The women of September the 11th. . - Reviews - The Wotnen's War: Voices from September 11 - book review

Contemporary Review, June, 2003 by Joaquina Pires-O'Brien

The Wotnen's War: Voices from September 11. Christopher Hilton. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]17.99. 230 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3021-7.

It has been suggested that whilst the bad deeds of the world are normally caused by men, it is the womenfolk who often get to pick up the pieces so that their families and communities can carry on. Perhaps this was the inspiration behind this book, a compilation of true stories about the effects of September 11 on the lives of eleven women from three continents, put together by Christopher Hilton, a British writer and former journalist with the Sunday Express and the Daily Express.

The first story is that of forty-year-old Tern Tobin, a Lieutenant in the New York Police Department, whose helmet saved her life when she found herself under the debris of the crumbling towers, although a piece of concrete found its way into her skull. According to her own account, as she managed to get up and clear the soot from her face she realised that the hand she was holding was from a detached arm. Then there is the story of Marian Fontana, wife of the fireman, Dave Fontana, whose line of duty caused him to stand her up for their anniversary lunch in a Manhattan cafe. A similar story is that of Renee Mangalo, an American solicitor specialising in insurance, who, on the morning of 11 September 2001 decided to stop first at the polling station to vote in the primary mayoral election before going to her office in Broadway, where she had a full view of the twin towers. Besides being a city high flier, Renee Mangalo is also a marathon runner who trains on her journeys back home. After hearing that a plane had hit the first tower, she decided to take a different route to the office via the underground. In the Pentagon, Washington, Chief Sheryl Alleger, a navy officer, was watching on television the coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center when she felt as if her building had been lifted up and set back down. She guessed what had just happened because seconds before she had been informed of the unconfirmed aircraft heading in their direction. The aeroplane had fallen only 200 yards away from where she was.

When the United States decided to start its war against terrorism in Afghanistan, not a few voices were heard in the media accusing the United States of ignoring Afghanistan's experiences with the Soviet invasion in 1979 and later with the Taliban regime. Extrapolating that accusation to the entire West would not be entirely true. This we learn from the story of Ulla Asberg, who has worked for the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan since 1979. She had visited Kabul several times and from 1999 she actually spent two full years there, under the Taliban regime. Possessor of a great cultural empathy and a strong personality, the 60-year-old Swede was able to persuade the Taliban leader to allow girls to remain in school until the third year, and later to allow female foreign aid workers to work in the hospitals and clinics of Kabul. Another, similar story is that of Jacqui Tong, a New Zealander who in August 2001, arrived in North Afghanistan for her seventh mission with the Medecin sans Frontiers (MSF), the orga nisation specialising in providing basic health assistance in remote areas of the world. On the 11th of September Jacqul Tong was in Faizbad, the centre of MSF's operations. She heard of what had happened in the United States from a member of her team, who had heard the news from the BBC on her high frequency radio. From the MSF UK she received instructions to evacuate, but she decided to stay. Days later she moved to Eshkashen on the Tajikistan border, from where she monitored her projects by radio.

September 11 changed the lives of many people directly or indirectly. In the case of Diane Kenna, another marathon runner who lived in Manhattan and worked in a building near the World Trade Center, September II made her rethink her priorities as she realised how close she had been to becoming another casualty. That morning Miss Kenna had arrived early at her Merryl Lynch office, having gone straight to the trading desk on the seventh floor. After the strong vibration she and her colleagues felt, she decided to go outside to investigate what had happened since the windows at her office did not have a view of the twin towers. From outside her block she looked up and saw the fire in one of the twin towers. Later, as she walked home, she saw the burning tower and the people jumping out of it, aware that some of her fellow joggers who worked for the fire brigade were probably there. Many committees were set up to provide support for the bereaved who had lost their husbands or wives, including information on insu rance policies and financial compensation. However, no such support was available for Debbie Barret who lost her finance, Brian Cummins, a thirty-eight year old equity trader, with whom she had made so many plans. Her attempts to get information on her finance's body were frustrated just because she was not a wife. Amid her grief Miss Barret found the strength to organise a support group for the bereaved partners who did not have a marriage certificate.