Don’t look at me for answers, I thought as I walked into my history class at Western Carolina University last Tuesday and looked out at my students.

They looked back at me like I had answers. I didn’t have any. I found solace in the fact that as an historian, I don’t get paid to have answers. All I need are the right questions.

But my students already had the right questions. Are we going to war? Explain Israel and Palestine. Who is Osama bin Laden? Who will be on our side? Is this really like Pearl Harbor? Could this have been perpetrated by Americans? How easy is it to fly a plane? Is it safe to fly anymore? How long can Peter Jennings keep going until he drops?

After hearing three classes’ worth of comments, I was struck with the mood of restraint. Should we retaliate militarily? Of course, they agreed, but against whom? What’s to blame here, a weak military or weak intelligence? I boarded a plane with a knife in my pocket, a student said, and no one even noticed. What’s up with curbside check-in, another student pointed out. Hell, any slob can board a plane with a weapon. All a terrorist has to do is look for the slackest airports.

Nowhere in all this did I hear excessive flag-waving or demands for instant blood. Students might watch MTV instead of C-Span, but in this crisis, they demand explanations, reason and justice. Their Selective Service registration might have seemed like a waste of time, but rest assured the feds keep these things on file. My students want the truth. They deserve no less.

I was glad the students made these discussions easy, because my mind was actually in Manhattan wondering what kind of nightmare my Aunt Katty was living at that point.

Katty commutes from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day for work. She is an anesthesiologist at a Manhattan hospital. And by Tuesday evening, the family had not heard from her.

Among my late father’s four sisters, Katty has always been known as the quiet, gentle one, more at home in a symphony hall or art gallery than a war zone. She’s a New Yorker sure enough, but I wondered how she was holding up.

She finally reached the family in New Orleans to say she was fine, but not until Saturday night did I talk to her directly. Her voice was still shaking. Katty had spent much of her time at the hospital anticipating the arrival of patients who never came. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had ordered 6,000 body bags. Ambulance stretchers would not have done much good.

Katty described the burning bits of paper that fluttered into her backyard. A co-worker’s son, who worked in the World Trade Center, had not been seen since Tuesday morning. A local fire station near her home lost all of its firefighters except one.

“It’s touched a lot of lives and destroyed a lot of lives, and it’s going to take a long time for the city to get back in shape,” she said. “If you could see the devastation ...”

Her voice trailed off, and she turned the phone over to her husband, Henry Huttenbach, who had seen the devastation take place. My uncle’s quivering voice was no steadier than Katty’s.

I was hoping Henry could give me answers. He’s a history professor at City College of New York. He is a native of Israel and has written extensively on the Holocaust. He is on sabbatical this semester but has a special appointment teaching a graduate seminar at Yale.

He was in his office at City College when he saw the burning towers. He was consumed in those moments by a sadness that has weighed more heavily as the days pass.

What do we do now, Henry?

“I haven’t the foggiest,” he said in his slow, distinguished manner that grips me no less now than it did when I was a little kid. “I’m not a policy maker. But I can look at it as a history teacher.”

Much of the history he studies is that of his own people, meaning that he has definite ideas about the alleged culprits. He firmly condemns an idea he has heard from colleagues arguing that this is an opportunity to find why Americans are hated in the world. He stressed that Osama bin Laden isn’t the problem many Americans perceive him to be. He is merely a symptom, and the United States should proceed cautiously through his dangerous world.

“To bomb the s--- out of them, as they say, is just a bit of macho duff,” he said. My uncle sees a scared, shaken President Bush, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,

“I think much of the rest of the world will join with the U.S., or we will join with them,” he said.
Henry argued that this is not terrorism. It’s a new kind of war, a war against civilization, with different scenarios and a new enemy, “but not an unknowable one.”

He said this tragedy has had one positive outcome already. We actually talked with each other at length on the phone, which I don’t think has ever happened. I hardly ever see him and have never visited him in Brooklyn. I always go back to New Orleans when I visit relatives.

“Maybe we can be closer,” he said.

I’d like that, but not everyone feels the same way. I should have joined with the nation in observing the Friday noon memorial for the dead. Instead of attending the assembly at WCU, I opted for stress management by swimming a few laps in the Breese Gymnasium pool.

Only three other swimmers were in the pool, which meant plenty of room to unwind. But evidently, it wasn’t enough room for one swimmer.

At the same moment most of the nation supposedly joined together in prayer, a woman swimming next to me told me that I was swimming too close to her. I explained that I was simply trying to swim in my lane.

“There are four swimmers here,” she said curtly. “You are supposed to swim over the black line. Do not swim in the lane. Please swim on the line.” I told her I was sorry if I bothered her. She put her head back into the water and started another lap. On her line.

I decided to give her the space she felt she so rightly deserved and left the pool. In a week of talk about how much the nation has come together, not everyone has received the message. I have a feeling that in months and years to come, that woman — and many other Americans — will find that their space has long since been invaded, and staying within one’s boundary won’t be part of the game plan.

But until the game plan is unveiled, I watch the endless parade of experts unveil their armchair strategies and push their forthcoming books while some of the more enlightened Americans pause and reflect on a map of the world and slowly make sense of the world’s steps and missteps that have led to Sept. 11, 2001.

I can’t shake one particular television image from my mind. I thought it ridiculous when I first saw it, but it has haunted me ever since. Someone had e-mailed a message to CNN, who ran it at the bottom of the screen: “Heaven now has more angels to help keep the rest of us safe.”

If our safety is only insured by a massive body count, then, yes, I agree, heaven help us.

(Karl Rohr lives in Cullowhee and teaches history at Western Carolina University. He can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)

 

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