Why I Invited The Dalai Lama To Spokane

When the buildings fell on 9/11, I was at a conference about how to work with female inmates in Boise, Idaho. A few thousand people from all over the English-speaking world, sharing a lot of high ideals, hopes and possibilities. The previous day, we were given a tour of the old Idaho State Penitentiary. We were all feeling pretty horrified by what we saw there. Even the New Yorkers were revolted. But this one woman from Mississippi told me it looked all too familiar. But that was yesterday, before everything changed.

It was early in the morning, and I was still rubbing my eyes and looking for that first cup of coffee to help me wake up. I wandered into the conference center half asleep and absent-mindedly looked around for the Canadians or the New Yorkers, two groups where I had some acquaintances. I saw the New Yorkers and headed over that way.

But there was something wrong. I stopped and looked more closely. At first I thought there was something going on under the table, because they were all bent way over looking down at the floor. But that wasn’t it. Then I glanced up at the big TV screens that hung around the room above our heads. What I saw on the screens woke me up.

A plane flew into one of the World Trade Center towers and exploded. There was a huge ball of fire on the view screen. I stood there transfixed, got my eyes all the way open and perked up my ears. What the hell? Was this real, I wondered?

As I listened in horror, the tape was replayed, and I understood what was happening at the New York table in Boise.

Instantly awake, I shifted into work mode. At once, I realized what needed to be done and I knew it was an emergency. I looked around the room until I found my Regional Administrator. She was surrounded, but I pushed through and got her attention.

“We have to pull the Islamic inmates out of population,” I said.

“I agree,” she said. “And I’ve already called. But guess what? They’re not coded, so we have no way to pull a list. We have no way to get them out quickly.”

“Oh my God,” was all I could manage. “That is really bad.”

“It is,” she said. “They’re going unit by unit and file by file right now.”

I needed that cup of coffee. “I’ll keep you posted,” she said. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”

I walked to the coffee service area and poured myself a cup. They had good coffee, I’ll give them that. Strong and nutty. Even the smell was comforting. I had no desire to talk to anybody, so I sat down at an empty table in the center of the big room and watched the news unfolding on the screens.

“…worst attack ever on American citizens,” the news anchor was saying. A voice behind me at an adjacent table had a comment.

“I don’t really care for New Yorkers,” he said, “but I guess they are Americans.”

As a transplanted New Yorker living in the Northwest, regional animosity toward people from New York was a sore subject with me, and I bristled. How many times had I been speaking to someone at length, only to have them turn to someone else and say, “She still has the accent, doesn’t she?” I often wondered if people here even heard what I said. My New York style had even come up on an evaluation at work, identified as a communication problem. I gritted my teeth.

Speaking of being from New York, one of my best friends worked in the towers, at the State Attorney General’s Office. I dialed her cell phone. She answered.

“Thank God you’re alright,” I said.

“I had Court in Brooklyn this morning,” she said. “So I’m sitting in a bar in Brooklyn, drinking and looking at the smoke. They won’t let us back in the city.”

A native New Yorker myself, I was in High School when the World Trade Center was built. That made it personal to me. When you watch something being built, and it’s something that big, you can’t help but identify with it. It’s a part of you, or maybe you’re a part of it. Either way, it’s yours.

About then, I started to get angry, and I wanted to go home. At least it was energy. I finished my coffee and searched for the administrator. She was at the back of the room, looking stricken. But then, so were we all. When I got to her, she took me aside.

“We didn’t make it,” she said.

“What?”

“Apparently, one of the inmates cheered when he saw the news.“

“Idiot,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “By the time the staff got to him, it was too late.”

“What?” I said, for a minute not understanding. Then I caught her meaning. “Oh shit,” I said. “That’s what I was afraid of. So the other inmates…?”

“They kicked his head in. The staff tried to get to him. I really believe that,” she said.

She was looking at me like she really wanted me to believe that, too. Some part of me was too jaded to go there. My gut told me the staff stayed on their side of the door and looked the other way until it was over. I was immediately ashamed for thinking it.

“So, what are we going to do…here, I mean. Is this conference over?” I asked, changing the subject.

“What do you think?”

“I want to go home.”

“That’s what I’m thinking too,” she said. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve made my decision. We’re going home. Get everybody over here. I have some things to say.”

It didn’t take long to round us all up. It seemed everybody was milling around in the general area already.

“Okay people,” she said. “We’re going home.” Then to me, “You have a car, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well, get as many people as you can in it and get started. There aren’t any flights out of here.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m with Rose!” I heard Sarah’s voice from inside the crowd of Washingtonians. “Me too,” Tim called out. In a matter of seconds my car was full.

As we grouped together, I called the car rental company and was promptly informed that none of their rentals could be taken out of town under any conditions. I informed the administrator. “That’s what they all say,” she said. “We’ll deal with that when we get home.” I looked around and noticed one of our staff members who was in a wheel chair. “What about…?”

“A van is already on the way,” she said.

“Okay then,” I said. “See you at home.”

We headed out of Boise in what could technically be considered a stolen car. For a while, it was pretty somber, but somebody in the car had alcohol. It wasn’t long before the back seat was howling drunk, which only made the trip seem longer and duller to me personally. It also pissed me off, and I ended up doing all the driving. But despite being exhausted by the time we got to Spokane, I was glad it was me driving after all.

When everybody was finally dropped off at their homes, it was the middle of the night. I drove home in the unauthorized rental car, crying quietly. Outside it was a beautiful star-studded Eastern Washington night. I opened my window and took a deep breath of fresh Northwest air.

When I got up in the morning, the news was still replaying the videos. But the new topic of discussion was what the United States would do now. “Light it up,” I said, my anger white hot in the morning.

“No baby,” Richard said. “You know better than that.”

“Do I?”

Richard’s disappointment in me started to bring me to my senses. Oh wait a minute, I thought, I’m a lifelong pacifist. What am I saying? My thoughts and emotions were at war in my head, and at the moment my emotions were winning. But Richard never wavered. Richard remained steady. It is one of the most impressive displays of moral fiber I have ever seen.

But as for me, I needed help. So I went to my bookshelf and grabbed my copy of The Open Heart, by the Dalai Lama. I opened it to the chapter on dealing with our enemies, and started reading. At first, it made no sense to me whatever.

Talk to them, he said. How do you talk to people who blow up your buildings? Develop understanding, he said. Ha! I thought. This guy is plain crazy.

But somehow I kept thinking. I’ve always been a pacifist, I thought. Have I been pretending? Even though I couldn’t grasp what he was saying, I kept reading. And over the next few days, I kept looking around inside myself until I found my center again. In the end, I was a little ashamed that it took me a couple of days.
Today, the Dalai Lama is speaking in Long Beach, California. I know because my little brother told me. When I told him that I would love to be there, he suggested I call him up and invite His Holiness to Spokane. So I went to the Dalai Lama’s website and got the email address for his office in Daremsala. And then I sent him an email, complete with pictures of Spokane and my promise to help coordinate his visit. I’m thinking he and Richard would really hit it off.