Fighting Terrorism at Home
If you really keep your eyes open, in these, as they say, difficult times, you can catch a glimpse of unusual things just under the surface.
Take that day, a golden afternoon, a week or more ago, on the way to the Washington DC Press Club to hear Laura Bush's maiden effort to address pundits on their home ground.
Boarding the metro elevator in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, a small, dark, intent man in a navy suit backed up to the elevator wall. Body, compact; hair, jet black and closely cropped; face, a warm, dark brownÑI am thinking Japanese, but not quite. I notice his bag. The letters are upside down. No, they are Russian.
ÒYou're Russian,Ó I tell him. And he, responding uniquely to the charge, grins. (Most Russians, I have found, clam up at the suggestion.)
ÒYa govoru poruski ochen plocho,Ó I say, and, encouraged by a grin the size of Yankee Stadium, I add, straining to push forth the last bit of college Russian lit I can muster, ÒTaman. Nepriatnu gorodok na beragu moria.Ó
Which is to say, ÒI speak lousy Russian. Taman. An ugly little town on the edge of the River.Ó
ÒOh,Ó he says. ÒI love to hear Russian. It sounds so good. And your accent, you sound like a Russian.Ó
We are descending to the turnstiles now, and he is really seeming very sophisticated underneath that smile. ÒWhere in Russia are you from?Ó
ÒUzbekistan.Ó
ÒOh!Ó
(Brain on overload. Stallions racing over dunes. Spies in the desert. And that Northern Alliance guy on CNN).
ÒI am studying here in a programÑpublic health,Ó he says. ÒAnd we are cooperating.Ó
ÒAre you helping with our public health or are we helping we yours?Ó I ask.
ÒYes.Ó
He shows me his program brochure. I see faces, all captioned as doctors, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Burma and Cameroon, from Kazakhstan, and Kenya, Rwanda, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
They are working, the brochure says, on public health and tropical medicine, in a program sponsored by the United States Department of State, in a program for future leaders chosen by US Embassies or bi-national educational commissions based on their potential for leadership.
I show him my card. Strategic Communications. Health Care Consulting.
ÒAre you working on vaccines?Ó I ask.
He looks confused.
ÒWe are cooperating,Ó he repeats. And smiles.
He looks at me intently then. ÒHow did you come to be a doctor who studied Russian?Ó
No, no, I write about health. I donÕt do it, I say, realizing that Òhealth consultingÓ on my business card has been misinterpreted.
Did his interest dim a bit? Had he seen for me the kind of trip he must have taken once in troubled times? A brief encounter. A talk in some dark corridor as time or sand or trains whipped by, that can end as a recruitment trip on a Bethesda metro train, and sometimes, for some lucky American, Russian-speaking doctor in... Uzbekistan?
"
—Janet Lowenbach for World New York. Award-winning writer and photographer Janet Lowenbach has covered the dairy industry in Maryland, migrant workers in Colorado and health care issues for papers such as the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.'
