Back in the day – when I used to travel a lot – I liked to book flights departing on Christmas. Doing so typically meant cheaper tickets, avoiding the pre- and post-Christmas rush, and complimentary in-flight champagne (thank you British Airways). Of course, if you happen to celebrate Christmas, this deal’s probably not for you.
Christmas 2009 may have just put a sock in my ‘Fly on Christmas, it’s the Best!’ campaign.
The 289 folks on Delta/Northwest flight 253 likely agree. On December 25, 2009, they went from being regular people travelling on Christmas to being survivors. Had the aspiring suicide bomber Umar Abdulmutallab been successful in his mission, their plane would have exploded over the Atlantic, lock stock and barrel.
Abdulmutallab was reportedly working for Al Qaeda. I wonder why they chose Christmas? Greater chance of lax security? check. Greater publicity because everyone’s at home with the TV on in the background? check. Better targeting because Jews (like me) like to fly on Christmas? check…but it’s not like Muslims refrain from flying on the 25th…half a check.
I find terrorist attacks, averted or otherwise, unfathomable. I can’t believe it happened. Not here. Not there. Admittedly, there is the initial element of post-9/11-era numbness. Repetition numbs. This is not a new idea. Andy Warhol commented on numbness to violence and tragedy by showing image after image of the same car wreck. Lars Von Trier tries to penetrate contemporary numbness by dreaming up unthinkable scenarios and making raw documentary-style films about human interaction that are quite painful to watch. That is his point and purpose, to make his viewers feel deeply, have visceral gut reactions, despite the fact that we are in the era of non-feeling, the era in which we have seen it all and nothing has the power to shock.
That it is possible to feel unfeeling in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack is in itself surprising, worrying, horrifying. But horror and the inability to fathom follow quickly, hand in hand, as soon as I start to think in any real way about what has just happened/has been narrowly escaped. Once I engage in a genuine effort to fathom, and realise I cannot, cannot put myself in the shoes of the perpetrators, the victims, the victims’ immediate families, cannot grasp the magnitude of what man has done to man, I am truly taken aback.
How is it possible not to be able to fathom something that happens all the time? Because I deem it to be inhuman? But obviously in some sense it is very human. A very human aberration. Because it is happening (or almost happening) all the time. Happening to the point that it numbs. According to the report the White House released reviewing the Christmas day incident, attacks just like it are being averted by the U.S. intelligence community all the time. These attempts, the American public will never be privy to. The intelligence analyst who didn’t catch young Abdulmutallab, has caught umpteen others, and saved hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. How many times have I almost died in a terrorist attack? How many times have I been saved?
We’re living in a war zone. But from this perspective it feels oddly like a fairy-tale, a distant story, because everyone and everything still goes on. Flies, movies, birthdays, parties, gifts, dinners, drinks, dates, work, family. It seems war has always been present, and now is no exception. And the U.S. – safe though it may feel most of the time – is really just another bullseye. And our airplanes the arrows.






To be honest, I’d forgotten the photo souvenir (along with the day it recalled) even existed until last weekend, when, after roasting my very first whole chicken for friends willing to indulge me in my quest for test subjects, we headed over to Union Pool for après-dinner drinks. Time flew by a rather intricate conversation about dreams, and before we knew it, we were all being herded out of the courtyard, towards the exit. We, however, slipped into the old-school photo booth, typically obstructed by a long line of bathroom goers. It bought us an extra 4 minutes at Union Pool (1 for maneuvering us all in, inserting money and clicking, and 3 waiting for the pics). When, after what seemed an eternity, with every Union Pool employee asking us to leave at least once, we had the photos in hand — I remembered!