saving ink

I’ve been trying to write this for eight days.

I found out about the plane crash that killed the president of one of my countries on Saturday morning, eight days ago, by means of a text message I was convinced was a cruel joke being played on me by a coworker. I was on vacation thousands of miles away, sleeping in the warm land where I had spent most of my life, purposefully cut off from all things related to Polish news. The actual cruel joke was that the biggest event in recent Polish history would become the predominant headline worldwide, right in the middle of the ten days I’d spend out of the country this year.

So after scrambling to catch up on the news that had swept Poland hours before I awoke, I set myself the task of writing an editorial: a personal statement, as the Editor in Chief of a Polish paper and all, stating something deep and significant about the Polish nation amidst this tragedy. And I discovered that I couldn’t write a thing.

In the following days, when people in America would ask me what I felt, I’d answer that I was in shock. That wasn’t exactly true; I was definitely surprised, but what I felt was nothing. I was distracted by a completely different reality that surrounded me. I was disconnected, geographically and emotionally. Whether the former was the cause of the latter, I can’t know, but the lack of feeling rendered me with a tremendous case of writer’s block.

Not until I breathed Polish air on Wednesday could I begin to slowly form ideas about what I could write, and even then the process was far more painful that usual. I expected to feel the gravity of the plane crash the second my own plane landed on Polish soil, but instead I saw life going on around me more or less the way it had when I left, with the exception of everyone now hanging up Polish flags from every building.

I really wanted to be in Poland this weekend. I hoped that being here for the funeral, for the chaos and the communal sense of tragedy, would force me to feel something. I was scheduled to fly out on Friday morning, on a work-related trip to the Netherlands that was booked ages ago, back when no one imagined this could happen. To my great relief, my flight was grounded thanks to the Icelandic ash cloud wrecking havoc to Europe’s flight plans, the very same one that would keep the president of my other country away.

So I’m here today, not even as a member of the press (I didn’t bother to apply for a press pass as I thought I’d be out of the country), but as an ordinary Pole, drawn to this place of mourning. Don’t get me wrong, a big part of me realizes that this is a reporter’s wet dream, and I would lie if I said I didn’t feel any excitement. But mostly I wanted to use this day to understand what others are feeling, what the nation is feeling, so that maybe I could feel it too.

A little before the mass at St. Mary’s was to begin, I left the office near the Market Square and began to wander around the streets leading to the square, where I could go without a pass. The crowds were already substantial, and even walking down the street was difficult. I could hold my camera above my head and shoot the multitude, Polish and black mourning flags in their hands. But it wasn’t until right at 2 pm that something happened. I was walking back towards the office. A church bell rang out, signalling the hour, and then an air raid siren started its alarming wail (yes, we still have those - you never know when you’ll need one in Poland). And at the moment the air raid siren sang out, everyone stopped. A few clueless tourists kept walking, but quickly came to a halt, probably puzzled. And as I looked around I realized that I had stopped about ten seconds ago, along with everyone else.

The siren howled for a full minute, and the air was otherwise still. Few people moved, no one spoke. And the minute finally passed, the siren let out a dying cry and then faded, and everyone returned to their trajectories and conversations, as if some god had just pressed the play button on a divine TiVo.

It might seem strange to an outsider, but this is exactly what took place this week. For eight days, the nation stopped, and the people stood as one. Before and after, its citizens would inevitably follow their individual paths. But for that moment, for this week of mourning, as the world kept walking, Poland stopped its normal course and stood silent and proud, coming to terms with its loss.