Ten years ago, ten years later

As I write about the 9/11 memorial events this weekend, I think about the Mozart Requiem concert happening Sunday in Stanford's Memorial Church and imagine how peaceful the air will be inside. I always feel a breath of Europe there; even thousands of miles apart, historic churches have that wonderful cool smell.

I was an ocean away when 9/11 happened, sitting in my flat in Budapest planning an English lesson. The phone rang, I turned on CNN, and everything was different.

How did life change for Americans living overseas? I can say only that a few days later I wrote a column about how life was for this Yankee. It was never published, but now, feeling safe again in warm Palo Alto, I share it with you.


The jars of salsa are covered with dust. So are the bottles of barbecue sauce and maple syrup. These products, apparently, are not big sellers in Hungary.

I pick up the jar of El Rio anyway. I brush off the dust and stand up from where I have been squatting close to the floor. The American products are all on the bottom shelf.

Since the terrorist attacks, I have begun a new routine. Whenever I go into a grocery store here in Budapest, I make sure to buy something American. I don't mean a Coke or a Pepsi or something that any Hungarian would buy. I mean the hard-to-find items, the things that seem so strange to the locals but to me look like home.

The choices are slim even at the giant supermarkets. But I buy something, anything. Instant mashed potatoes. Pancake mix. Chocolate chips. It makes me feel like I am doing something to help.

When I moved to Budapest two months ago to write and teach, I wasn't thinking about supporting the U.S. economy. I was more concerned with finding a flat, making friends, learning to say more in Hungarian than "The fish soup in Szeged is delicious." With great excitement, I bought paprika, sour cream and cabbage.

But since Sept. 11, everything has changed.

There's one sentiment we expats seem to share: America seems very far away right now, farther than ever. The Atlantic was an impassable barricade right after the attacks, when flights were canceled and we knew we couldn't go home even if we wanted to.

The day of the attacks, a Hungarian friend called me and simply said, "Turn on CNN." I watched for hours until I had to go downtown, knees shaking, to teach an evening English class. It was peculiar to have my students looking at me so sympathetically.

Afterward, I joined the crowd of English-speakers gathered around a television in an Internet cafe. I must have gasped when I learned that one of the downed planes had been headed for San Francisco, because a guy turned and stared at me. "Are you from San Francisco? Me too," he said. And then we both turned back to the TV.

At home, I got a message from my kind, paternal landlord, who said, "My deepest condolences for the tragedy in your country." I stayed up late watching CNN, the BBC and the French news.

Hungarians have been enormously sympathetic. I have not heard one anti-American word. But the strange thing is that life here for people who aren't Americans doesn't seem to have changed that much. I get on a crowded Metro car or escalator, surrounded by incomprehensible words, and think that I'm the only American there and perhaps the only one thinking about the tragedy across the pond. Sometimes it feels lonely, sometimes reassuring. It's good to be in a small country that has a low profile on the global radar screen.

At the same time, we are the ones being told by our embassy to keep our heads down. We are cautioned not to speak English too loudly in public or to open suspicious packages. We avoid known expat hangouts like the Iguana Mexican restaurant, refrain from yelling "God bless America" in a crowded theater, and so on. But I think, I hope, that I am relatively safe here.

The American Embassy in Budapest was closed right after the attacks and has been so thoroughly cocooned behind metal barricades and blue-and-white police tape that it's impossible to go anywhere near. Officers with large weapons and helmets patrol. At the edges are flowers and candles and Hungarian red, white and green ribbons. One of the most touching notes was from a Spanish man who praised America for always taking in the downtrodden.

Last Friday there were black flags everywhere to mark the NATO day of mourning. Black flags at the neo-Gothic Parliament building and beneath the massive dome of the basilica, Hungarian flags at half-mast by the Danube. I kept thinking about Aug. 20, which was St. Stephen's Day, similar to an American Fourth of July. I had watched a fireworks display on the river from a party up in the Buda hills. There were Hungarian red, white and green flags everywhere that weekend.

The fireworks were beautiful, but as I watched I couldn't help thinking that it must have sounded like that during World War II, when all the bridges across the Danube were blown up. Hungary has had a difficult history, including being war-torn and losing a huge portion of land with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Our past is nowhere near as painful.

But now, it seems we are the ones at war.

Pictured: Stanford's Memorial Church. Photo from stanford.edu.