The videos are horrifying. A city building explodes and collapses to the ground. Thousands of people inside are trapped. On the streets outside, people are racing every which way, trying to outrun billows of smoke and cement dust so aggressive the ash covers whole city blocks in a matter of seconds. It’s thick enough to shovel.

Another building starts to implode. Watch people use scraps of ripped clothing to cover their mouths. See people crying, bleeding, dragging one another to safety. Look at how their mouths form great big O’s of disbelief.

Now people are running back into the area, frantic to see if anyone is still alive. Bystanders get as close as they can, crowding around towering piles of debris, frozen in bewilderment. Great big buildings like that, reduced to rubble. How can that be?

Every year on the anniversary of 9/11/2001, the same newsreel reappears on our TV screens. We relive the horrors of that moment.  Who did this? Al-Qaeda, a group of rag-tag terrorists; Muslim extremists based in Afghanistan. We remember that.

It’s 16 years later. Many Americans still have a bad case of xenophobia: intense dislike of people from another country. In this case, the phobia covers the entire Arab population, anyone wearing a hijab or a keffiyeh, all people with dark brown skin, anyone with roots anywhere in the middle east. Citizens of our own country who “appear” to be middle eastern, who wear traditional middle eastern attire and who practice the Muslim faith have been and continue to be subjected to our collective fear of and irrational hostility toward “the other.”

Focus on those newsreels from a different angle, if you will: the trauma of watching helplessly as thousands lose their life. The horror of knowing it could have been anywhere. It could have been you, your parents, your child. Think of the shock of having to flee everything you’ve known. The icy cold terror. Behind you, as you watch, buildings where you lived and worked are turning to ash faster than you can run.

If we fail to remember those experiences and those feelings, we fail to comprehend the human side of catastrophes that turn people who were secure in their own homes and offices into refugees. Because of 9/11 and a hundred other acts of terror that have since been committed on our own turf by our own citizens, we ought to have developed an abiding understanding of the human cost of bombings and terrorism, wherever it occurs, whoever is responsible.

This was Aleppo, Syria five years ago, a thriving city with more residents than all of Manhattan.

It was one of the oldest cities in the world, with museums that housed many rare and precious antiquities. Tourists loved Aleppo for its ancient landmarks and its world-renowned shopping.

 

 

 

This is Aleppo now. Very few people are left there, It’s a tough place to live. There is no water. There are no grocery stores. There are few buildings in the city that are habitable, forcing people to use whatever they can find as shelter. It has been like this for the past 5 years, due to the civil war in Syria.

 

 

On another Mediterranean shore, the people of Libya have been trying to escape lawlessness in their country for several years. People are fleeing dangerous situations in the countries all around Libya as well, and using Libya as their exit route to freedom. The Italian navy rescued an estimated 10,000 refugees during one week in August of 2016. Nearly four thousand other migrants that year perished at sea before they could be rescued. All were trying desperately to escape life-threatening circumstances in the Middle East and Africa by crossing the Mediterranean. Europe is struggling to absorb what is estimated to be a million or more refugees who ran for their lives last year.

Having to flee anything is a horrific experience.

The reciprocal of fleeing is being taken in, being given a safe haven. And that is a beautiful thing. That happened in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11/2001.

As the Twin Towers fell, and another plane struck the Pentagon, and a third crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, The United States shut down its air space. Over 4,000 planes in the air over the U.S. were ordered to land at the nearest airport immediately and were then locked down. All  transatlantic flights that were scheduled to enter the United States were diverted to Canada (AIN online, 10.8.07, Roger A. Mola).

The tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland happens to have an international airport, due in large part to its strategic location as a refueling and staging area during WWII. On 9/11, Gander International Airport was able to land 39 wide-bodied jets that had been bound for the U.S.

Over 6500 passengers and crew members were on those planes. That’s 6,500 mostly American refugees in Gander alone, refugees unable to return to their country because it was too dangerous (The Washington Diplomat, Kate Oczypok, 9/1/16).

Feeling isolated and abandoned, these particular passengers spent almost a full day locked on their planes until they were given clearance to get out. What they discovered outside was a welcoming town full of people with unlimited generosity.

Some passengers stayed with families that turned spare rooms, studies, kids rooms and other available spaces in their homes into sleeping space. The town closed a nearby school so that passengers could use their shower stalls and their computers. Residents and businesses gathered personal care supplies like toothbrushes and deodorant, as well as blankets and clothing, to distribute to passengers. The television company set up cables in large church halls and auditoriums to allow passengers to watch U.S. news as events were unfolding (Washington Post, Petula Dvorak, 9/10/16).

Everyone pitched in to supply three meals a day to the passengers for the 5 days they were stranded. People took passengers on tours of the surrounding area, gave them places to sleep, ferried them around town and consoled them when they became overwhelmed by events.

The feeling among passengers was that the people of Gander and the nearby town of Lewisport dropped everything to take them in, cook for them and make them feel less isolated and abandoned.

In other words, the people of Gander demonstrated philoxenia – love of the stranger.

Right now, while hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing something awful and trying to find a new life somewhere, we are in need of a giant dose of philoxenia. The easy thing to do is to close our borders and our hearts and say, “Not our problem. Not here.” But if ever there was a time to love the stranger, it is now, and it is here.

Once, not long ago, we were taken in. We were given safe harbor. Strangers cared for us not knowing how long their caring rescue would be needed.

Don’t forget to remember.