New Zealand 9/11

I caught his eyes from across the room. They were blue, below dark hair. He was American. I could tell by those eyes. Perhaps it was a moment, perhaps it was longer. It seemed to last forever. I remember how a feeling of understanding, of cognition, of fellowship struck me like a bolt.

It was the evening of September 11, 2001.

Or rather, it was the evening of September 12 where we were, on the South Island of New Zealand in the city of Queenstown. That morning I had awoken in an hotel room in Auckland. It was the last day of a couple week vacation. I had journeyed here with my two best friends, to get in some mid-summer (for us North Americans) snowboarding. I had remained behind for a day or two to visit some places on the North Island that I had missed on my first trip to the country. Tim had left two days earlier, and Scott the day before. I was to get on a plane at six-thirty that evening for the long journey back to California.

I was still in bed at nine when I grabbed the remote and turned on the television. On came CNN, even though I wasn’t tuned to the channel CNN was typically on. There was a shot of the World Trade Center, and within seconds, a plane flew into one of the towers. I shot up in bed and tried to clear my eyes. As I expect many people did, I checked to make sure I wasn’t watching a movie preview of some sort. Within the next five minutes I got caught up on the story, which had begun only an hour or two after I had gone to bed the previous evening. All air traffic in the United States was grounded. Much of the air traffic in the Pacific was also halted. The president was returning to Washington after flying around the country like he was some prize in a three-card Monty game.

I got up and looked out the window. Auckland was relatively quiet. I looked up at the high needle tower that is a landmark of the city. Three things slowly hit me. Thousands had died, quite possibly people I knew. I was stranded on the other side of the world and I wasn’t going to be able to get home anytime soon.

And I felt alone.

I’ve traveled by myself extensively, but that’s not the kind of alone I felt that morning. I was cut off from my own country. The phone lines were blocked to the states by far more traffic than the fiber could handle. Even though I was in a “friendly” country, I felt exposed. Like a good many people, I wanted to find a dark, warm corner to sit down in, pull the covers over my head, and hide.

That’s a bit harder to do when you’re in another country and living out of a suitcase and board bag.

Within 15 minutes of seeing the plane hit the tower I had formed a mental plan. I called United, confirmed I wasn’t going home and gave them enough information so they could contact me when and if things changed. I called Air New Zealand and booked a ticket out of the city. I showered and checked out of the hotel. I needed a taxi to the domestic airport. Wait. The evening before I had found an Internet cafe and e-mailed to family and friends that I was returning today. I found the same cafe and sent messages to reassure all that I was on the ground and safe. At least one line of communication was still available to me.

 I got on the plane to the South Island. The middle part of the day is a blur. I got to Queenstown through Christchurch and grabbed a taxi. As soon as he heard my accent the driver wanted a conversation. A surreal one at that. I don’t remember all of the details – something about the tragedy and how we shouldn’t overreact. It was a virtual monologue on his part. Just before we stopped he finally asked me what I thought. My only words were, “My country is at war.” The last few minutes of the ride were spent in silence.

I headed back to a hotel we had stayed at the week before. We had struck up a friendship with the owner while there, and when I arrived she had no trouble fitting me back into a room. I told her I didn’t know when I’d be checking out, and that it might be at a moments notice. She understood completely. I dropped my bags, turned on the television, and gradually took in all of the pictures and words that almost 24 hours had generated.

But the thing I remember most vividly from that day are those blue eyes below dark hair.

Late in the evening I realized I hadn’t eaten during the day, so I headed down to a local shopping district, saw the familiar golden arches and stopped in. Certainly not good food, but comfort food. I ordered, took my tray and sat down at a table. Around the lobby of the mall there were a number of televisions, all turned to a channel that was simulcasting ABC from the states. And for a few minutes I ate and watched.

But then I slowly realized that there were people sitting and standing all around the lobby, watching the broadcasts in silence. As my gaze slowly panned around the room, I could see that most of the faces were young, in their 20s and early 30s. A few were in groups. Most were alone. And it suddenly hit me.

All of these people were Americans.

Queenstown is a skiing town, a center of outdoor adventure activity. It draws hundreds from the US, many college students and recent grads, who come to work at the resort during the northern hemisphere’s summer. They arrive in the south’s fall, and leave in the spring when it’s time to head back to school or to more career-oriented pursuits. Most of these kids weren’t scheduled to go home for another month. On a night like this they’d usually either be partying or sleeping. But they were here. Alone. At a McDonald’s. And I realized that they had all come here for the same reason I had.

And that’s when I realized I had been staring into the eyes of the guy with blue eyes and dark hair. And he back at mine. I’d guess he was maybe 25, probably six foot tall. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt under an unbuttoned blue flannel shirt.

I didn’t break the stare, and neither did he.

Americans often refer to ourselves as isolationists, especially when we get caught up in our own internal diversions. Groups outside of the US use that term even more than we do when referring to our country. But when you’re traveling in a country that’s rather proud of the fact that it’s off the beaten path of world events, you begin to realize how in the center of things Americans are every day – even if we don’t realize it. Our media is filled with an ongoing conversation about the middle east, the dynamics of oil prices, the growth of China and southeast Asia, the global AIDS crisis. Television, newspapers, and the Internet constantly bring these issues to our attention, if not always in a balanced light. Why? Because we are expected to do something about these things.

And in those blue eyes was an understanding that the world had changed radically in the short time it took for two towers to fall to the ground.

For a decade we had been celebrating the end of the cold war, a rise of a new kind of prosperity, and a new optimism that we could, given effort, solve some of the environmental and human problems that had plagued the race during the first two millennia of the modern age. And that we would have some time to do so.

With one barbaric act, it all had come crashing down. Resources would need to be diverted to fighting a new enemy. A new uncertainty would enter the equation. Americans were targets. Instead of leading, we would have to spend time fighting and protecting. It wasn’t going to be a month or a year of effort. It would take years or decades. And this would likely lead to a withdrawal of Americans from leadership in many of the altruistic endeavors that had only yesterday seemed to be the destiny of a new generation.

A generation’s future, changed in a cloud of pulverized concrete and steel. We, our generation’s future, had been forced onto a new course.

Any other night, that stare might have meant something different, and led to a different conclusion. That night, it was a moment shared between two people of common background who understood that nothing would be the same, perhaps a little ahead of the people in the resort around us trying so hard to pretend that the far away events wouldn’t change their world.

We broke the stare at the same time.

I headed back towards my hotel room. The night was cold, a bit harsh, with a breeze coming off the lake. I thought about those blue eyes. And about the others that had been drawn together if only for a moment.

Tomorrow I would wake up to deal with how I would get home and the realities of a stark new future. But for tonight had found a dark, warm corner of the world, and a blanket to pull over myself, if only for a little while.