haunted by the memory of that FATAL morning....
haunted even by the SMELL of the EXPLOSIONS....
as if it had occurred just a moment before...
10 years had passed...
10 years of FEAR and RESENTMENT and RACISM and MOSQUES...
of BURKAS and SUICIDE BOMBERS....
of SHARIA this and ALLAH that...
10 years of the THREAT of TERROR poking its nose around every corner....
around every bend...
Perhaps it was not a CONCENTRATION CAMP they were living in per se...
But it was surely a PRISON reality all the same...
Waiting ALWAYS for the other shoe to drop...
HATRED had emerged STRONG from that MESS of BLOOD and GUTS and SINEW and RUBBLE...
from that catastrophic haze of SMOKE and BURNING FLESH....
She would never forget the scene that afternoon....
thousands of people walking up the avenues...
THE WALKING DEAD....
They had taken the 'then' baby to the park....
The other parents had done the same...
in a WEAK ATTEMPT at some modicum of normalcy...
as the throngs of New Yorkers continued by on their death march....
EVERYTHING had changed on that day...
irreparably...irrevocably....
She shivered as the images took shape yet again in her mind's eye....
haunted even by the SMELL of the EXPLOSIONS....
as if it had occurred just a moment before...
10 years had passed...
10 years of FEAR and RESENTMENT and RACISM and MOSQUES...
of BURKAS and SUICIDE BOMBERS....
of SHARIA this and ALLAH that...
10 years of the THREAT of TERROR poking its nose around every corner....
around every bend...
Perhaps it was not a CONCENTRATION CAMP they were living in per se...
But it was surely a PRISON reality all the same...
Waiting ALWAYS for the other shoe to drop...
HATRED had emerged STRONG from that MESS of BLOOD and GUTS and SINEW and RUBBLE...
from that catastrophic haze of SMOKE and BURNING FLESH....
She would never forget the scene that afternoon....
thousands of people walking up the avenues...
THE WALKING DEAD....
They had taken the 'then' baby to the park....
The other parents had done the same...
in a WEAK ATTEMPT at some modicum of normalcy...
as the throngs of New Yorkers continued by on their death march....
EVERYTHING had changed on that day...
irreparably...irrevocably....
She shivered as the images took shape yet again in her mind's eye....
