Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

BY MARTÍN ESPADA

for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head

and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,

a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,

the harbor of pirates centuries ago.

Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle

glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.

Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap

worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane

that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,

for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.

Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked

even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish

**rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.**

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,

like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.

Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen

could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:

Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,

Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.

Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,

where the gas burned blue on every stove

and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,

hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs

or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.

Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime

of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher

who worked that morning because another dishwasher

could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime

to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family

floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.

Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen

**and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.**

After the thunder wilder than thunder,

after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,

after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,

after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,

for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,

like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us

about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,

soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations

across the night sky of this city and cities to come.

Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul

two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,

mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:

Teach me to dance. We have no music here.

And the other said with a Spanish tongue:

I will teach you. Music is all we have.

(poem by Martín Espada, copy-pasted from poetryfoundation.org used here non-commercially for academic purposes and in memoriam of the 2,997 fatalities of 9/11; photo by Ezra Stoller rightclicked from nymag.com “The Windows on the World dining room, on the 107th floor of the North Tower” of the World Trade Center, used here non-commercially for academic purposes, in memoriam, song by Beyoncé used here non-commercially for academic purposes, in memoriam)

(blog admin’s note: Photo released by the White House, U.S President Barack Obama and his national security team monitor the 40 minutes of gunfight between U.S. Navy Seals and Osama bin Laden and his guards. The photo looks genuine, i think the facial expressions are real, only the room was managed a little, i think, with the computer screens facing the camera, blank and some of the documents turned down… but other than that, this is a good documentation. At least… they weren’t sleeping or in a daze… like some officials are… during a crisis or strategic operation…)

“TIME. TIMESwampland. Exclusives

“After Uncertainty, a Moment of Triumph in the Situation Room: ‘We’ve IDed Geronimo’

By MICHAEL SCHERER Monday, May 2, 2011

“The people who gathered Sunday in the Situation Room know all about high-pressure situations. But this was something else. For 40 minutes, the President and his senior aides could do nothing but watch the video screens and listen to the operation and ensuing firefight on the other side of the world. At Barack Obama’s orders, special operations teams were invading the airspace of a foreign country, targeting a compound with unknown occupants, and hoping to get out unscathed. The target was America’s No. 1 enemy, Osama bin Laden. But no one knew for sure if he was even there.

Barack Obama, Tom Donilon — White House photo

(blog admin’s note: Originally, Barack Obama was seated at the head of the table behind the presidential seal: see photo above, still semi-relaxed:

then he transferred to the other end of the room (see full photo, first photo above), maybe to look at the screen better, maybe to sit next to the military general for quick huddles. Zoomed-in photo: mouth contracted, eyes piercing, facial muscles, tight.)

“The President sat stone-faced through much of the events. Several of his aides, however, were pacing. For long periods of time, nobody said a thing, as everyone waited for the next update. In the modern age, Presidents can experience their own military actions like a video game, except that they have no control over the events. They cannot, and would not, intervene to contact the commanders running the operation. So when word came that a helicopter had been grounded, a sign that the plan was already off course, the tension increased.

“Minutes later, more word came over the transom. “We’ve IDed Geronimo,” said a disembodied voice, using the agreed-upon code name for America’s most wanted enemy, Osama bin Laden. Word then came that Geronimo had been killed. Only when the last helicopter lifted off some minutes later did the President know that his forces had sustained no casualties.

Hilary — White House photo, cropped, blown-up, & lit by blog admin for emphasis

“The decision to attack had been made days earlier by the

(blog admin’s note: based on CNN reports, one of the women was grabbed and used as a human shield to protect bin Laden. She was shot. In a situation like that, perhaps all of those protecting and aiding bin Laden, except minors if any, could be considered combatants. Maybe letting the situation drag would result in the Seal unit getting massacred as well. I expect civilian officials to look this concerned — see photo of Hillary — when lives are on the line)

President. He gathered his senior intelligence, military and diplomatic team together in the Situation Room on Thursday afternoon to hear his options. There were already concerns about operational security. At that point, hundreds of people had already been read into the potential whereabouts of bin Laden. Any leak would have ruined the entire mission.

“The intelligence professionals said they did not know for sure that bin Laden was in the compound. The case was good, but circumstantial. The likelihood, officials told the President, was between 50% and 80%. No slam dunk. Obama went around the table asking everyone to state their opinion. He quizzed his staff about worst case scenarios–the possibility of civilian casualties, a hostage situation, a diplomatic blow-up with Pakistan, a downed helicopter. He was presented with three options: Wait to gather more intelligence, attack with targeted bombs from the air, or go in on the ground with troops. The room was divided about 50-50, said a person in the room. John Brennan, the President’s senior counter-terrorism adviser, supported a ground strike, as did the operational people, including Leon Panetta at the CIA. Others called for more time. In the end, about half of the senior aides supported a helicopter assault. The other half said either wait, or strike from above.

“Obama left the meeting without signaling his intent.

He wanted to sleep on it. At about 8:00 a.m. on Friday, just before he boarded a helicopter that would take him to tour tornado damage in Alabama, Obama called his senior aides into the Diplomatic Room. He told them his decision: A helicopter assault. At that point, the operation was taken out of his hands. He was trusting the fate of his presidency to luck.”