In Memoriam
Atocha Renfe is a huge sprawling train station that boasts an indoor rain forest, a mall, restaurants, and of course countless train platforms. It is the main hub for national, international, local, and suburban train service in Madrid; a work of architectural art and one of the places I would direct any tourist visiting the city. Today though, the station closed indefinitely at 7:30 am. Trains that normally bustle in and out of the station carrying passengers across the city or across the nation are either parked passengerless in the sprawling train yards behind the station or have been rerouted around it. Red and white police tape circles the building and emergency workers will be the only people moving in and out tonight.
This morning Atocha became the center of something much more sinister than transportation when it was chosen as the focal point for the largest terrorist attack in Europe since the explosion of Pan Am 103 a little more than 15 years ago. It’s hard to understand the numbers: 192 dead and 1,421 injured. Even living in Madrid, less than two miles from the epicenter, these figures feel distant and detached. It only becomes real when I consider my friend Mati who rode with a friend today to work instead of riding a train that would have passed through the blast area. Or when I think of Johana who could have easily been on one of those trains if today was Wednesday or Friday instead of Thursday. Thursday 11 March 2004 - it’s a day I wont soon forget. Today my wife boarded a train that had just left Atocha Renfe at 7:09 AM and traveled north of the city getting off at 7:39 just moments after a series of bombs blew a train just like hers to pieces.
The television has been showing images of the carnage all day long. I can still see each clip of video in my mind as they play like a time-laps view of the tragedy. Steel is warped and mangled in every direction leaving an open hole in the side of these all-to-familiar suburban trains. The sharp edges of metal look like jaws closing down on the bodies of the dead which reporters zoom in on to show in detail. Soon rescue workers cover the bodies with blankets leaving a patch work of scattered color across the switch yard where bodies have landed on the tracks, train roofs, platforms, and each other. The news cuts to images of the injured who’s wounds are in some ways even more frightening than the eerily peaceful looks on the faces of the dead. In the eyes of the wounded I see terror.
Today I don’t feel so foreign. Today I feel like this is my city, this is my country, these are my people. As I sat at dinner this evening with two Spanish friends recounting our stories from the day we talked about loved ones, near misses and people who are still missing. I think we all fought tears once or twice over dinner. Even as I struggle to learn the language of this country I shared something even deeper than language with them today. I shared their sorrow, their fear, their hope, and their confusion. How can I be thankful for all of this pain? The hospitals called for blood donors today and within hours they were so overwhelmed with volunteers that they quickly announced that the need had been met, at least for now. How is it that I can feel such a depth of sorrow and yet feel such comfort in the way men and women around me are rising up to be community for one another?
I don’t know the answers to these questions and they are just a few of the thousands spinning around in my mind. I’m not convinced that tomorrow will bring answers but I am thankful that tomorrow will come. In the next few days and weeks I’m sure I will continue to think about all that happened today. I just hope that the change it stirs in me will be something that I can put into action and live out daily. I suppose this is just about the only thing I can do to bring value to the loss of so many innocent lives today.