INDEPTH: SNIPER ATTACKS
Viewpoint: A city hiding in fear
Tara Mansbridge | Updated October 10, 2003
Tara Mansbridge is a first-generation Canadian living in Washington, D.C. She is the Managing Editor of TomPaine.com.
It's strange, really. The last time I wrote about what it feels like to live in Washington, D.C., was on September 11, 2001. I was taking a short sabbatical from work and sleeping in when I heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then two. Then the Pentagon. Cellphone lines were jammed, and my network of friends played phone tag on voicemail.
That evening, friends and colleagues from Maryland, Virginia and D.C.
converged, unannounced, at a single location. We joked and sat closely
together. We were doing whatever we could to fight off the bewildering
shadow of what had happened.
Now it's happening again. This time, though, it's much more personal.
The echoes of September 11 are clear and crisp.
"You need to move home," said my mother, after she heard about the last sniper attack. She's reasonably protective and would be more so if she
knew that I had driven by the Home Depot in Falls Church, Va.,
somewhere between 9:05 and 9:10 p.m. the night of Linda Franklin's
death.
She had voiced the same opinion a little more than 24 hours earlier, when I was sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table north of Barrie, Ont. The first time the comment was motivated by an empty-nest feeling and a
desire to have her eldest a little closer to home. The second time, the
command was motivated by pure fear.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, I drove warily by the military police stationed on every corner and
muttered about the unnecessary show of force.
Now, with a hunter of humans on the loose, I drive warily into gas
stations, just wishing those MPs were somewhere in sight. When I went to
get groceries yesterday, a man walked across the parking lot carrying a
large bouquet of flowers at head level. "No head shots," he joked, as I
passed him at a quick jog, heading for the safety of the store.
Groups of volunteers have organized to pump gas for those paralyzed by
fear. I thought I was immune to such hysterics, writing triumphant
e-mails to friends and family that this maniac wasn't going to change my
behaviour, that the intrepid Canadian in D.C. refused to live in fear.
It was all bluster, though, as I nursed my almost-out-of-gas car to the
nearest station Wednesday morning. I had got in late the night before
and, rather than fill up with gas before heading for bed, something I
usually wouldn't think twice about, I had opted for a morning run to
the station. Broad daylight is much safer than pitch black, and there
are always more people to act as human shields.
My companion at the next pump that morning said a jocular "Hello!" and then added, ruefully, "This is a dangerous activity these days."
Rumours are flying again in the D.C. area. When I left my office at TomPaine.com to go get lunch, the servers at the sandwich place across the street warned me in hushed tones that there had been another
shooting in Chinatown - an area that's about three blocks away from my
apartment. Blood started pounding in my head, and I whispered a guilty
prayer that the victim wasn't anyone I knew.
Grabbing my sandwich, I hurried back across the street to my office, all thought of a leisurely lunch abandoned. I wondered if I should call some of my friends to let them know I was O.K.
There was, of course, no shooting in Chinatown, as a quick check of the Web confirmed. I felt slightly foolish. I hadn't fallen for the
rumour that there had been a car bomb at the State Department a year ago
when people had mentioned it - but now, with a killer in the area, I was
falling prey to the kind of fear I had resisted vehemently back then. Am
I now going to flinch every time I hear a loud noise?
On Monday, after the shooting, my friends again gathered, without
prompting, to talk, and laugh and be together. We had played phone tag
earlier when news of the shooting had become widespread - this time the
phone lines weren't clogged.
"You've heard? Yeah. No, I'm fine. Where's Jacqueline?"
"No, no one was there. We would have heard if it was Terasita by now,
right?"
In the living room of someone's house we made each other promises. I
won't go to a gas station alone. I'll call when I get in. In a way, this
killer has become a more effective terrorist than the al-Qaeda pilots.
In October 2001, Washington was a city standing in defiance. In October
2002, Washington is a city hiding in fear.
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