|
First Person: September 11, 1996
A narrow escape from a terrorist's bomb recalls the sanctity of human life BY JOSEPH M. HOCHSTEIN '55 By rights, I should have been killed. What saved my life was an illogical, inexplicable detour onto a pedestrian bridge a moment before the explosion. Only 25 paces from the bomb, but one story above the street, I heard a bang and saw the plate glass alongside me start to disintegrate. Minutes later, I was in an ambulance. Having worked as a journalist most of my life, I responded almost automatically. I took a little notepad from my shirt pocket and tried to capture the event. As we sped toward the Yitzhak Rabin Medical Center, I jotted the information that filled my mind-images of smoldering body parts and corpses on the pavement, and sounds of people weeping in bewilderment. Alongside me in the ambulance was an unconscious woman. At one stage, the paramedics could not find her pulse. I made a note of that. I was told later that she had been laced from head to foot with double-pointed metal nails and had survived after many hours in surgery. I made a note of that, too. But I did not write the story. Although I had some good, firsthand material, I did not try to get in touch with any of the U.S. daily newspapers where I formerly worked, nor did I make any effort to notify the weekly newspaper that I used to publish in Washington, D.C. When a television crew came to the emergency room looking for victims to interview, I told the doctor I'd just as soon not talk to them. I made a point of returning to the site of the bombing almost every day. Less than 48 hours after the massacre, home from the hospital with stitches in my scalp and left ear, I retraced my steps, accompanied by my daughter. When the bomb went off, I had been on my way to her house, onehalf block away, for a grandson's third birthday party. She had searched the neighborhood for more than an hour without knowing whether I was safe. Within a few days, I resumed work as a freelance editor-writer. I had no trouble doing routine, cut-and-dried projects for old clients. But I discovered that it was not easy to concentrate on anything else. For the first time in more than five years, I went to a movie in the afternoon. I turned down new work. I tried to write about the bombing, but one draft after another failed. I had committed the reporter's cardinal sin-getting too close to the story. I attended group-therapy meetings for victims of the bomb. Some people appeared to be having greater difficulty than I had in coping, although their physical injuries were even less consequential than my little cuts. A social worker who specializes in counseling survivors of katyusha rocket bombardments in northern Israel told us it is normal to feel troubled for four to six weeks after a terror attack. At first, I could not understand why this incident affected me so deeply. I have been at least as close to being killed on a number of occasions in the past, and I have seen equally grim scenes of death and violence, but this experience got to me as no other has. I discussed this with other bomb victims. Two army reservists who serve in frontline combat units said that this attack in the city shook them more than being under fire in battle. In war, you expect that someone will try to kill you. At home, or at work, you want to have other expectations. A colleague who thinks he knows a lot about the Vietnam War informed me quite solemnly that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. About one month after the bombing, I made a list of the questions people had asked me, and I began writing answers. Within a few days, I had a 3,700-word report on what happened to me and how I felt about it. I put it aside for three weeks and then sent it to some family members and friends. It circulated on the Internet, and someone sent it to Harper's magazine, which asked permission to print an excerpt in its July issue. At some point in this process, a switch clicked. Before I finished checking the Harper's galley proofs, I felt like working again. I resolved (as one does now and then, for all sorts of reasons) to be more productive and concentrate on really important things from here on out. I began some new projects of my own. Today, the bombing no longer keeps me from writing. It has become a subject almost like any other. While recuperating from this latest reminder of our mortality, I thought from time to time about some memories of Princeton. Mainly, I thought about a conversation in Joline Hall during sophomore year. In memory I hear one of my classmates expressing outrage at Life magazine, which was then a publication of influence and prestige. This classmate was angry at the magazine for printing a photograph of a man burning to death. His point was that the photographer should have been busy trying to save the dying victim. The behavior of journalists in moments of disaster is not what connected this remembered conversation to my recent experience. Rather, I pondered the preciousness and fragility of human life. My classmate's outburst had taken me by surprise. On the surface, he and I did not seem to have much in common, and until that conversation I had seen no sign that he cared about anything of substance. We came from vastly different backgrounds and we never became friends. By the rules that prevailed then, I as a Jew was unacceptable in his privileged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant world. And there he was, lecturing to me about the central principle of the Jewish tradition in which I had been raised-the sanctity of human life. As he talked at me, I realized that, despite the social barriers that separated us, there was no argument between us on this issue. Over the years, this conversation of sophomores has stayed with me, insistent in memory, popping up every now and then to teach me new lessons. It has reminded me, among other things, to keep trying to listen to the other person and to be open to pleasant surprises. In later years, it has encouraged me to pay attention to the voice of youth. Today, more than four decades later, the fervency of my classmate's concern continues to startle and hearten me. I still hear his indignant assertion that human life must take precedence. This principle is the best, perhaps the only, argument against terrorism. It is also a good reason for pulling up one's socks and getting back to work. Joseph M. Hochstein '55 is a freelance writer and editor living in Tel Aviv.
|