Fight or flight? The falling man of Afghanistan has haunting echoes of 9/11
by Archbishop Cranmer:
They aren’t stupid. They scramble beneath a US military aircraft and cling to its wings and wheels in the hope of escaping the coming Taliban terror. It is fight or flight – quite literally – and they chose to fly, because the Afghan army seemingly has no appetite for a fight. Freedom, it appears, is not worth fighting for in Afghanistan. And so they cling like ants to the fuselage of a departing US Air Force C-17 plane as it takes off from at Hamid Karzai International Airport. All they have is a wing and a prayer – quite literally.
They know they will surely die: if the rush of the air over the top of the wing doesn’t push them off with its force of pressure, there will be vortices of turbulence in the sky, sub-zero temperatures to turn gripping fingers blue, and a lack of oxygen causing dizziness and drowsiness. But the feeling of flying even momentarily to freedom is an ineffable ecstasy; an almost mystical union which transcends consciousness and common sense. Why stay and fight to certain death when you can fall in flight to the breath of God?
The falling man of 9/11 seemingly chose to fly to certain death over being burned to death. His flight was wingless: he knew, as did many other ‘jumpers’, that he had no feathers and could not flap. There was no fight to be had with the scorching flames and choking fumes of aviation fuel mingled with acrid smoke: all that remained was the choice of his departing. And the falling man chose free-fall: there wasn’t even an attempt to cling spider-like to the concrete and glass of the World Trade Centre tower. We can try to rationalise his conflicting currents of thought and feeling, but he had no time in his fight or flight decision. There was no decision to make; no resistance to a one-dimensional image of horror. There is the good of the air and the evil of fire. Who wouldn’t choose to fall to earth in the hope of meeting God in the wind?
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