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Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Dyab Abou Jah Jah
Belgium is not usually a joyful place on a September afternoon. The sky starts to retrieve its usual clouds, and the parks look less and less green. As well as the weather, most people -- especially in our Arab community -- are suffering from post-vacation depression. School is starting up again. Instead of enjoying the relaxed pace of a village in the Atlas or Rif, as they have for most of the summer, people have to run again to make a living. Returning to September-cloudy Belgium after a long summer vacation is enough to wipe the smile from one's face.
Yet by these standards, 11 September 2001 was an exceptional day in every sense. Against the natural order of things, in the Arab Ghetto in Brussels, people were smiling. They were out in the streets, exchanging glances with each other as they walked. Even total strangers would nod at one another; there was something different in the air that day. All that joyful display, because on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a number of planes had crashed into buildings killing some 3000 people. Isn't it sick, one might wonder, that such a tragic event could ever be perceived this way?
Once someone told me that the toughest meeting a person might ever have to make is with himself. And it was indeed very difficult for us to realise that we are capable of experiencing a feeling of satisfaction at such atrocity. It was very disturbing indeed. We started wondering, "What's wrong with us?" But faced with this question, almost everybody answered: "Look how low they have brought us. They have been killing us, humiliating us and oppressing us for so long, that we have lost a part of our humanity -- that part which cherishes human life unconditionally."
We tried to understand our reactions. Why didn't we mourn the dead? Why didn't we feel as terrified as the rest of the world? Well, maybe because no one had mourned our dead. No one stood for even one second of silence for the million (some say two million) Iraqi children slaughtered (albeit very cleanly) by the American- British embargo. They taught us, by killing us over and over again, that human life is so cheap, that thousands and thousands of us torn to shreds by their "smart" bombs are nothing but "collateral damage" -- regrettable, but acceptable. So one day we saw them being slaughtered, and we found ourselves thinking and talking just like them. We caught ourselves feeling that all these innocent civilians in the planes and at the WTC were just regrettable, collateral damage.
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