A Chapter Closed

News of the death of Osama bin Laden has reached us here in Azerbaijan. A text message sent out by the CD erroneously announced that President Obama had gone on the air to speak about the death of “Obama bin Laden,” something that certainly won’t help Obama’s fight against the Birthers and those that pay too much attention to his middle name.

Ten years ago, I came home from a Boy Scout meeting to see the live coverage of the World Trade Centers falling. We didn’t know exactly what was going on, but knew that the attack had caused a huge amount of damage and deaths. On the other side of the world we still felt the repercussions. Friends went home, recalled by the government or by their companies. Security was raised at the school. I listened repeatedly to the Concert for NY album. Just as for those who were in the United States, it was a time that we could never forget, but I always noticed how different and slightly distant the effects of the event were in Indonesia. I was more directly touched by the bombing of a nightclub on the island of Bali in 2002, in which a teacher from our school died.

I can’t help feeling that it is a bit fitting that just as I was abroad for the events of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath, I am abroad now, as the man who claimed to be the mastermind behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. Even though bin Laden’s death does not mark the end of al-Qaeda, nor does it mean the end of the War on Terror, his death does create a symbolic bookend.

Here I am, abroad again, just as I was when the towers fell. But it is not just as it was, for the world has changed, and I have changed, in the past ten years. I was in middle school in 2001. I lived in a rented house in Jakarta with my family. We had a maid, a driver, a gardener, just as most expats in Indonesia did. Now, I live with another family, an Azerbaijani family, though a family I can still call my own in a way. I work at a middle school. I shop and cook for myself. In these past ten years, I have adapted to American high school life, participated in an exchange program in Japan, gone to college, studied abroad in India, graduated from college, and entered the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan. I have grown physically, of course, but have also changed in other ways as well.

There have been constants, as well. There are people, two friends in particular, who have been with me over that time. One predated Indonesia, one I met there. And though I am on the far side of the world, they are still my friends, people I would not want to be without. In the ten years that have passed, what has bin Laden’s life been like? Has he had friends that he has been in contact with this whole time? Has he changed in these ten years? He has become such a symbol for the fight against terrorism that it is easy not to think of him as a person, but an evil entity that lurks in caves and makes videos condemning America and the West, or a cartoon character lampooned by the likes of South Park or Family Guy. I wonder if, at the end, when his life came to a close, how he looked back at the ten years that have passed since the attack in New York.