Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Leaving Vietnam, New York Times Blog, November 7, 2007

Leaving Vietnam

By Huong Sutliff

[The following entry, written by the author at 13 years old, recalls the day of her adoption at age 6.]

Dear Journal,

It was a cool breezy day in the fall of 1997. I remember the precise moment, sitting crouched in a chair, squeezing the suitcase in my hands. The room I was in smelled of freshly brewed tea. I sat there in the uncomfortable leather chair just gripping my suitcase. A young woman sat across from me scribbling away at her desk. From a distance I heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. The knob slowly turned and in the doorway stood a man dressed in a navy blue suit holding papers in his hands.

He signaled for me to come with him. The expression on his face did not comfort me but I stood up and walked towards him. A lump grew in my throat. He looked at me and we both walked down the hallway in silence, When we reached the end of the hall, he asked me to wait. He said he would be right back. As he left, I saw two figures enter the orphanage gates. They were silhouettes. Minutes that seemed like hours passed, and the man returned. “They are here,” he said with a glint in his eyes. My heart began to beat faster and faster as we walked down the stairs. Our footsteps echoed throughout the building. When we opened the door my heart felt like collapsing.

There were people standing in a circle. I could not make out who they all were. I followed the man through the crowd pushing my small body through the towering figures. As we broke through a woman and a man stood side by side holding hands and whispering to each other. The woman had pale white skin and wore a white shirt and black pants. The man wore a shirt and khaki pants. The woman spoke but I could not understand her words. She looked at me and spoke again and still I had no idea what she was saying….

I didn’t know what to do, where to look, what to say. I gazed helplessly at my hands. The woman bent down next to me holding out her hands again. She waited for me to touch them. I slowly lifted my hands and placed them into hers. I sighed. It was a feeling of relief and I hugged her as she held me tightly. I wasn’t thinking. I just kept holding on. It seemed like a long time we both stayed holding on to each other. Finally, we let go.

All the other children at the orphanage peered through the windows. They waved as we made out way towards the gates to leave on our journey to my new home.

Abid Katib/Getty Images

Palestinians inspected their homes for damage after the earthen embankment around a sewage reservoir filled and collapsed on March 27, 2007, flooding Umm al Nasser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Steven Erlanger, Gaza’s Reflection in a Foul Threat - New York Times, November 6, 2007

UMM AL NASSER, Gaza, Oct. 30 — Fahmi al-Abrak, 70, was at home on March 27 when a lagoon of human waste broke through its sand embankment and hurtled downhill, inundating this poor village of Bedouins in northern Gaza. “It rose to here in 15 seconds,” he said, pointing to a discolored line on the walls, four feet above ground.

Residents of Umm al Nasser pulled belongings from their homes after the wave of sewage struck their village in March.

Five people died, drowned in the wave of waste, along with scores of goats, sheep and chickens. Nearly 1,000 people had to be taken out of the village. Now, Mr. Abrak said, “I’m afraid to go to sleep at night.”

The lagoon disaster seemed a sort of metaphor for Gaza — overcrowded, lacking in resources, coping with makeshift answers to long-term problems. But the lagoon, which held more than 150,000 cubic yards, is dwarfed by the huge lake of sewage it was built to reduce.

14 percent of Iraqis now displaced, McClatchy Washington Bureau | 11/06/2007

WASHINGTON — The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction offered a generally optimistic picture of security developments in Iraq in his quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday, but noted that while violence was down, one of every seven Iraqis — 14 percent of Iraq’s population — is now displaced by the war.

The report said that electricity production in Iraq reached its highest level since early 2003, in part because insurgent attacks on power-lines and repair crews have declined. Corruption, however, remains a major problem, the report said.

The deaths of 72 civilian contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq were reported to the U.S. Department of Labor during the third quarter of the year, a 22 percent increase over the average of previous quarters, the report said.