The View From Overseas

ByABC News
October 10, 2001, 12:40 PM

-- While the events of Sept. 11 unfolded, thousands of Americans living abroad were sharing the nation's collective horror, shock and grief. Here, some "expats" describe in their own words, and in their own way what it was like to be time zones away when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked.

CASCAIS, PORTUGAL

BERLIN, GERMANY PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC SAME VILLAGE, MANUFAHI DISTRICT EAST TIMOR SINGAPORE CAIRO, EGYPT MADRID, SPAIN JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA PAPUA NEW GUINEA TOKYO, JAPAN

CASCAIS, PORTUGAL

On Sept. 11, my sister in Atlanta had called me in Portugal to complainthat she had stomach flu and was home from work. We had a long, hilarious,homey conversation. We hung up. She called back immediately. "FYI," shesaid, "a plane just hit the World Trade Center."

I ran to turn on the news. Within seconds my Portuguese husband called fromhis office to tell me.

I watched the news for half an hour before decidingto take my 3-year-old son back to his nursery school. It was only his secondday. I had not intended for him to go all day immediately, but I didn't wanthim to see the terrible images on the television, and I had to see them.

Idrove him back to the little school on auto-pilot, left him there screamingand reaching for me, and returned home in time to watch the towers fall. Icried as if I had been wounded. My Portuguese baby sitter ran from thekitchen to see what had happened to me, but I couldn't answer her, couldonly gesture at the screen. She sat and cried with me. My baby daughterslept.

One of my closest friends is an Army officer, in Washington, D.C. I left apanicked message on his wife's cell phone. I sent a mass e-mail to otherfriends in NYC and in the D.C. area who may have been affected. "Check in,please," it said. Please, please, check in.

For the whole first week I don't think that I ever turned off the news. Iwas never so grateful for cable and e-mail.

The first shock faded. I began to get the e-mails about how this was aresult of American foreign policy.

I sent them on to my siblings and to myArmy friend, asking what they thought. They returned furious phone calls,referring to me as "Osama bin Holly." I played devil's advocate. I neededhelp in formulating responses.

I was not living in America, surrounded byflags and a great rush of warmth and solidarity. I was in Europe, withpeople who thought that what happened was a terrible thing but who did notfeel so personally affected by it, and who in fact, maybe did feel a littlebit that it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

America isn't the mostpopular kid on the block.

What has happened since? My husband's family, who are intensely politicallyaware, have been grudgingly won over by Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell. The feelingthat I have from them and others around me who would not hesitate to roundlycriticize the U.S. has generally been one of surprised approval.

I wonder when my husband and I will feel safe about taking the kids on anairplane to the U.S. again. I wonder how long it will be before I see myfamily. For the first time in many years, I am homesick.

My husband chastises me for striking up conversations with random strangers,since it inevitably comes up that I am American. Never mind that they areusually other mothers in the park with kids. You never know, he says.

The embassy sends out bulletins urging Americans abroad to keep a lowprofile, limit movements, vary travel times and routes, to not leavevehicles unattended.

They have been warning us about bin Laden, "who in thepast has not distinguished between military and civilian targets," sincelong before Sept. 11. I do not fly my flag. I do not dress my childrenin the clothing that they have with American flags on it. I look askance atpeople whom I know are not American wearing fashion statements decoratedwith American flags. I think, "Are they idiots?"

Last Friday, my son asked to take a small American flag to school to showhis teacher. He loves the flag. When he sees it on television, he shouts,"Tenho igual!" (I have the same!) He doesn't go to an American school. Thereare people of several nationalities there. Maybe it's not a good idea forpeople to know that he is American, I thought.

I let him take the flag. It is a small rebellion against fear.

Holly Raible Blades

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BERLIN, GERMANY

Disbelief and disconnect. These were the first words that scurried across thebrain as the World Trade Center crumbled. Television transmitted terror acrosscontinents in only a matter of seconds. It was the mind that took hours tocatch up.

Instantly to the Internet trying to figure out who was making what of thishorror. Jumbled words in fragmented calls to other expats living here inBerlin to make sure they were watching hell at home.

That evening, a group of Americans gathered to do nothing other than watch CNNand the BBC, the English-language news networks to which we had access. Therewas little chatting and lots of watching. Most everyone present had someonethey loved in either New York or Washington, many in both cities. Franticattempts to cross the Atlantic with the help of an operator. Checking e-mailover and over again in case someone had been able to reach a computer morerapidly than a phone. A group dinner offering a dash of laughter over a plateof shock. More television. More attempts to reach home.

The strangest moment came upon emerging from our impromptu evening of adhesionto the television: Life on the city's streets rolled on as usual. Certainlythe attack was the only topic in Berlin, both in the city's newspapers and onits televisions, but all the day's events remained physically thousands ofmiles away no smoke snaked up Berlin's streets, phone lines worked withoutproblems, subways ran and stores were open.

Struggling to grasp what it was that had taken our country's imaginationhostage, fighting to feel what it was that Americans at home were enduring,seeking out American papers, watching more television, feeling guilty for notbeing there to share the mourning and the mornings to come. This was what lifeabroad became.

Gayle Tzemach

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CZECH REPUBLIC

This morning I arrived at the offices of the newspaper where I work inPrague to find a workman blocking my way. He was hunched over a welding toolthat was throwing off a shower of sparks.

My first thought was: My God, that man isn't wearing safety glasses.My second thought was: My God, where did that giant steel door come from?

Then I remembered. Last week, our general manager pried the 3-foot PraguePost sign off the front of our building. The steel door being installed infront of the lift that takes people from the street directly to our floorwas yet another attempt to make our largely ex-pat staff feel safe.

We all get shiny new keys on Monday.

The big news here is that the Defense Ministry has finally settled on whoamong them will give the order to shoot down a hijacked civilian plane.(There are no skyscrapers in the Czech Republic.) Parliament is debatingwhether to give the secret police more powers. Four armored tanks are parkedin front of the headquarters of Radio Free Europe. The army chief triggereda gas mask buying spree when he suggested that an infected terrorist mightsuddenly appear in a Prague movie theater.

And the mild-mannered former-dissident president, Vaclav Havel, got so angryover nationalistic remarks made by the leader of the Civic Democratic Partythat he chastised him in the press for trying to surpress Czech citizens'right to free speech.

From what I can tell, it's the same kind of stuff that's going on inAmerica.

But it's hard to tell. I have a fractured idea. I read The New York Timesand Washington Post online, check major news sites, scan Slate, peruse TheGuardian and fall asleep to the BBC World Service. But I'm not experiencinganything close to what my friends and family in New York, Minneapolis,Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco are.

I'm glad. I hear it's awful. I hear no one can sleep and everyone isdepressed. My sister e-mailed to ask if I thought she should buy a gas mask.A friend in New York is traumatized because his doctor told him the air inhis neighborhood isn't safe to breathe.

When I walk through the cobblestone streets of this fairytale city, I'msecretly relieved I left New York last July. Here, I smell coal smoke, notburning cement rubble. Here, I see flyers announcing classical concerts, notthe faces of the missing and dead. I haven't had to read what someone waswearing when they went to work Sept. 11 as I wait to cross a street.

We had three minutes of national silence after the attacks. Air raid sirenswent off and I leaned out my window and wondered what I was doing here.Lately I'm wondering whether I'll recognize the place I left.

Everyone's buying flags? Journalists who criticize Bush have been fired? The"Star Spangled Banner" is the top song? Arab-looking people are being turnedaway from airport boarding gates?

I feel like going home immediately so I'm not caught outside the walls ofFortress America.

I feel like staying put so I don't have to get on a plane.