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Shocking Me Back to Reality
(or time to be Guatemalan again)
by robert karimi, 9/12/01

My little baby brother (3 years old) learned a new word last week: "shocked." He uses it all the time. If you take away a toy from him, he says, "i am shocked." If you play a cool CD and start dancing in front of him, he says, "i am shocked." Basically, almost anything that occurs in the house, he uses those three words.

Yesterday morning (before we turned on the TV), Iasked him if he knew what "shocked" meant. He just gave me that 3 year old smile of innocence. "No, Wobert." I explained to him, as my mother called to inform me that she does not want me flying to NYC this weekend or to Europe next weekend (I am supposed to fly to JFK Saturday and London next Sunday). She kept speaking in fast fractured speech, and I was totally confused. She thought I didn't understand her Guatemalan accent, so she just punctuated her conversation with "Watch the TV, just watch the TV."

My dad has this huge TV. He loves television. I guess a big TV gives him a better sense of what is going on (I think his eyes are going bad). When I turned on the TV, my little brother was sitting next to me. Our first image: the second plane crashing into the WTC. "I am shocked," was the only voice I heard as I looked at a visibly shaken up ABC anchor Peter Jennings. I looked at my baby brother. We both got a lesson on what shock is.

I was getting ready to go on KPFA that morning, and my father immediately intercepted me after he heard the news. "Don't go on the radio. Don't say anything stupid." He started to tell me to go shave and cut my sideburns. My friend called me and joked around, telling me to start "dressing Cholo" again so that I can hide all traces of my Iranianness. I wasn't even given time to grieve for these people at the World Trade Center.

My girlfriend and I spoke on the phone, and she cried while she watched. I wanted to cry with her. Why do these people deserve this? What decisions did they make that made them the target? They did not deserve this.

While another friend and I were in Berkeley yesterday, some caucasian-european lookin fella with pseudo-dreadlocks began to yell "America got what it deserved!" My friend, who has been very shaken up by this event because his cousin works at the WTC, became incensed; I thought they were going to throw down, they became so heated.

One of the things my friend said during his verbal defense: "Why do 10,000 people have to die because of the decisions of (around) 5 white guys? It's not their fault.". It hit me. I wanted to cry more for these people as their deaths are being used by both sides.

I heard the pundits and the experts giving their expert advice on the identity of the "terrorists" and their theory of terrorism. Why weren't they crying? Their words stopped me from crying. Fear and anger whirled around me as they continued to talk about "Afghanis", "terrorism", "Middle East," or "Palestinians." How do they know?

These were the same things that were said after the Oklahoma bombing. I was a journalist in Texas, and I was interviewing President Baby Bush (then Gov.). and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson in Dallas when the Oklahoma bombing happened. When I came back home to San Antonio, I received many suspicious looks, and my boss asked me (in a sidewinded fashion) if I made any detours during my stay in Dallas. And, my co-workers even made jokes: "I know why you went to Dallas." or "Did you meet up with any of your relatives while you were there?"

Back then (and now), I remembered a Japanese friend who was researching modern internment in the U.S. during his time at UCLA. He told me about Big Poppa Bush's plan to set up internment camps for people of Arab descent or others who posed threats after a terrorist attack. It's name at the time: Project 2000.

As the news "reported" the events of September 11th, I heard one newscaster say that investigators were especially looking at airport personnel who are "naturalized citizens and green card holders." My father confronts me again. "I'm going to shave you while you sleep tonight." I laugh, but he is half-serious. He lost his security clearance because of his nationality; he took a lot of ribbing during the Iranian hostage crisis, and he even changed his "professional" name to Eric from Mohammed Ebrahim because of all the history of confrontation that he has had.

I want to cry for all this. The past: the death, the carnage, the hate. The future: the death, the war, the hate. And I want to say that when I go through customs next week and show my passport that I could dress anyway I want, and my father is wrong. But he is not.

I am here in Kinkos and one of the workers (who is a caucasian-european lookin fella), repeated something from the radio: "The announcer said, 'Do you ever see the Christians, the Jews attacking us? The nation of Islam may want to reevaluate their beliefs.'" He then defended the announcer: "He wasn't being racist, he was just giving the facts." That's at 3:20 PDT Wednesday, September 12th.

And what do I tell my baby brother? Is this the most shock he will see? Will he be harassed by kids in the neighborhood? Will his father be harassed? Will I?

When I taught high school English, I was the advisor for theschool's Afghani Club. Will they be insulted and assaulted like I was when I went to school during the Iranian Hostage Crisis? When President Baby Bush says he will make those pay and those that harbor the criminals pay, who does he mean? Afghanistan? Syria? Saudi Arabia? U.S.A.? Will my former high school students be sent to war? Can I write a poem to truly help the situation? What can I do?

I can only teach my baby brother new words. It helps me with mine. I taught him a new one: patience. What does patience mean, Edgar? "It means to wait." Very good, Edgar. Now it's our turn.