We’re on lockdown here in Cambridge.
Since Monday the Boston bombing has come closer and closer to home until last night and a major shootout just one mile away at MIT’s campus.
We are in lockdown – what better time to write? Bread is rising on the stove, ready to be baked in an hour, and the bright daylight is shining through the windows making beautiful patterns on the wall. The bright yellow forsythia outside our windows belies the chaos that is going on at Norfolk street, less than a mile away.
Since midnight last night our neighborhood has been under a type of siege. While this is not unfamiliar to some of my readers, for Boston and Cambridge it is unusual. These are safe, small cities in the big scheme of things. Easily monitored and contained. All of this began last night but a few blocks from us. We are on full lockdown, not allowed to go out, told to stay away from our windows. All of the businesses are closed, all cab drivers have been ordered off the road, and the public transit system is completely shut down.
It’s eerily quiet other than the sirens in the distance and the occasional police log that we are trying to listen in on.
It turns out that the suspects live not far from us in Inman Square, just blocks past Central square. The younger of the two, Jahar, was in high school with my daughter. A “great kid” she says. She brings up an old prom picture that shows the two of them side by side at prom in 2011. Well-liked, well respected, a wrestler, a scholarship recipient.
And so the why’s begin. A reporter knocking on the door to interview my daughter, desperate to create a profile: who was this kid, who is this kid? Non-stop commentary that we are so tired of but can’t bring ourselves to turn off. I look at Jahar’s picture – he’s a kid, for God’s sake. He’s not fitting our well-crafted profile of what a ‘terrorist’ looks like. He’s so young. And he has brought a city to a standstill.
What happened between high school and now? It’s clear he and his brother had no family around – a sister in New Jersey who has not recently seen him, an uncle who admittedly has not been in touch with him. What loneliness, anger, ideology leads someone to go from seemingly well-adjusted to being chief suspect in the worst tragedy that has struck Boston since the planes left from Logan International Airport on 9/11?
“I do not have one single friend in America. I do not understand Americans…”*
I am acutely aware that the immigrant experience can be fraught with loneliness and isolation. I also know that unless you have experienced the loneliness of coming to this country from a completely different world then you can’t quite understand that. America does offer tremendous opportunity. But there are times when that opportunity is entwined with insecurity, loss, isolation, a constant feeling of not belonging. Lady Liberty doesn’t tell us this on her inscription.
Please understand –– I am not justifying the actions of this young man. He is an adult and made a choice. His actions are evil and should rightly be condemned. To suggest that he made this choice just because he was a lonely immigrant is ludicrous. There are many lonely immigrants and they don’t bomb cities.
Yet the why remains? And I, like so many, shake my head and long for answers. Long for the world to make a bit more sense.
Meanwhile, we are in lockdown in Cambridge. And it’s a reminder of the many places in the world that wake up every day and safety is a foreign word, an unknown concept. May I never forget that – because today we are on lockdown.
*quote from deceased terror suspect in photo essay.
Related articles
- Boston on lockdown as details pour in: Suspects told carjack victim they were marathon bombers (usnews.nbcnews.com)
Marilyn R. Gardner 
Very thoughtful post. Thank you.
I don’t remember who she was. but there was a public figure in England who said many people did not want to hear her point of view but that it is necessary to start focusing on the transition experience for immigrants. She said that providing food and lodging was not enough if Brits wanted to allow or welcome immigrants from around the world, because without a support system that made them, especially the young and most especially the young males, feel a sense of belonging, they would remain susceptible to the men grooming and recruiting them into terrorist organizations. I think the same applies to the U.S. but it isn’t only immigrants.
As others point out, most terrorist acts in the U.S. are committed by Americans. Most of them are young, white males. The U.S. has become a mean country throwing away our young males. (and increasing numbers of our females too, in order to feed the prison profit machine in the U.S.). As their families lost their jobs over the last 30 years and more recently the economy tanked, they flounder in public school, and come out unemployable or there are no jobs to be had, we address their anger and sense of disenfranchisement with ever-more-punitive laws that are sending large numbers of them into the criminal justice system and prisons.
Young people also no longer have the mentoring into adulthood by adults other than their parents that previous generations enjoyed. We’ve abandoned them, expecting their parents to do it all after their children are 12-years-old, but that isn’t developmentally normal.
What do young people do when they feel adrift, lonely, like losers, a disappointment to their parents, like outsiders at school, depressed? They show their depression through defiance and anger. With no adults other than their parents to patiently help them through their adolescence and early 20s, they are pretty lost. They want respect and to feel accomplished at something more than anything and they will do anything to save face. They turn to their friends, and some of them are vulnerable to the grooming and nurturing of white supremacist groups who intentionally target them. Others turn to the anti-government militias. And so forth. In those groups, lost young males find mentoring and they are provided ways to earn respect.
I think it is wise to ask why when these horrible things happen, because if we do, perhaps we can make changes that will help avoid future tragedies.
Thank you, again, for the balanced and well-written observations.
LikeLike
So well written Marilyn. I kept thinking Jahar must have been dupped into by his older brother. I thought maybe he had no idea what he was participating in but I guess thats just not the truth. How could he seem to have it all together all of those years in school and then this…
LikeLike
Thanks so much for coming by and reading. The whole thing is just so tragically sad. I just read a speech by the Chinese girl’s father at her funeral and tears are welling up. The layers of this run deep.
LikeLike
Wow. Marilyn. We were out of town for the Djibouti weekend (totally out of internet and news reach while snorkeling and climbing volcanoes), which is Th/Fri and so I missed all of this on the news and on your blog. Now I finally have a chance to sit down and catch up on things. All I can say is wow. You wrote so honestly and beautifully and life-giving-ly. Makes me want to cry. Thank you for staying compassionate and true through all the wildness of this life.
LikeLike
Your weekend sounds great Rachel! Wow – snorkeling and climbing volcanoes….no, your kids will never be satisfied with the suburbs :) It has been crazy – to add to that, last night we talked to one of our Chinese friends and the Chinese grad student from Boston University who was killed in the marathon was her friend. She went from hospital to hospital to find her until she finally got the news that she had died. Thanks for you words – they mean so much.
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be “on lockdown.”
LikeLike
Thanks so much for reading Trinity. It’s funny – on a day when you know you can go anywhere you please you’re happy to stay home; on a day where there is forced lockdown you begin to get antsy immediately!
LikeLike
That is so true. When my car is in the shop or I get snowed in…that is the time when I climb the walls wanting to go out.
LikeLike
I read this post yesterday, and I’m glad that I read it again today. Yesterday, I read it and thought ‘nothing’s been proven yet, this boy is just a suspect, he might not be evil, the police might be wrong.’ And then I went out to buy the paper this morning, and he and his brother held up a shop and shot a police officer, and when his brother was shot he had explosives strapped to him. So I guess I was wrong, and I feel sad that I was wrong but I don’t know why – surely it’s good that the police got the right guy? This boy is the same age as my sister, and maybe I wanted to believe that it hadn’t all gone so wrong for him so early in his life. Like you said in your post Marilyn, I don’t want to reduce or explain away what happened, the terrible thing that it appears that he did. For some reason I just feel sad that it was him that did it, which doesn’t make sense at all. We’re thinking of you all over here in the UK.
LikeLike
Nicola – it’s so good to hear from you! How have you been? How is university? I totally get why you feel sad that you’re wrong. I think there was just this hope – we had it too. I got up early yesterday morning to process and started crying about the whole thing from Monday until now. All the connections make it impossible to keep it at arms length – we felt ‘involved’ whether we wanted to or not. So glad you came by and thanks for thinking of us.
LikeLike
Oooh, WordPress only just told me that you replied to this! I am thrashing through the last parts of this semester – going to hand my third-year dissertation in soon (if I can stop obsessively fiddling with the formatting), and then the end really is in sight! I think you’re exactly right that is was just hope – which really I should be grateful for being able to feel, instead of feeling silly because I dared to hope. Am now watching as more young men get sucked into this whole nightmare – it just goes on and on.
LikeLike
Although I’ve not commented before Marilyn, I am very much thinking of you and Cliff there in Boston. How crazily close to home this whole thing must be for your family, especially as your daughter went to school with Jahar and they lived so physically close. I haven’t really had the words to say in response to your posts but I’m praying that you will be the carriers of God’s peace in the midst of chaos, fear and the stress of your city. Love, Sophie x
LikeLike
Sophie – this means so much to me. I had a good and long cry yesterday and ended up in the book of Lamentations….Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for his compassions never fail……thanks for the prayers for us to be carriers of peace. It’s a good prayer.
LikeLike
I’m loading up the city of Boston on my mat and I’m laying you all at the feet of Jesus too. May you all recover….
LikeLike
Love.This. Have read your post 4 times this weekend.
LikeLike
As you would expect, this is receiving international news coverage. I live in New Zealand, a small, relatively peaceful, multicultural place with a hugely diverse society, made up of indigenous Maori and immigrants from all over the world. I am grateful to have been able to read your post, and your insightful comments. It must be a difficult and puzzling time, particularly from your daughter’s perspective.
So far away, it is easy for us to distance ourselves from the personal trauma of this awful thing. I’d like to share with you the commentary from here, anyway. Many Americans will disagree, but here goes …
From here, America is seen as a violent, isolating society. Young white males are seen as the most violent. These young white males have been isolated from society. Sometimes their violence is aimed at schools or colleges. That these young men are lonely or isolated does not excuse their violence.
As an aside, from here, the threat to America does not seem to be from external terrorism, but domestic (as in national) violence. Yet so many emotional and physical resources seem to be poured into the treat of external terrorism. Young men from New Zealand, many of Pacifica or Asian descent are targeted as they arrive in the US, simply because their skin colour and bearding meets the racial profiling.
People will want answers as to how these young men could want to kill and maim others. There is no simple answer. There have been no answers to other massacres in the US. I hope that as events unfold, the emphasis is not placed on “immigrant”, but rather on “isolated”and “lonely”
Meanwhile, I feel sympathy for all those people whose lives have been marked by this destruction.
LikeLike
Thank you Denny – you know I love perspectives from beyond so I appreciated this tremendously. Without doubt, the perpetrators of shootings and attacks are white males and I think you have highlighted some huge and hard issues. And many of the recent attacks with guns have not been young men who are from immigrant families at all. I think the immigrant experience is a bit more at play with this case. Although by all counts, the younger brother was connected and seemingly more adjusted in high school. But we also know that high school kids can mask a lot. Thanks again for your thoughts.
LikeLike
Marilyn, I thought of your family when I heard one of them recently graduated from Cambridge Ringe. These words express what I am also feeling, thank you for writing them. I’ve looked through the window towards your apartment many times today thinking about you. Maybe we can get together again when all of this is over?! I have some exciting news to share with you :)
LikeLike
Colleen – I’m looking back at you ;) Thank you for this and for your gracious spirit in my not being in touch with you. I can’t wait to hear your news! Maybe this next week?!
LikeLike
Marilyn, As always, you express your thoughts and feelings so eloquently. You and your family must feel this is all so surreal – it just can’t be happening. Thank you for taking the time to share these contemplations. All the best, Terri
LikeLike
Thank Terri – I’ve had to take break from online so just watched a mindless movie..Nothing like Marisa Tomei and Bette Midler to help with that! I so appreciate your thoughts!
LikeLike
Marilyn, thinking of you, your family, all us. Gathering my thoughts to write. Asking the why, how could this happen questions too. Have you read Mary Pipher’s book: “The Middle of Everywhere, Helping Refugees Enter the American Community”? Just in the middle of reading it. Some answers in it. Of course every situation and person is so unique. Praying.
LikeLike
That sounds like a great read Julie!Thank you. I want to look it up. I just read the interview on NY Times with his dad. It’s so sad – it shows a family estranged. He wasn’t talking to his brothers, (Jahar’s uncles) the uncles in turn were not speaking with the kids….It’s so sad.
LikeLike
Marilyn, I’m reading your post while sitting in a Starbucks in our nation’s capital. Life is going on as usual, people walking the streets, laughing while enjoying a cup of coffee, however my heart and sole is with my friends in Boston. I am an immigrant. I love this country. And more, I love Boston. It is MY city. I am a marathon runner. I watched in horror from my home in Maryland (relocated down here 2 months ago) as the events of April 15th unfolds. As with you I cannot tear myself away from the media. I need to know that my city is fine, is fighting back and is safe.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – I love reading it. You make me want to come “home”.
LikeLike
Petra – I am so glad to hear from you! So many connections you have to what is going on. So much love to you – this is indeed YOUR city and it misses you.
LikeLike
And “with bread rising on the stove” states and demonstrates that we continue to live, enjoy the sighting of spring, hug our family and friends a little tighter and longer, and pray. This is so close to home, even close than the short mile, even in family photos. And I know of their loneliness (these immigrants, refugees, new Americans )that their isolation due to many factors creates. Marilyn, you touch some of these folks and offer them balm for that loneliness, in your greeting, your listening to their stories, your care.
LikeLike
Yes – I am more and more struck by our need for God to be both Global and Local – our deep need to know he is Sovereign in the world and has the big picture, but our equally important need to know he cares about the details of our lives, including bread making. Thanks for your words ….. I have a longing to work with refugees. Such a longing. Am praying that I will be able to move into that area. Refugees and immigrants have my heart.
LikeLike
be safe! may God with you!
LikeLike
Thank you so very much!
LikeLike
Stay safe!
LikeLike
Thanks Nathan – I appreciate your great tracking of the news.
LikeLike