By Ilene Lerner
BOSTON — I remember going to New York years ago and seeing Six Degrees of Separation, a play based on the assumption that all of us are separated by just six degrees. If I ever doubted it, I don’t any longer! The Boston Marathon bombing has taught me how connected we all are.
I was folding my laundry on Patriot’s Day, when my peace was shattered. My roommate, Lisa, came downstairs and appeared at my bedroom door to tell me there had just been explosions on the route of the Marathon, on Boylston Street. “Oh NO!” Quickly grabbing the television remote, I watched as countless others did, horrified, as a bomb exploded and an unmistakable roar rose and spread through the streets and into the air. In front of hundreds of spectators from everywhere, standing on the sidewalk, cheering for the runners as they closed in on the finish line, a runner in his seventies stumbled and fell to the ground from the force of the blast, All of them had come to enjoy the annual Boston Marathon, the oldest continuous marathon in the world.
The man fell, rolling onto his back, seeming okay, lifting his head and looking back, watching as police officers rushed over to assist him. This alarming sight was but a mild harbinger of what was to come. Ominous, white smoke issued into the air, obscuring the bitter aftermath, for a moment. The sound of the blast was still reverberating, when the second blast came. I had a momentary vision of the second plane hitting the second Twin Tower in New York, twelve years before. Bang! And more of those who came to cheer were felled. The impact sent shrapnel zooming into the bodies of children and adults, killing and maiming. A second of time separated the spectators from their former lives. All around, people lay bleeding, many grievously wounded. Blood painted the sidewalks red, as people ran to help the victims, lifting metal barricades from bodies unnaturally sprawled beneath them, tying tourniquets to stop the loss of blood, picking people up, running with them in their arms to a hoped-for safety and medical care.
Later the world learned that the bombs had wounded hundreds of people, and three had been killed. Boston had sustained a huge hit, a huge loss. I hurt for all the victims, living and dead. The eight-year boy who was killed, and his 6 year-old sister, who was taken to the hospital in very serious condition, still haunt my thoughts. My youngest grandchildren are a boy 8, and a girl, 6. I could imagine the loss. A series of phone calls from and to family and friends on Monday confirmed that we were all safe and unharmed, but as relieved as I was, I was still concerned for the victims. They were part of my family too, my Boston family, that was large and diverse.
Anxiety about what would happen next gripped the city. Were there more bombs and bombers out there? Who could have done the devil’s work and for what reason? What could the perpetrators have hoped to accomplish? A friend, Lewis, who is a college professor called to “check on me’” and said he was very concerned that people would feel differently from now on about attending such public events as the Marathon. For me, nothing had changed. “There are no guarantees in life. Anything can happen, anytime, anywhere. You could stay in your home, in your bed, under the covers, and a hole could open up and swallow you and your bed, or a tractor-trailer, a tornado, a flood, a fire could destroy your home and kill you. There is no safe place! So, I’m not going to change my life because of this. Anyway that would be letting the terrorists win!” My friend took a few moments to consider my perspective and said, “I guess that’s right!” Nevertheless, I wondered if the bombings would create a lasting sense of fear and timidity among the residents of Boston.
As I tossed and turned that night, sleep eluding me, I thought of the bombs made in America that had exploded in so many other countries in the past few years; I thought about the innocent victims of drone strikes, and that now we Bostonians knew first hand how terrifying this kind of violence could be. It seemed to me that violence had begotten more violence. On television, I heard calls to limit immigration, and withhold financial support from political refugees (because the boys’ parents had received assistance, as well as the older brother’s wife). Donald Trump tweeted, “What do you think of water boarding the Boston killer sometime prior to allowing our doctors to make him well? I suspect he may talk.”
Just a few voices advised examining the foreign policies of our own country. Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian columnist, warned of the abuse of governmental powers on Bill Moyer’s show, and pointed out how the government was becoming more and more secretive while the life of the average American was becoming less and less private.
On Tuesday I returned to work as an English teacher at the International Learning Center, across the street from City Hall Plaza. Police and army troops patrolled all the stations, and were much in evidence. As I emerged from the subway, I realized that Government Center might not be the safest place to be at this particular time! But the young men and women in uniform, checking out each commuter as they passed in the cool April morning air, quickly reassured me. I decided Government Center might be the safest place to be – with such a large army and police presence. How quickly we adapt to militarization!
The lobby of 3 Center Plaza was unusually empty as I stepped into an elevator and rose to the 9th floor. I wondered if it was because the public schools were on vacation, or because of the bombing or both. A colleague of mine, Glenn, always comes in before me, but that morning, the morning after the bombing, his classroom was empty. I looked for him in the copy room, but he wasn’t there either. Alarmed, I went to the office and asked our secretary, “Ana, where is Glenn?” “He left a message that he wont be coming in today. He’s in the hospital with his niece, who was hurt in the explosion.”
Thank God, Glenn wasn’t hurt, I thought. I hope his niece is ok! But how many more people will I know whose family or friends have become casualties before this is over? The following day Glenn returned to work. He told me that shrapnel had pierced his niece’s leg, but thankfully she had not sustained any permanent muscle damage. She was being kept in the hospital for a few days to be treated with antibiotics, and monitored to ensure that no infection developed. I heard that 14 people had lost limbs. How terrible and yet, how much worse it could have been!
Like the subways, on Tuesday, the school was uncharacteristically quiet. Many students didn’t show up. I had only 4 out of 13 that morning. Fortunately, none of them had been at the scene, but, on Wednesday, when most of the other students returned, Maria, a 65 year old student from Spain described standing across the streets when the bombs exploded, stepping over bodies, body parts, and blood in the street. As she left, she took photos she later sent to friends in Spain. (I informed her that the police wanted everyone to send them any photos they had taken, and she agreed to do that.) I will not soon forget the look in her eyes and the expression on her face as she relived the carnage of that moment.
Dani, 23, a lawyer from Colombia, reported that he had been in that exact spot 15 minutes earlier, but he had been hungry and along with several friends had left to have lunch in a nearby restaurant. Because it was in a basement, he and his friends had not heard the blasts. When they came out they were unaware of the events, and entered Copley Station, where police told them they could not leave the area from this stop. As they emerged they became aware of the commotion and learned what had happened. His mother had called from Colombia, badly frightened by the news, and wanted him to return home immediately. He was not sure if he would.
Although CNN and other news sources said the perpetrators were dark skinned, even after their photos were made public, by Thursday we knew the identities of the terrorists, as we saw photos of the two brothers carrying and dropping their backpacks full of bombs taken from surveillance tape at Lord and Taylor’s.
Suddenly I felt more willing to accept surveillance cameras in public places, but a friend warns me that we are losing our right to privacy, and that is a slippery slope. These bombers, Tamerlan and Djzhokar Tseumene, 25 and 19, are from Chechnya, in the Caucasus Mountains. Pure Caucasians! You can’t get much whiter than that! But people were looking for the boogeyman, and the boogeyman is black, or at least wears a black hat, right? ” Like other friends I know, I was relieved the bombers were not black or brown. I definitely didn’t think we needed a new witch-hunt on our dark skinned brethren
The brothers had attended and graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge. I live in Cambridge, and my son Conrad teaches Pre-Engineering at Rindge and Latin. In a phone conversation, he told me he knew both of them. The older brother, Tamerlan, was a big guy, a wrestler, and had been a student in his Pre-Engineering class. Tamerlan would give Conrad bear hugs. However, Conrad described an incident when Tamerlan had been in his classroom when he should not have been. Conrad asked him to leave. Tamerlan left, but, betraying Conrad’s trust, he was back a short time later with a school guard, who had caught him with some equipment from the lab.
Days after the bombing, the media reported that the boys’ mother could not come back to the U.S. because she was a convicted shoplifter, and I wondered if Tamerlan’s stealing was a reflection of his mother. I also asked Conrad if it could really be true what a classmate had said in a television interview, (after the identities of the Chechnyan brothers had been revealed on national television). He had described the younger boy, Dzjhokar, as ‘angelic’. “Yes,” Conrad replied to my amazement, “There was something angelic about him.”
In telephone conversations, I found out that my friend Mona’s granddaughter, N—–, had gone to school with Dzjokhar, and was very much upset. The nephew of close friends of mine had also been close to the younger bomber and Djzhokar, who even had attended his graduation party. My friend Brian had taken photos of Dzjokhar with his arm around the nephew’s shoulders. L—-, the nephew, had also been interviewed by the F.B.I. I cannot even imagine how tense that must have made him. Brian had talked with Dzjohkar and said he seemed very nice. How is it possible that this boy, who looked so sweet, and could be described as nice, even angelic, could commit such cold-blooded mayhem and murder? Is there an answer to this question and will we ever know it or understand?
The CNN reporter informs us that Tamerlan lives on Norfolk Street. A few streets away, my former sister-in-law, Betty, hears the sirens and helicopters overhead Wednesday night, but isn’t sure if it’s connected to the terrorism. It was! (Helicopter noise and sirens are not uncommon in the city). We see images of the police searching houses on Norfolk Street, and of a woman carrying a young child, dressed in a long black Muslim dress and head covering being escorted into a police car. Was that Tamerlan’s wife and child or someone else? I still don’t know.
An MIT policeman was shot and killed and a MBTA policeman was shot. One of my roommates, Susan, is an Emergency room nurse at Mt. Auburn Hospital where he had been taken. Susan told me he had nearly died from loss of blood after being shot, but was saved by the combined efforts of the Mt. Auburn medical staff.
Thursday afternoon and evening, two women friends arrive from N.Y. and N.J. to stay with me. One, Daria, is a documentary filmmaker, and her movie, is an official selection of the Boston International Film Festival. Ironically, the film is about all the latest developments in the production of prosthetics (artificial limbs for those who have lost a leg, an arm, a hand, foot.) Fourteen people lost legs in the attack. Daria, Karen, and I were looking forward to the screening on Friday evening. But when I turned on the radio Friday morning as I prepared to cook my breakfast, I heard the news: No trains or buses were running because there was a manhunt and everyone was instructed to stay at home. I slipped off my bathrobe and slippers, got back into bed, and slept soundlessly for two more hours. Later when we had all gotten up, we had coffee and hot cereal. Daria had realized that Out On A Limb was not going to be shown. The three of us were disappointed, but we understood that there were a lot of worst-case scenarios that had happened, and this was surely not one of them.
Daria, Karen and I could hear the helicopters, explosions and police sirens as the man-hunt continued throughout the day into Watertown, just a few miles from where I live, and the population experiences ‘lock-down’, a term associated with prison incarceration, for the first time. Later CNN would call it ‘sheltering at home’. I didn’t even take my dogs for walks, allowing them to relieve themselves in the yard, as we honored the authorities request to stay in-doors. Daria, Karen and I watch CNN obsessively hoping to hear a coherent story, but getting different facts, often conflicting; at some point we learned Tamerlan had been killed, shot by the authorities and run over by his brother during a shoot-out. Details were slow to leak out and fuzzy. Did they have one or two cars? Where exactly and when had Tamerlan been killed, in Cambridge or Watertown? We switched back and forth between CNN and local channels, listened to public radio trying to piece together a coherent story.
Hundreds of Police and FBI rush to Watertown where the younger bomber is thought to be hiding. My former son-in-law Terry and his wife live just a few blocks from where the younger brother lies wounded in a boat parked in someone’s backyard. On Facebook Terry wrote that a suspicious package was found on his street. Karen’s daughter, alone in her apartment in Waltham, near Watertown, calls, and says “Mom, you never had to deal with (foreign) terrorism when you were young!” How true! And now Rindge and Latin would have a new legacy. Before the bombing, its most famous alumnae were Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Now these two young men would be its most (in) famous graduates.
The usual assortment of ‘experts’ was trotted out to edify the public whenever there were no new facts or information to share. A female psychologist assured us, that just because one son in a family turned out to be a murderer, it didn’t condemn his brother to the same fate. We were so relieved to find this out! Laughing together at the absurdity of the ‘experts’, I was so glad I was not alone, that my friends and I could relieve the tension of the day by eating, chatting, and even joking around! By evening, it was over, the younger brother had been captured, as much, it seemed because of his and his brother’s ineptness in car-jacking, and a homeowner’s discovery of the intruder in his boat parked in the backyard, as because of shoot-outs with police and door to door searches of the neighborhood. ‘Lock-down’ was now over. We were free to go out! In Watertown, Cambridge, Boston, Medford and everywhere, Americans could rejoice. The emergency was over!
Out On a Limb was rescheduled for Sunday night. Unfortunately, except for fellow filmmakers, a prosthetics doctor, Karen and I, members of the public were absent. Nevertheless, Daria’s documentary wins first place, and Daria dedicates the award “to the many people who had lost limbs in the tragic events.” She later wrote, “The best reward would be for the public to become engaged in the issues that affect people who have lost limbs. In America, it is sometimes easier to get a heart replaced than a prosthesis!”
Even after the death of the older brother and the capture of the younger one, the interconnectedness of us all kept showing up. Another roommate, returned from Maine, on the second Wednesday, after the attack. Linda is a case manager at Children’s Hospital. I thought she had escaped the excitement when she had returned to her home in Maine the previous Friday afternoon, but when I asked her, she told me that the injured children had been brought to Children’s on Thursday and that Michelle Obama had visited on Friday, so no, she had not missed anything. And my neighbor, Bobby, told me he had done some contracting work for the family of the Medford woman who was killed. Medford, like Boston, and Watertown borders Cambridge.
The Fund to assist the survivors of the attack is appropriately named The One Fund. Six degrees of separation? It’s got to be less.
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Ilene Lerner is a freelance writer based in Boston. She may be contacted via ilene.lerner@sdjewishworld.com