Outside the Window: May 14, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudy and cool.

Inside the Book: 2000-2001. Oxford, England. Continual rains and mists. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Chiang Mai, Thailand. Giza, Egypt. Jerusalem, Israel. Istanbul, Turkey. Crowded and confusing.

            I’m now halfway through The Unforgiving Minute, and Mullaney still hasn’t left for Afghanistan. As I read, this began to wear on me. Although his travel writing nicely captures the sheer weirdness of globalization (in Bangkok, “…an elephant walked past sporting a blinking taillight suspended from its tail … one woman who had parked her ox-driven cart on the street came back with a bucket of chicken from KFC.”), Mullaney is a soldier, and it’s his growth as a soldier, not as a citizen of the world, that brought me to the book.

        The educational value of his trips becomes clearer when an old man in New Zealand interrupts him in the grocery store with the news that the World Trade Center has been attacked. Suddenly, the world he has sallied out into has come charging back, and with nothing like his obvious good will. In light of the attacks, small moments appear foreboding, even menacing:

Televisions beamed American sitcoms and a Thai replication of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. My favorite was an original Superman cartoon with a slightly altered introduction. Instead of fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way,” the Thai Superman fought for “truth, justice,” and a second of muted silence.

In another revealing encounter, a local man chases Mullaney (a Catholic) and his two friends (both Jewish) out of Malaysia’s national mosque. This is a shame because moments earlier Mullaney had found, in Islam, a parallel to the quiet ritual of his Catholic Mass: “The air inside [the mosque] was cool and clean, a contrast with the choking pollution outside. This was refuge.” Mullaney, I think, is suggesting that both he and the Muslims at prayer are looking for a sense of order in a chaotic world. He can’t communicate this thought to the angry Malaysian, though, and has to leave. Even if he could, it might not help. Mullaney may be interested in understanding, but not everyone he meets is interested in being understood. Not everyone wants to eat at KFC and Starbucks, not everyone wants to adopt “the American way.”

He and his friends began their vacation as “innocents abroad,” a term Mullaney borrows from Mark Twain. By the end of their travels this innocence, about the world and their place in it, is gone. Mullaney understands that all of his preparation (from Ranger School to reading Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars) is no longer academic: “there [will] be boots on the ground—one day, my boots.” I’m eager for Mullaney to get to Afghanistan, but I also see why he’s lingering. He wants to show us that, despite all the warnings, September 11th, 2001, still took him by surprise. I don’t think he thinks he was alone.