"In the Moment of Greatest Calamity is a profoundly moving and illuminating testament to a victim's need for understanding and justice-not vengeance or retaliation-in the wake of a devastating terrorist attack. With extraordinary wisdom and insight, Hirsch makes a compelling case that, whether the victim of terrorism is, like herself, an individual whose spouse has been killed, or, like the post-September 11th United States, a country that has been attacked, healing will not be brought about by a unilateral lashing out at a poorly understood enemy, but, rather, only by a patient, thoughtful, and judicious response that does not compromise our humanity or lose sight of our respect for life."--Susan J. Brison, author of Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self

"Susan Hirsch has written a marvelous book that is compelling, moving, and yet always rigorous. In the Moment of Greatest Calamity is a rare combination of autobiography and first-rate ethnography. Hirsch skillfully draws her readers close to her pain and yet manages to provide a new way of seeing the possibilities and problems of taking on the identity of the victim. Her book tells a powerful story of the limits of law in the face of unimaginable personal tragedy. I know of nothing quite like it."--Austin Sarat, Amherst College, author of Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution

"Incredibly rich, this book is many different things at the same time. It is beautiful, chilling, sad, disturbing, and intensely moving. I found it hard to put down. The text is beautifully written. Hirsch's legal analysis--indeed, the book as a whole-is insightful and original."--Susan Coutin, University of California, Irvine, author of Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency

"This is an enthralling read, even as it is an appalling tale. I found myself utterly riveted. While conveying her story in a fashion that recalls fine documentary filmmaking or investigative journalism, Hirsch never loses the voice or stance of the social scientist. She gives us a very anthropological account of the process of grief and mourning."--Lawrence Rosen, Princeton University, author of The Culture of Islam: Changing Aspects of Contemporary Muslim Life

Susan F. Hirsch With a new preface by the author

In the Moment of Greatest Calamity

Terrorism, Grief, and a Victim's Quest for Justice By Susan F. Hirsch

Princeton University Press

Copyright © 2008 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-13841-1

Introduction

ON AUGUST 7, 1998, two truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blast in Dar threw me to the floor, scattering a wad of money the embassy's cashier had just handed me. I managed to stand and, with plaster and dust raining down, escaped out a nearby exit. Ignoring warnings to seek cover, I ran toward the embassy's main entrance. I was desperate to find my husband, Abdurahman Abdalla, who had been standing outside, waiting for me while I cashed a check. In one direction barbed wire blocked my path to him, in another crowds surged between us. A third route was a gauntlet of burning cars. Hysterical in my efforts to reach him, I eventually allowed a Tanzanian doctor to take me to a hospital where he insisted I would find my husband being treated for injuries and could receive care for my own abrasions and shock. After a day-long search of Dar's hospitals, I found my husband. He had been standing just yards from the truck bomb when it detonated. He was killed, along with eleven others nearby.

The embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania shattered the peace in East Africa. Together the blasts killed more than two hundred people and injured thousands. Most of the casualties were Kenyans, like my husband, and a few dozen shared his Muslim faith. Among the dead were twelve Americans, all U.S. government employees. Seen in hindsight, the bombings were early indications of al Qaeda's commitment to attack U.S. interests and forecast a new moment in American awareness of the threat of terrorism. Although only a few people realized it at the time, the embassy bombings were a wake-up call to the United States and to the world about the operations and goals of a new sort of enemy, and the distinctive and deadly tactics it would deploy in a long-planned war.

In the immediate aftermath of the embassy bombings, family and friends on two continents helped me to face the shock, grief, anger, confusion, and guilt that envelop and torment victims of violence. As the acute trauma abated, the urgency of questions grew about who had carried out these horrific acts and how. I found myself increasingly preoccupied by another question: Why? Why had the embassies been attacked? I began a quest to answer this and other related "why" questions, for myself, my husband, our families, and everyone else affected.

My search for an explanation was far outpaced by officials on several continents, who pursued the perpetrators and collected evidence of their crimes with the primary goal of bringing to justice those responsible for the bombings. The United States launched the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken abroad, and within months more than twenty men were indicted and several apprehended. Because the bombings targeted American citizens and embassies, which are considered U.S. federal property, four of those in custody faced trial in a federal court in Manhattan. The embassy bombings trial-held in the first six months of 2001-was an extraordinary public forum, where the U.S. government assumed the multiple responsibilities of acknowledging victims' losses and communicating to an inattentive public the threat posed by al Qaeda, as well as establishing the guilt or innocence of the four men on trial.

The U.S. legal system decisively shaped my quest to explain the bombings, as the trial drew me in with the promise of answers. Much of this book focuses on what I learned about the embassy bombings, and terrorism more generally, by participating in the embassy bombings trial and attempting to make sense of it as an anthropologist and a victim. Yet the book also focuses on what the trial failed to explain. As a response to the bombings, law ultimately left me unsatisfied, wanting-with even more intensity-an explanation, an answer to my question of why.

My husband and I met in the mid-1980s, when I arrived in Malindi, his coastal Kenyan town, to undertake a year-long study of contemporary Islamic law courts for my doctoral dissertation. His nickname was Jamal, which means beauty. His father, a respected elder in the Swahili Muslim community, was a key informant for my project, and his extended family welcomed me into their homes and lives. It was the anthropologist's ideal of intensive research, what we call "participant/observation." My relationship with Jamal developed over the next decade, as I worked toward my degree and Jamal built a small family business and gained stature as a community leader. With Jamal's assistance, my writing about life and law in Malindi highlighted the richness of Swahili culture, with its dual origins in Africa and the Middle East, and the uniqueness of coastal East African Islam, with its emphasis on piety, moderation, and pluralism. When my book was published a few weeks before the bombings, we celebrated its portrayal of Kenyan Muslims, which countered common misconceptions of Islam as hostile to the West, or inherently fundamentalist or sexist.

Ours was an unlikely but successful love, partnership, and understanding across continents, "races," religions, cultures, languages, and ways of life. Just two weeks before his death, Jamal and I had stopped in the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam to pick up his immigrant visa for his first trip to the United States. After years of negotiating distance, we planned a fresh start together.

The embassy bombings destroyed our plans.

Just hours after the explosions, the unquestionable power of law to define the event became evident to me when Dar es Salaam's main hospital refused to release the victims' bodies, citing instructions from "American officials." We were caught between two legal systems: American criminal law, which required a thorough investigation, and the Islamic rules that mandate burial before sunset on the day of death. Waiting increased my anxiety, and Jamal's family in Kenya was understandably, though frantically, insistent to have him returned to Malindi for a proper burial as soon as possible.

Over the next two days my telephone rang constantly, and, pacing my apartment at the University of Dar es Salaam, I fielded dozens of sympathy calls and visits in a haze of shock and grief. Jamal's family called every couple of hours to check on the status of our return. As I negotiated logistical snafus with the numb efficiency that can be an aftereffect of trauma, CNN International blared nonstop for the many friends and colleagues who came to pay respects. Over and over Osama bin Laden's picture appeared with statements explaining nothing: "A Saudi businessman linked to terrorism, he is suspected of involvement in the East African embassy bombings." Tanzanian friends, some Muslim, were confused. None of us had ever heard of bin Laden or al Qaeda. "If he did it," one asked, "why don't we know anything about him?" Another remarked, "He looks like an old man. How could he have done something like this?" "They say he did this all the way from Afghanistan. Where is that? It's not even in Africa."

Three days after the bombings, it seemed we would never leave for Kenya, and the growing tension brought on bouts of hysteria. In a rage born of frustration and grief, I called the official in charge at the U.S. Embassy, Deputy Ambassador John Lange, and demanded the release of Jamal's body. Taking on my anthropologist's role as an interpreter across cultures, I explained that...