JEDDAH, 1 November — I just returned last week from a three-week trip to Washington, DC. The whole time I was there news of the sniper dominated all the airwaves. It seemed like someone was being shot every other day, and always in some new location. The whole Washington area became obsessed with the mystery sniper, or snipers, as it turned out to be.
After a taxi driver was shot and killed while filling up his car with gas, Washingtonians became scared to fill up. Driving to see a friend in Maryland, I stopped with other friends at a gasoline station to fill up. A man next to us, who must have been in his late 50s, crouched behind the gas pump, looking nervously around as he pumped gas, his wife keeping a watchful eye from inside their car. News reports said that night that many motorists had paid for their gasoline in advance then jumped into their cars and sped off, too spooked to fill up!
The whole time I was in the American capital, news reports kept telling the public to look out for a white Chevy Astro van. This was supposed to be the vehicle being used by the sniper(s). Initial reports said to look for one without a roof rack, and then the rack was added to the description later on. The only problem was that in the DC area alone there were at least 52,000 vehicles that fit the description!
As it turned out, the arrested sniper suspects, John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, were driving a navy blue Chevrolet Caprice, a car totally different from a white Chevy Astro van. Perhaps police put out the white van description to confuse the snipers and make them let their guard down and slip up. Throughout the whole sniper hysteria I couldn’t help thinking that Americans were so coddled and spoiled by their wealth and happiness that a few mysterious serial murders could so easily freak out a whole city. A Jordanian-Armenian owner of a dry-cleaners in a Virginia suburb of Washington echoed my sentiment when he told my colleague Barbara that he didn’t understand how easily spooked Americans were by a few murders. He recalled living through the constant machinegun fire that met anyone who dared venture out in Jordan during the 1967 war with Israel. "That was really risking your life," said the cleaner, who wondered in amazement at customers of his who called him and said they wouldn’t be picking up their clothes until the sniper was caught.
I must admit, though, that I too succumbed to sniper-fever. The day I was due to leave Washington, Barbara took me to the Home Depot in Falls Church, Virginia, where the female FBI analyst had been shot and killed in front of her husband after buying home improvement materials. "Don’t worry," said Barbara, "the sniper won’t strike in the same place twice."
Nevertheless, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder as we walked into the store. At the entrance a security guard who looked like an ex-Marine greeted us at the door. "There, does that make you feel better?" asked Barbara.
"Yes it does," I replied.
When we left the store, we stopped at an impromptu shrine of flowers and notes left by well-wishers in memory of the woman who had been so senselessly gunned down in the parking lot.
As I zig-zagged back to Barbara’s car, as the police had advised the public to do in open parking lots, Barbara laughed at my antics and said, "if it’s maktoob (written), then it’s maktoob!"
THE WASHINGTONIANS I felt the most for were the panicked parents of school-age children. After a 10-year-old boy was gunned down upon arriving at school in suburban Maryland, I could relate to the fear of all parents who bolted from their offices to yank their children out of school and bring them home to safety.
After the boy was shot, all schools in the DC area suspended recess outdoors and tried to keep all of their students safe. The quandary of school superintendents must have been how to balance the need to continue with daily life and classes, and the real need to make sure no more students were shot. A difficult question indeed.
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AS THE WHOLE sniper drama was unfolding on the streets of the Washington area, I went to see Michael Moore’s new film on how gun violence has overtaken America.
"Bowling for Columbine" is filmed in the faux documentary style that has made Moore so famous. The Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, two years ago, is the basis for the film’s title and premise: "Why is America so violent?" As Moore points out, in Canada there are more than 7,000 firearms owned by the public, yet last year there were only around 57 murders committed with handguns. In contrast, in the United States more than 67,000 persons were murdered with a handgun in the past year alone.
In his quest to find out what makes Americans so much more violent than their cousins up north, Moore interviews students who knew the Columbine killers, Canadians who own firearms, and the actor Charlton Heston, who is the president of the National Rifle Association. The NRA is the most powerful pro-gun lobby in America, and whenever a gun-control measure comes up in a state assembly, it lobbies politicians hard not to pass the measure. But even the veteran actor Heston is stumped when Moore asks him why Americans kill more using firearms than Canadians do. "I guess we’re just more violent," says Heston.
The high point of the film for me, though I do admit it was rather gimmicky, is when Moore takes a paralyzed survivor of the Columbine massacre to the headquarters of K-Mart in Michigan to ask that the retailer stop selling ammunition in its stores. The students who unleashed the blood bath at Columbine had purchased their bullets at a local K-Mart.
One can’t help thinking that America would indeed be a safer place if there were more restrictions on the purchase of firearms and their ammunition.
But along with that, I think producers of violent films and video games must rethink their strategy and de-emphasize the violence. Sure violence sells, but it also kills in the long run. Just look at the Washington snipers. Would they have popped up in a society that wasn’t already so violence-infused? I seriously doubt it. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from the Canadians.
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