ManicDDaily

The headlines today about the bombings in the Moscow subway system held a double whammy for New Yorkers.  First, there was tremendous sadness and horror at the loss of life in Moscow.   Secondly, there was the guiltily, self-centered fear, not of whether it could happen here, but whether it will.

Even so, there was no new tension on the New York City subway system;  this may be because it is the first day of Passover, which means that the subways were less crowded than usual, and that many observant Jews (who unfortunately may be particular targets in New York) were not on the trains.

On top of this, New Yorkers are a bit fatalistic;  to get on the train day after day, particularly after 9/11, you have to just hope/assume/pray that if something happens on one train, you (and everyone you know) will be on the next one, or the one before it, or the one stopped in the tunnel way way down the line.

Then there’s the New Yorker bravura, the gritty sense of invulnerability that makes us all feel a bit like the Yankees–that we will somehow make it to the play-offs no matter what.  (Of course, many of us also feel like the Mets, that no matter how much we try, we won’t really win, but that’s mainly a feeling about our economic status, not our basic survival.)

Many New Yorkers have little tricks.  Avoiding rush hour trains;  getting on less crowded cars; even occasionally getting off the train if someone who looks suspicious (unfortunately, this may be someone simply in foreign dress) with several large square-cut, plaid, plastic bags.   But most New Yorkers don’t follow these tricks very much–with transportation cuts, almost any hour is rush hour (i.e. crowded); more importantly, if you avoided people who looked suspicious or foreign in New York, you’d probably have to stay in your own apartment (and even then, you’d most likely have to avoid mirrors.)

The Russian bombings seem particularly troubling because of the participation of female suicide bombers.  There is a history of female suicide bombings in Russia and around the world, with some groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam using women bombers in 30-40% of their attacks.  (From a 2004 study of suicide bombers by Debra D. Zedalis for the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.)  Females have not figured largely among the images of terrorists in the U.S. however.  As someone with an instinctive trust of most of my fellow women, I find this perhaps the most shocking part of these terrible bombings.

My grandmother used to always ask my mother if she thought that her “life was laid out” for her;  meaning pre-destined.   My mother said no; she believed that people had some choice in their fate.  But my grandmother, an old lady by that time, had suffered much more loss than my mother–one young brother to the Spanish Flu, later, her parents, a child, her husband.   I don’t think I believe in pre-destination, and yet I can certainly understand the comfort of it on a day like today, and one like tomorrow, and the next day too;  how do you get to work each morning if you have to worry whether you are making the right choice of train, car, seat, city, life?

So sorry for the suffering in Moscow.