I asked: “How can one say, ‘You’re either with us or against us?’” He answered: “Well, we have.”On September 30, 2001, as I walked into the world’s holiday destination, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t here on a vacation. Even so, from a tame tour of the US, the Fellowship gathered a momentum of its own, as it attracted senior officials and soldiers from the government and the military, businessmen, editors, academics, all targeting a new terminology, a new language, negotiating new words - and a new world of terror.On and beyond the beaches, the universities, the state department and the department stores I met two kinds of Americans. Most of them were PLUs (people like us), leading normal lives, earning money, wondering about their children, and perhaps wearing their trousers one leg at a time. A smaller minority, but one that shapes public opinion within and outside the US, was a rough bunch of power-brandishers. The PLUs lived in Honolulu, San Francisco and New York; the latter in Washington DC.Over dinner one evening in Washington, a huge defence contractor showed his steel slip. I was arguing, “How can anyone say, ‘you’re either with us or against us?’” His swaggering answer: “Well, we have.” I stared at my stuffed potatoes.Within the buses and the first-time-encountered queues that went on for over a hundred yards on the JFK airport, I got to know my colleagues from around the world. All of us, I found, were concerned about terrorism but each of us had a local story of terror to tell. All of us were cynical and often scoffed about the US taking a holy stance. It is something to do with power, I guess.Are we, therefore, to live, as we have over the past five years, in a world where the powerful decide which government to topple, which UN resolution to ignore and when? And then see it being justified on grounds of greater good? Osama bin Laden can’t be seen and weapons of mass destruction can’t be found, but Afghanistan and Iraq deserved to be bombed. Now, it’s Iran’s turn. Who’s next? Certainly not Saudi Arabia, where the same, righteous US supports a dictatorship. Or, closer home, Pakistan.Ground Zero was still smoking. But on terra firma, Guy F. Tozzoli, who built the two towers where rubble now stood, brought the idea of WTC to life. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, he told us how he managed to stay alive the two times it was bombed. The first time, on February 26, 1993’s truck bomb, because he was early to work. And then on September 11, 2001’s plane bombs, when he was late and watched towers go down from Brooklyn bridge. His peace mantra: when nations trade, they can’t fight.
