9/11 as Viewed on a London Television Set

“Bad news from America today,” the cabbie casually mentions as he transports us across London.

We are three days into a long-awaited trip to England, and it’s about 4 in the afternoon. We’ve just finished touring Buckingham Palace and we’re headed to the Tower of London. He makes his comment in such an off-hand way, I assume he’s going to tell us about the death of some celebrity or maybe an earthquake in Los Angeles.

What I’m not expecting are words like “planes” and “World Trade Center” and “terrorists.” It’s so jarring we have to ask him to tell us again before we start in on the third degree: Was it intentional? There are other planes that haven’t struck yet? Has anyone claimed responsibility? How many people were killed? Why would they do it?

We arrive at the tower not quite sure what to do. We sort of stumble onward, and look for fellow Americans to shake down for what they know. One of the first people we meet is a woman from Chicago’s Midway neighborhood, of all places. She knows less than we do.

In a courtyard, we come upon three people who are crying. They’re clearly American, so we ask if they’re all right. No, they say. They’re from New York and they have friends who worked in the World Trade Center; no one has been able to reach them.

And thus begins our surreal European adventure. We read every paper we can get our hands on – there are a lot of them and they seem to publish around the clock. We’re glued to the tiny TV mounted to the wall in our miniscule hotel room.

We don’t know whether to bless CNN or curse it as we watch over and over again as the planes fly into the towers, as the buildings, whoosh, go down in a slow-motion collapse. We can’t get enough of the eerie night shots of excavation equipment backlit by giant searchlights. And we watch the stories, one sadder than the next, of people looking for loved ones, desperately holding out hope as they pin photos to walls and trees and buildings.

And we’re stuck. Unless we feel like boarding an ocean liner, we aren’t going to be heading home anytime soon.

Worse, we don’t know quite what to do. If we carry on as tourists, are we shallow and callous? Are we being disrespectful? If we forget and start enjoying ourselves, what does that say about us?

But we do carry on. There’s only so much CNN you can watch when there’s so little new information to be had.

The journalist in me is angry. Of all the times to be out of the country; I should be at my desk at my newspaper, putting out the paper’s only extra edition in its history, working around the clock on a story so world-changing there will never be another like it (God willing) in my lifetime.

I will never know what it was like to watch this tragedy unfold in real time. I will never have that communal experience of abject fear because you don’t know where the next plane might strike, of feeling that sense of Americans pulling together and standing as one.

But I tell you what I do have that I would not have had were I not in England on 9/11: The world view of a tragedy happening thousands of miles away. Here are some examples:

• One couple heard us speaking, determined we were American and offered their condolences. They told us to “stay strong,” as if we were in imminent peril of going into the fetal position at any moment.
• One woman said, “You were there for us, and we’ll be there for you.” I assumed she was referring to World War II. It’s a point driven home when we tour St. Paul’s Cathedral and come upon an area dedicated to American servicemen and women who died in the war. It may also explain why Tony Blair was so uncharacteristically keen on joining George Bush in taking on Saddam Hussein.
• One guy in a bar told us Americans were finally getting a taste of the terrorism Brits have lived with for years, as if the IRA blowing up a pub was in the same category as flying planes into skyscrapers. Not to belittle the horrendous nature of that type of crime, but it's a bit apples to oranges.
• The British understanding of the interconnectedness of world politics was nothing short of extraordinary. Not only were many of those we spoke to well-versed in Middle Eastern issues, particularly those between different countries and different religious groups, they knew the names of many of the players in American government. I would dare anyone in this country to name the British equivalents of the secretary of defense, secretary of state or attorney general. I know I can’t.

In hindsight, I’m not sure I would have given up my British experience to have been in America on 9/11. While I find myself weirdly removed when people start sharing their stories of watching things unfold on TV or being unnerved by not seeing planes in the sky, I find myself thinking back on those responses from people who saw the tragedy from a different perspective and knowing that my world view will never be the same.