Under a hot desert moon, the bombs fell. Baghdad turned into smoldering flames as cruise missiles shot past futile anti-aircraft fire and burst into government buildings and palaces.
Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest. In London, more than 200,000 brandished signs with mordant slogans. In Madrid, protesters clashed with police outside the American embassy. In San Francisco, they lay supine on the Golden Gate Bridge to block traffic. In Pakistan, some beat an effigy of President Bush with wooden sticks. The list can go on: Norway, Germany, Malaysia, Jordan, New York, Japan thousands of people rallying against the war, denouncing its orchestrators and demonstrating against perceived injustice.
Meanwhile in Seville, Spain, a romantic apolitical city of 700,000, I sat complacently by the river, reading my book, sipping Spanish beer, tanning my bare back and watching the olive-green water undulate and flow downstream in the long winding cup of the riverbank. Suddenly a voice aroused me from my tranquil stupor:
“Do you have a light?’
I turned around to see a short, dark-skinned Spaniard with spiky hair and a thin mustache that extended out past the sides of his lips.
‘No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t smoke.”
He began to walk away, and as I grabbed my beer, I saw his head whip around and his eyes stare directly into mine.
“Ambush!” he shouted.
“What did you say,” I asked.
“Ambush. Your president,” he shot back, this time in thickly accented English.
“My president,” I responded. “I didn’t vote for my president. I’m against this war just as much as you are!”
His eyes bulged as if surprised and his eyebrows rose above his eyelids as he began his rambling tirade, using his hands to karate-chop the air to emphasize his point.
“After September 11, my heart went out to Americans. It really did,” he said. “My heart went out to the victims. But your president is crazy. All he wants is war. War and oil.”
After lecturing me for several minutes about American greed and belligerence, he seemed satisfied, shook my hand with a smile and ambled back to his group of friends. Apparently I had passed his litmus test and that was enough.
Getting back to my beer, I started to think about the situation. God, I wish I had said something! I wish I had told him that I did oppose the war, but not for his reasons. I wanted to tell him that serious and complicated issues were at hand and that his war for oil harangue missed the point entirely. What about the prospect of spreading democracy and the problems involved in regime change? What about the importance of the United Nations and the dangers of weapons of mass destruction? What about the plight of the Kurds, and the ignominy of occupation?
All would have been worth mentioning. Instead, I said nothing. I just smiled and shook his hand, just as I had done to the bar owner and the woman in the book store. All nods and smiles in the face of intimidation; all nods and smiles reminiscent of post-Sept. 11 makeshift patriotism and conformity. This was the same. This was the same human orchestra playing a modified tune: the dissonant piano key scream of members of a traveling herd, instinctively following the hoof marks embedded in the trampled dust in front of them.
Those same frightening and banal notes bellowed through the center of Seville two weeks prior, where I had joined a protest against the prospect of war. The majority of the protesters gathered in Plaza Nuevo holding hands and chanting the popular anti-war slogan “No a la Guerra” (No to the war), wearing matching T-shirts bearing the same slogan. In the center of the plaza, a few shirtless, white men with dreadlocks were beating conga drums to the rhythm of the chanting voices, which started to resemble a cheer at a baseball game. Others in attendance wore peace stickers and held caustic anti-American signs: “Bush and Aznar are the real terrorists,” and “Bush and Aznar = the death of democracy.”
Looking to my left, I saw a booth selling “No a la Guerra” T-shirts. Wanting to contribute to the anti-war effort and also wanting a souvenir to bring home, I went over to the vendors and handed them 10 euros. Walking back into the crowd still holding my souvenir in front of me, something seemed awry. The chanting seemed to have ceased, giving way to an air of tranquil festivity. As I looked around I saw neo-hippies playing hacky-sack in a circle by the men who had been playing the drums; I saw college students with their matching T-shirts drinking vodka and Coca-Cola out of plastic cups and flirting with their girlfriends; I noticed the Communist Party graffiti that adorned many of the walls near the plaza: forlorn, anachronistic hammers and sickles painted Stalin red.
Staring back at my T-shirt, I suddenly realized what was wrong: pressed upon a black background, the letters in the phrase “No a la Guerra” were written in blood.