September 11th in Stockholm
I wouldn't imagine, as I awoke in Stockholm this morning, that the second anniversary of the 9-11 attacks would be far from my mind as I fall asleep tonight. Alas, other tragedies intervened today and made the present more urgent than the past. Grieving 9-11, so far away, seems quaint and desirable by comparison.
Close to home, a thief busted my Honda's window and ransacked through all that was inside: a couple dozen neckties, a few QuikTrip coffee cups, my Mealbox, 66 CDs (my entire collection!), a bad novel and, ugh, my spankin-new Pioneer stereo. All will work out in the end -- insurance will pay for the items I need, the thief will have good tunes to listen to and I'll head to China with few worries and perhaps a few hundred samoleans from State Farm. But, the bah-stads broke my trust. And my parents will live in greater fear from now on. Even sleepy little Falcon Heights isn't safe anymore.
And neither is Stockholm. Yesterday, my first day here, 46-year-old Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed, repeatedly, while shopping in downtown Stockholm. This morning, she died of complications from her numerous wounds. And a cloud of sorrow hangs over Stockholm, and stands to linger for decades. The killer has not been caught. No motive is known. And Sweden's political heart and soul have been hollowed.
I walked the streets of Stockholm today and watched people mourn. Expressionless faces, gray as the glum autumn sky, rested awkwardly atop stylish plaid scarves and collared, button-down dark coats. A red rose, one in seemingly everyone's hand, stood out, a flash of vivid color against the dark surroundings.
The red roses are the symbol of Lindh's political party, the Social Democrats. But they also are the color of blood. And through them floods the emotions of a reserved, stoic people. I saw hardly a tear shed. I saw few embraces, no emoting for the cameras. I saw men and women, boys and girls, blonde native Stockholmers and coffee-skinned Ethiopian immigrants, one by one, silently walk up to makeshift memorials, one red rose in hand, add it to the stack, bow the head and then retreat back to their normal lives.
In one way, this silent mourning seemed unnatural -- now is not the time, it seems, for stiff upper lip and stoic, steely gazes. Where's the outraged shouting? Where are the desperate cries for justice? Where is the musician strumming John Lennon peace tunes?
In another way, though, it made more dramatic public mourning -- for Princess Diana, for JFK Jr., for Wellstone -- look contrived and made-for-TV by comparison. In their silence, the Swedes seemed to say: we're stunned. We have no words for this. We'll leave our rose and go to mourn in private. So soon after the attack, and with the killer still among us, there can be no closure, or even the beginnings of it. To cry out only makes you look foolish. And that doesn't help anyone.
According to everyone I talked to, Anna Lindh was known and loved by all Swedes -- even her political enemies. She had charisma, guts, a sharp mind and the wiles to compete in the old-boys Swedish political establishment. She was next in line to be Swedish prime minister, the answer to decades of silent hopes and prayers: someday, God, may Sweden have a female prime minister. Anna Lindh was to be the first.
The night she was attacked, she was scheduled for a debate about the upcoming Swedish vote on whether or not to adopt the euro as its currency. She was leading the "yes" faction, and her face, smiling, confident, radiant, adorns billboard after billboard after billboard all around town.
Maybe it's especially sad that this pioneering woman died while fighting for a cause -- the color of Swedish money -- that seems quite mercantile and, in the broader scheme, insignificant. And I think it's another sign of this age of lost innocence that, in the safest, cleanest, most beautiful national capital I've seen, in the place where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, the people's silent hopes and prayers have turned to silent outpourings of shock and sorrow, and stacks and stacks of roses, red like Anna Lindh's blood.
