.

We went to follow up on a family in a rural town an hour outside of Prishtina. who had previously been seen by members of the American team. There were twelve women there and one young boy. In this poor, extended family, all the men had been killed two years before in the war. The grief was intensely palpable in the living room where we all sat together on the floor. The first words from the oldest woman, suddenly the matriarch in a very patriarchal society, was how much she and her family felt for our experience with the World Trade Center. Her hand moved towards her heart. She said she knew we now understood what her family had experienced. Their generosity of spirit was beyond anything I would have ever imagined. I wanted to embrace each and every one of them.

Coming back home was strange. The country felt jittery, off-kilter. My friends were very upset. My clients were not finding anything to hold on to that seemed trustworthy. I wanted so much to tell them what I had learned from the Kosovars, who had told us over and over that one must keep on living with as much love and connection as possible. For oneself. For the children. This is surely an antidote to hate and hopelessness.