We had been raising our wine glasses to toast Paris when the shouting began, and with our meals hardly eaten, we mournfully watched as they picked the poor soul off the street, shoved him into the ambulance, and drove away. On the way to the Louvre, our tour guide told us that the suicide rate in Paris was astronomically high because of the country’s economic circumstances. He said that the Eiffel Tower had become such a popular place for people to jump off that it now had to be wrapped with barbed wire fencing in certain places where people could gain access to jump into the Paris sky and certain death. He went on to say that Parisians were not callous, but numbed from the sight of seeing people die this way.
I sat slumped in my seat, unable to rid myself of the vivid images in my mind: the man dying, the boy with the soda can. I shuffled through the rest of that weekend in Paris like a zombie. A large part of the wonder and excitement of being in Paris, the “city of lights,” had vanished.
I was twenty-four years old when I rode on that tour bus to Paris, and that event has stayed with me through all the years since; it crouches in the corner waiting in some deep dark recess of my mind. I have learned to live with it and move on with my life. I have quietly become uncomfortably numb.
But my experience in Paris turned out to be only a prelude.
When I returned to my dormitory room at Ramstein AB I was exhausted from the weekend trip; instead of walking to work as usual, down the narrow wooded path that separated the working and living sections of the base, I climbed aboard the small shuttle bus that would take me to my post.
It was on this morning that the truly unthinkable happened. A bomb exploded as we passed USAFE headquarters; I thought the bus had hit the curb but actually, the curb had hit the bus. What remained of the car bomb was a mass of twisted, burning metal; it sat spitting and smoking in front of what was left of the entrance to the USAFE-NATO headquarters building.
I remember being very shook up, but I had not sustained any physical injures that anyone could see. In shock, sitting still in the seats, inside the safety of the shuttle bus, the passengers traveled on again, after a brief stop, to their separate destinations on the base. Everyone moved on.
Article comments
1 - roger nowosielski
A beautiful piece, Jeannie, and so moving. I only hope we should all try to understand you better and see more than mere pixels on the computer screen.
2 - Jon Sobel
Beautifully expressed.
3 - roger nowosielski
Well, Jeannie. I'm not alone. You have another admirer.
Check Jon's blogsite, though. You'll find him to be quite talented, too.
There's hope for America, after all, if it keeps on producing so many talented people and artists. I don't want to be stinking rich. I'll just take "the room with a view" (E. M. Forster), or better yet, "a room of my own" (Virginia Woolf), and I'll be happy. And cases of cheap white vine so I could finish my masterpiece.
Screw the rest.
4 - Jeannie Danna
Thank you Roger, actually I just popped back out on to this page!
I did check out Jon's blogs, in-fact I have The Stone Coyotes on my browser right now..:)
5 - Jeannie Danna
Thank you Jon, I don't know what to say, now there's a first!
6 - roger nowosielski
Just looked at it. What's the connection with Jon Sobel?
It mentions Elmore Leonard's "Be Cool," another great writer. But the one that will really blow you away is none other than James Ellroy. If you think that "The Black Dahlia" is any good, I've got news for you.
Read "American Tabloid" and weep.
7 - Christopher Rose
Another great piece of writing, Jeannie. Just remember to hold on to the love and let go of the paranoia.
8 - roger nowosielski
Just occurred to me, Jeannie. The events you describe remind me of John le Carré's Absolute Friends.
The story is told from the opposite point of view - that of "the terrorists'" - but the scene of action is also in Germany and the story is contemporary.
You should look it up.
9 - Jeannie Danna
Thanks Chris, I will try, but you know that comment thread..:) ha ha