In the 20th century, perhaps only one decade can be said to have been lived not only in a state of optimism (like the 60s) but without dread. The nineties was the decade that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall (signaling the defeat of Communism and the end of the Cold War) and for a while there was no looming threat that took centre-place in our social narrative. But for children born the year the Wall fell, on the dawn of their teens, their ‘innocent’ childhood ended with the destruction of the World Trade Centre. And with the fall of the Towers, the world entered a new era of dread – of global terrorism.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York times have a story each on the subject well worth reading. The firstis about those 12 year olds- born the year the Berlin Wall fell) who were emotionally unprepared for an event as unthinkable as the attacks on 9/11. Unlike their parents and grandparents generations who grew up with “duck and cover” or dealt with emotionally catastrophic events like the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the children on 11 September 2001 were not prepared for this sort of shock.
These children are now 20, have graduated high school, are of college age and are now beginning to articulate the trauma as adult.
They’ve been marked by 9/11 more than they know. It was their first moment of historical consciousness. Before that day, they didn’t know what history was; after that day, they knew they were in it.
The second story is a counterpoint to this one, in which an American Muslim parent speaks about the experience of explaining to her eight-year-old – born into the post 9/11 world – how that world is, particularly for Muslims in America.
She says:
Mass murder is impossible to explain to yourself, let alone a child. But how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?
Two stories worth reading.
