12 March 2004

Madrileños

We are all Madrileños this morning, or so says the op-ed page of the Times.

It is beginning to sound hollow. Trite, even. I do not really feel Spanish this morning. I just feel a low anger and mounting frustration. So this time it is a clockwork operation of ten bombs, three trains, 200 dead quickly, hundreds more injured. Confidence shattered. A gracious and long-suffering city in mourning.

Of late we have been one with Nairobi, New York, Washington, Bali, Mombassa, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Moscow, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, too.

I watched the Pentagon burn, smoke silhouetted by the sunset that day from across the river, armed troops all around me.

London stood alone, as it has before, in years of terror out of Ireland, and in some way I will always count myself with the mother city, as I do when I stand in Saint Paul's or at the chapel of St. Clements-Dane, scorged by the Nazis like Christ on the cross.

And yet…

And yet.

It is all part of the static of the day, a vast roaring white noise coming from all directions.

Try to remember. Say their names: Baghdad, Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Moscow, Mombassa, Nairobi, New York, Riyadh, Washington. Arranged alphabetically, there is a cadence in the names of the cities. I forgot Dar es Salaam.

Our demon lovers are still out there with their backpacks and detonators, cook-top biologics and stolen low-grade radioactive material. Serene in their savagery, bathing in the blood of the sleepy workaday innocents, triumphantly announcing that plans are being finalized to once more bring the battle to the great enemy. Here.

They are still coming here. It is too easy, once one has embraced murder and called it sacrifice. But they will visit others. The other great Crusader partner is London, mother London. Perhaps they think it is a harder target, and the killers prefer places where security is light. No cowardice, per se, since some of them are willing to die. It is more a cynical show business.

Of late I have felt the vast beast of our democracy settling back into lethargy, back into the old sleepy ways. So this morning we have Madrid. The clarion call of murder stirred us to frantic activity for a while. But now we seem to move our lips and worry about what designer drugs our baseball players are using and the downfall of superstar interior designers.

As a senior officer expressed it to me this morning, were it not for beer, he would despair for the Republic.

We are all Madrileños now. But the list of places is lengthening and becoming cumbersome. We share citizenship with so many.

Aden, Algiers, Baghdad, Bali, Casablanca, Dar es Slaam, Istanbul, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Marseilles, Moscow, Mombassa, Nairobi, New York, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Washington. Perhaps you can add a name, find a new sister-city. Don't worry if you can't. Some are obscure.

There will be more.