Letters to Mohamed: Introduction

LETTERS TO MOHAMED ATTA	Introduction

	Dear Mohamed Atta is a collection of letters written to Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers believed to be at the controls of American Airlines Flight 11 that slammed into the North Tower of the WTC on September 11, 2001. The 50 letters are housed in a cigar-style letter box and were written between September 11, 2001, and March 11, 2002. You have permission to invade my privacy as well as Atta's, to read the letters that address some of the events and issues of September 11. The letters may be too painful for some to read. For some, they may not say enough. I used to believe that the scariest things were the nightmares conjured up by the imagination [the Brothers Grimm; myths and fairy tales of trolls and ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night; the monster under the bed or in the closet; and of course, religious based demons]. The most frightening visions, however, are found in the realities of human behavior. There are the known monsters of past and present, the Hitlers and Stalins, Milosevics, Saddam Husseins and Osama bin Ladens. Not always original in their prejudices, cruelty and missions, they are descendants of as well as fathers to be of gospels of hate and loathing and death in their quest for power, domination and self-satisfaction. These monsters are tame, however, compared to the anonymous ones they create - the followers, the believers, the soldiers of the gospel. They are the ones who make it happen, get their hands dirty, who force the nightmares out of the dream world, out of the subconscious into reality. They come in the night with black masks and guns. They come in the day with fake smiles and convincing words. To them, the end justifies the means. The means: war, terrorism, genocide, urbicide. Their weapons: anything on hand. Do they really know the end they are seeking? Do we know what it would take to make us them? The events of September 11 are with us today and will be with us for some time. For some, there may be no recovery; the monsters will haunt them during their waking and sleeping moments. For others, time will erase the impact of the day upon their memories and it will become another vaguely remembered event. In preparation for a book that examines genocide, I have read many texts that speak to our capacity to be monsters (Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II; Mark Danner's The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; Philip Gourevitch's We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda; Anthony Loyd's, My War Gone By, I Miss It So; William Shawcross' Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict; Donovan Webster's Aftermath: the Remnants of War). I have read many more. Some days it is almost too much to bear, to comprehend, to understand. I did not want to wait too long to put into some form a response to 9/11. I did not want this event to be just one of many events to be listed in my book on genocide as just another statistic in the documentation and commentary on terrorism and human rights. It was difficult to find the best form for what I wanted to say. This form came to me around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning when I was awakened by a typical Northwest winter storm. As it howled outside in the dark, I wrapped myself tightly in the blankets, the letter in the envelope. The Materials Used: One-third of the letterheads/cards were purchased from Office Max, Paper Zone, Fred Meyer and K-Mart. Two-thirds of the "letterheads" were printed on scrap/left over/offcut papers that were laying on shelves in my studio. The images are from my growing collection of photopolymer "cuts." All letterpress printing was done on a Vandercook 4. The letters and envelopes were printed on an Epson 3000 inkjet printer. The "stamps" were designed in Photoshop using the primary image of Mohamed Atta found on many web sites. Various filters were applied and in some cases combined with images from my own antique photo collection and/or Corel Photo CDs. The stamps were printed on an Epson 3000. All envelopes have been "cancelled" with a rubber stamp. The cigar-style letter box has been constructed in Davey board with double walls and covered in red Lohkta with gold paint; the interior has been lined in gold Thai Momi. The letter knife was purchased at Grigg's in Bellingham. © 2002 by Elsi Vassdal Ellis \| EVE Press. An edition of 20 has been created, referencing the 19 hijackers of the four planes and Osama bin Laden: American Airlines Flight 11 - North Tower WTC Mohamed Atta Waleed M. Alshehri Wail M. Alshehri Satam M.A. Al Suqami Abdulaziz Alomari United Airlines Flight 175 - South Tower WTC Marwan Al-Shehhi Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad Ahmed Alghamdi Hamza qAlghamdi Mohand Alshehri American Airlines Flight 77 - Pentagon Hani Hanjour Majed Moqed Khalid Almihdhar Nawaf Alhamzi Salem Alhamzi United Airlines Flight 93 - Rural Pennsylvania Ziad Samir Jarrah Saeed Alghamdi Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi Ahmed Alnami Somewhere/No where - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia... Osama bin Laden EVE
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