The Iraq War

The iraq War

I was travelling through Charles de Gaulle airport right after the Iraq war started. This was also the time that the SARS scare was breaking out. My flight had been cancelled, and even though I had confirmed my ticket less than 24 hours prior, the people at Air France did not make an effort to put me on a flight as soon as possible. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting on one of the many flights as they continued to leave the ground, as the hours rolled past, and they kept cancelling my seats on upcoming flights, one after another. I finally went to ask someone why I couldn’t be placed onto one of these flights. The response came curtly, from behind a white medical mask that was a standard issue for all Air France workers at that time, that I did not need an explanation as to why I was being bumped, because I am American, and the reason flights were being re-arranged was because of the Iraq war, for which, by the way, I was personally responsible.

Naturally, I was shocked. And I felt alone and isolated. What did I have to do with the Iraq war? I didn’t vote for this administration. I did not support the war. I had no part in it. Yet, because of it, I felt alone, and scared, and abused. And I imagine, that those feelings that I had, are the same feelings, mine being comparatively on a painfully microscopic scale, that another young woman in Iraq would be feeling at the same moment as me. And I wonder if there is any connection between people in the world who are feeling the same things at the same time. Are we all interrelated, truly? Can the world be thought of as a whole, living being, and we as only some of its constituent parts—like cells or organs that make it up?