As an exchange student in 1984, I was immediately plunged into the European political arena every day on our campus in Normandy. International refugees poured into France from Poland, Iran, Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania and other countries. Nearly 600 terrorist attacks occurred that year including the IRA bombings in the United Kingdom, Direct Actions bombings in Paris, as well as the 300 bombs claimed by the Front for the National Liberation of Corsica. America was at the height of the Cold War with the USSR where Russia and her allies boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated and the Middle East was roiling in conflict.
No longer in my Yankee bubble, I witnessed firsthand the hatred in German manifestations against the U.S.A. and our bases. I experienced the poisons of nationalism and radicalism by being in Ajaccio at the wrong time with flying bullets and held at knifepoint by a crazed Algerian at student dance party, dragged by my blonde hair, being called a dirty American whore.
But those incidents were nothing compared to my friends’ stories. How Afsi and her mother had witnessed the killing of her brothers and father in Tehran or how the Polish professor had 8 hours to leave Warsaw with his family carrying forged passports. How Sharifa’s family had fled Syria prior to the Hama genocide and how Josef fought with the Lebanese Maronite…
