An excerpt from “Mothers and Terrorists”
September 4, 2024
This is an excerpt from my monologue play, “Mothers and Terrorists.”
September 13th. The passenger list for American Airlines Flight 77 appeared online. Scanning the list, I found a familiar name. Sarah Clark. Common enough name. Could be anyone.
A few lines down: Joe Ferguson. More lines down: Ann Judge.
I called my buddy, Vance, who still worked where we had all worked.
“Yes, it’s them.”
Over ten years had passed since we’d all worked together at National Geographic. Vance and I cemented our friendship early, knowing it would be lifelong. Sarah, Joe, and Ann? Workmates. Inebriated laughs after three drinks at Happy Hour. Might have seen each of them once over the ten years.
But at that moment, I saw them clearly. Distinctly heard their voices. Remembered their height relative to mine. Sarah and Ann’s brown eyes, Joe’s blue. Ann huddled outside the building in the winter, smoking her Marlboro lights. Joe nursing whatever was on tap. Sarah sipping, always, chardonnay.
One blip of relief: it was a different Sarah Clark. Nevertheless, a Sarah Clark was gone.
Ann and Joe were memorialized in that December’s edition of the magazine. Ann ran the travel office with expediency and effectiveness. Whenever I’d travel, she’d have every customs form and every expense form ready a week before departure and processed them even faster upon return. Joe, who was the same age as me, was the director for Geography Education, a quirky redhead with a propensity for a joke, accompanied by a hearty laugh.
Years later, I visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. I found Joe’s and Ann’s names on adjoining panels.
I traced their full names with my finger.
For an entire year after 9/11, I couldn’t shake their faces from my mind or my dreams. Their faces, full of fear. Their faces, knowing they had minutes to live.
Almost immediately, people started asking why.
President Bush, the eternal optimist: “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”
I’m not usually one to quote Deepak Chopra, but he did ask a lot of good questions:
“Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism? What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer? Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective soul? Isn’t this an attack on civilization from without that is also from within?”
Then there was this: Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson lay partial blame for the attacks on liberals, feminists, homosexuals, and abortionists since they have pushed God away from the United States.
Wait? Who’s to blame for all of this?
Life is short. And this? So inconvenient. All of it.
