"Bombings in Moscow"

The recent terror bombings in Paris and the Russian flight bring up not just sadness for me at a world seeming lost in a never ending cycle of violence, but also memories of my time in Moscow. Though bringing no answers for those feeling afraid, angry and helpless at these acts of inconceivable malevolence, for me reflecting on the difficult times after the Domodedovo bombings and writing about the experiences we all went through following it is cathartic.

Like me, for many Americans the terror attacks on September 11th, 2001 in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania were, and still

are, a defining moment of our lives. I remember where I was, sitting in Algebra class in Orono Middle School in Minnesota, having just returned from what seemed at the time like a routine early year fire drill. Then suddenly over the loudspeaker the principle's voice informed us of the attack on the first tower (the second tower had not yet been hit). At that moment all eyes immediately turned to the now turned on television screens where we, in shock, watched as the events of that cataclysmically tragic day unfolded before our eyes. Yet also like many Americans, the shock, anger and hurt came from a place of general human sympathy for the families who had lost loved ones, anger that the sanctity of our safe world had in one day been completely annihilated, and general fear, fear of what would come next. Yet this did not come from a place of personal connection. New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania were over a thousand miles away. Outside of the general feeling of outrage at the attacks on my fellow countrymen, I had no personal connection to the tragedy. Minneapolis was not a target that day.

Almost a decade later, I was preparing for my first real job out of college. It was exciting, exhilarating and at the same time slightly terrifying. I was jumping on a Lufthansa jet taking me to Moscow, Russia via Frankfurt, Germany. The fear was not necessarily going to Russia, having travelled extensively throughout the world prior to the trip including actually having studied in St. Petersburg and Moscow as a college student in the summer of the previous year, I felt reasonably confident of my ability to survive there. The job itself of being an ESL teacher, for a person who hated public speaking, brought the majority of the fear (though more on that experience later). A small part of the fear was going to a city that had just experienced a metro bombing a few months earlier. The violence was no longer in a city a thousand miles away, it was going to be right there.

The first five months in Russia brought a ton of excitement and adventure punctuated by moments of danger. However, nothing prepared me for January 24th, 2011 when a young man from the Caucuses, a region full of near continuous violence and strife for much of the post-Soviet years, detonated a suicide bomb in Domodedovo International Airport in southern Moscow. That moment, the fear and terror was right down the road. Having been in that airport, walking through the international arrivals gate just three weeks earlier, exacerbated the feeling of the violence hitting home. As the news broke, the younger students did not quite comprehend what was happening. To those under the age of 12, it seemed just as distant as the 9/11 attacks had been for me a decade earlier. Yet when the evening classes rolled around and the adults started to file in the change in the atmosphere was perceptible. Some had the weary look of people who had gone through so much upheaval in their lives that this was simply another tragedy to endure through. For others, many of them younger adults and college students, the anger was barely restrained. They had few if any memories of the fall of the Soviet Union and the chaotic times that followed in the ‘90’s. Instead, many had not too distant memories of the two horrific wars in Chechnya.

The connections between Chechnya and the suicide bomber were obvious to many, fueling the feeling of fear and anger that were exacerbated by the memories of those past nightmarish conflicts. The next few weeks were trying for all as the anguish, fear and anger begged questions that, like the most recent attacks, found their answers in the same place, extremists and zealots wishing to strike fear in an innocent populace. Though complicated by the contentious past between Russia and Chechnya, nonetheless the feeling of pain and hurt were real, and the feeling of anger unavoidable.

This first-hand experience of a tragedy so close to home and the subsequent weeks were difficult for all of us. The feeling of helplessness was rampant, and the desire for vengeance of some sort was infectious. Though eventually those initial feelings subsided, the memories of that moment in time still endure. I empathize with the people of France and Russia, once again trying to figure out how to survive through another tragedy, with the fear that this will happen again and the feeling of impotence to stop it. Like most, I have no answers. All I have is the memories of a tragedy, the feeling of fear at the unknown and perhaps the inevitable.

#DomodedovoBombings