The View Of US From Afar

To the Editor:

When I arrived in Ankara, Turkey in 1986 to teach at Middle East Technical University, I got my first taste of what the US looks like from a distance through the words of my faculty colleagues, both Turkish and non-Turkish, as well as through European social contacts and Turkish friends.  I learned we truly do not see ourselves as others see us.

But while the view of America from afar has some validity, there is great distortion as well, created by our frivolous preoccupations and our loud self-assurance. Our world view seems to be blind, many observers think, to the harsh realities of life which they have endured and which they feel define life on this planet.  Because Americans persist in their optimism, we are considered amateurs at life.

How often I heard from the international community that America was so “young” compared to their lands, so pampered with a life of convenience, so “lucky.” But I got to thinking: we have the oldest form of government in the world.  No one else’s constitution or form of government has lasted as long.  Maybe we know how to govern. And pampered with convenience?  We work more hours and have fewer holidays that any other work force – even the Japanese have more days off.  And as for the kind of work we all do, not only do Americans take projects on themselves daily, burned into many of our heads are the images from the end of the Gulf War of idle citizens of the country we liberated standing around watching American soldiers sweep their streets with brooms.

Luck? Yes we have it, those of us whose poor parents came here from other countries.  As my mother and father often told me, having been sent to labor as young children in the weaving factories and shipworks of Scotland, at least in America you had a chance for something better.

America still offers that chance, but apparently some were among us who did not want anything better than what they had had where they came from.  This “something better” does not refer to the richness of anyone’s culture because all cultures have depth and magic in them that is wonderful. But there are ways to keep children healthy and educated, the sick treated, and people free of civic upheaval and persecution, and that we do well. The barbarians of last week would give us a world of women in bondage, ignorance rampant, governance incompetent, and the sick without succor.  A world filled with dust and despair, so reminiscent of their own.

They can keep their world.  If they think they can intimidate us with their fervor and willingness to die, let them remember Americans’ first response – they stuck out their arms and offered their blood.  They should think about that.

What we need to think about is that everyone in this country came from somewhere else; that has been good for America.  We need to respect the Muslims in this country and everywhere who are fine, decent people, and hunt down the barbarians, regardless of race or creed, who are guilty. 

My experience in Turkey, a non-Arab country whose people are Muslim but whose government is secular and aligned with our own, taught me to continue in respect for the rest of the world, but to value my heritage more dearly than before.  The only cultural conflict I ever felt there was with the tendency of Turkish people to stay up half the night blasting music in my apartment building at all hours. What to do?  Go upstairs and complain or lie in bed at 2 am so happy to hear Springsteen sing Born in the USA? 

Evelyn Gur

14 Beaver Dam Road, Newtown    September 19, 2001