For those of you old enough to remember...
Where were you and what were you doing on 4 June 1989 when the massacre at Tianamen Square took place?
I was finishing up year one of unemployment as I was trying to finish my dissertation, living in an uninsulated garret apartment. Some parishioners had invited me to take care of their four cats in their spacious and air-conditioned house. I grabbed the opportunity. They had television, something else I didn't have. Otherwise I would not have watched the whole news story unfold. I remember seeing the above photo.
Normally I might have said it was awful but no more but in this case, I was frantic because a close friend of mine from grad school was spending the spring semester in Beijing, teaching economics. In that pre-email, blogger, twitter, facebook, cell phone, even sat phone (for us lowlies), there was absolutely no way to get in touch with him to see if he was OK. So all I could do was watch television and pray and put him on every prayer list of which I could think.
When he finally got back home to Ottawa, having been airlifted out by the Canadian Air Force, he said that he was totally aware of all the prayers surrounding him. He also said he figured that several of his students did not survive the massacre because no one knew what had become of them.
Nada más.
1 comment:
I was finishing my first year of college. Watching a tiny, black-and-white TV in my dorm room. And I knew I couldn't be as brave as the people I was watching.
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