My dad’s life ended on December 21, 1988. My dad’s death never ends.
Two years ago next week, powered by sheer fuck-it-all energy, I sped down 1st Avenue. Sped, of course, was a relative term—cars flew by as I ran down the sidewalk—but my watch’s metrics confirmed my legs had found a new gear, what would have been my fastest mile ever had a stop light not intervened.
The email had come through a few days earlier. Sent to my mom and forwarded along, as always. Always, of course, was a relative term.
For years, I’d been counting down whenever a new headline about my father’s murder appeared, anticipating the final one. Knowing it could be years, but with al-Megrahi dead of prostate cancer, and Gaddafi sodomized by his own bayonet before being shot to death, only one name remained. Fhimah, acquitted at trial, was the last man standing. His death, whenever that came, would be the end of it all. The one remaining headline. The last time I’d be ambushed by the news.
Until the email.
There was a new guy.
I’d heard rumors and rumblings for some time, largely attributed to the work of Ken Dornstein, an author who’d lost his brother in the bombing and wrote an engaging yet painful-to-read memoir on the topic. After the memoir, he’d returned to the subject for a Frontline documentary, visiting Libya after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime to track down others who were rumored to be involved. I hear the documentary was good; I couldn’t bring myself to watch.
In his work, Dornstein identified a man named Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir al-Marimi, the alleged bombmaker. In the email my mom forwarded, we were given two days’ notice that Attorney General Bill Barr would be announcing charges against the new suspect, on the 32nd anniversary. The email included a link to watch the press conference.
I went for that run instead.
One of the few media enterprises I still geek out on is the BBC’s Doctor Who1, a science fiction series approaching its 60th anniversary that, in its early years, stumbled into the secret to eternal relevance: Every so often, it dies. Or rather, its lead character does.
The Doctor, an alien with two hearts (both of which are usually made of figurative gold), is capable of cheating death, while also dying. After a fatal wound, the Doctor’s body erupts into a conflagration of golden light, and, as the Tenth Doctor bitterly described it, “some new man goes sauntering away.” A Scotsman with “attack eyebrows,” perhaps. Or a blonde woman, or a Black gay man2. As far as excuses for recasting go, it’s a brilliant one.
When the Eleventh Doctor said his farewell in 2013, his companion Clara begged him not to change, and he responded thusly:
“We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good. You’ve got to keep moving, as long as you remember all the people you used to be.”
I was five years old when I discovered my mother crying in a chair. I was five when people started telling me that I had become the man of the house. I was five when they buried him, though I wasn’t there.
I was hours shy of 11 when my mom told me the news, and I revised my birthday list, bumping every wish down a slot. New #1: The Supreme Court rejects Pan Am’s appeal. New #2: A Super Nintendo. I unwrapped a Super Nintendo that night, and for the first time, thought everything might one day be okay.
I was 16 when we went to the trial, a summer trip to Europe subsidized by the U.S. government and sullied by the circumstances. When I stared through six-inch-thick bulletproof glass at the two alleged murderers, and instead of wrath, I felt boredom. When I shared the viewing room with those men’s families, a memory that would linger.
I was 17 when word came down of a verdict, and I awoke extra early that morning to watch the local news before school. I was still 17, seven months later, when the Twin Towers fell. That morning, I received my first payment from Pan Am’s settlement.
I was nearly 20 when the Libyan settlement structure was finalized, when they agreed to pay for what they did, only so they could make so much more. I was 20 when I walked into the Student Legal Services office, told them I needed a will, explained why, and was immediately referred to a real lawyer downtown.
I was 21, just barely, when I returned home from watching the Red Sox win at Yankee Stadium to discover the second chunk of the settlement was coming through. More than we’d ever hoped, more than we’d ever expected.
I was 25, by hours, when I woke up, checked my account, and saw the final direct deposit from the Pan Am suit had landed in my account. I took a screen shot and went about my day, telling no one the number I’d seen.
I was still 25 when the final payment came from Libya, after years of wrangling. My mom and I met up in New York to attend the lavish luncheon thrown by the lawyers in a bank headquarters-turned-banquet hall, where I sat uncomfortable with the knowledge that the only things uniting those of us in the room were two decades of tragedy and relatively newfound wealth.
I was still 25 when I packed up my car and set out for weeks on the road, trying to write something that would last. My friends thought I was out looking for answers, but I wasn’t even sure what the questions were. I’m still not.
I was still 25 when al-Megrahi, the one man convicted in my father’s murder, was released from jail on compassionate grounds. Authorities said he had terminal prostate cancer, with less than six months left to live.
I was 28 when Gaddafi died. My mom called from a vacation in the south of France, where she’d spotted jet fighters flying overhead, to ask if I’d seen the news. I told her I had, and that I’d just been dumped.
I was 28 when I read the news that al-Megrahi had died, nearly three years after his release. I broke the news to my mom, who broke it to my sister sitting next to her, who broke down in tears. That afternoon, I donned my grandfather’s watch (which he had passed down to my dad) and my father’s cufflinks as my mom and I walked my sister down the aisle3. Later, during the reception, I thought of al-Megrahi’s family, with whom I’d shared a viewing room a dozen years earlier. While we celebrated, halfway around the world, they mourned.
I was 34 when the ticking of the clock in the back of my head got louder, more urgent. When I realized 35 was next, and all that entailed. The money would come to me one month, I’d pass my dad the next.
I was 35, exactly, when I returned to the small Scottish town where my father’s body fell. A retired constable drove me around, showing me places few would want to see. He pointed out how the field across the church was still dented from the cockpit’s impact nearly thirty years prior, then gave me a moment alone in the memorial chapel, where I leafed through the guestbook, and found my own message from 18 years earlier—the handwriting familiar, the words strange.
I was 35 years and 29 days old when I declared my own holiday—Did It Day—when I surpassed my father in one objective way, and inked my left arm with his signature to mark the occasion.
I was 36 when my mom mailed me much of what remains: A shattered camera lens, the monogrammed buttons from his sport coat, the contents of his pockets, the watch he wore, and so on. She warned me of the watch, wanted to me to be emotionally prepared to see that it had stopped at the moment of impact, though when I received and inspected it, the time was 40 minutes off.
I was 36 when I took what remains to a room of University of Washington students who’d never heard of Pan Am Flight 103 or Lockerbie until a drama grad student decided to put on a play, and told them all about it while I passed the relics around the room. It seemed as though they couldn’t imagine the scale of such a tragedy, of these things I’d lived through. Before the play debuted, the world shut down.
I was 37 when I learned charges would be brought against someone new, and I went out for a run.
I was 39 on Sunday, when I woke up to the news that Mas’ud was somehow in U.S. custody, and would be brought to trial. My mom and sister had already chimed in on the family text thread, so I added my first thought: “Yeah, I still can’t imagine any good comes from this.”
I was 39 when I realized that, while the lawyers still weren’t finished, I was done.
A CNN op-ed I read yesterday trumpeted Mas’ud’s capture, claiming that this was yet more proof that those behind the attack wouldn’t get away with it.
Almost three and a half decades have passed since Pan Am 103 was brought down, and many may be wondering why Gadhafi and his intelligence officials carried out this bombing and why they thought they might get away with it.
When news about Mas’ud’s capture first broke, the thing that struck me was how none of the articles mentioned his age—not even the New York Times, which usually does so under these sorts of circumstances. Best I can tell, he’s in his early 70s, a guess that jibes with the photos I’ve seen and descriptions I’ve read.
Next week marks the 34th anniversary of my father’s murder. Mas’ud has lived half his life since then. It’s likely that, by the time his trial ends, my dad will have been dead longer than he was alive.
I’d say Mas’ud got away with it.
And, despite all I’ve said here, I’m not angry. I kind of want to congratulate him for his success, for eluding capture until now, for living his life, however horrific it may have been. (Mas’ud was supposedly in jail in Libya prior to being extradited to the U.S., though recent reporting suggests otherwise.) I don’t want to wish Mas’ud harm, because I don’t want to wish anybody harm. Not anymore.
I’ve been there. I’ve been vengeful, spiteful, and cruel. I’ve suffered through literal decades of this all, and come out of it with compassion, with the belief that the best way to avoid the next malicious act is to create a world where there’s no reason to feel malice.
Some particularly loud voices in the Pan Am 103 community have celebrated Mas’ud’s capture, have insisted this is another step towards true justice. Me? I’m here being quiet in the back, thinking of all the different people I’ve been along the way, and wondering if he might say the same about himself.
So much time has passed that even if we got the right guy, I doubt we got the same guy. I’m not sure what we have to gain from all of this, from being dragged through a third trial, from deliberately reopening wounds that had healed as much as possible.
Instead, I’m focused on the present, on the future I can control. A friend is getting married on Saturday, and I got my grandfather’s watch fixed up for the occasion.
I inherited two timepieces from my father.
One is forever stopped. The other keeps on ticking.
- I nearly titled this post “They Keep Killing Saul”, in reference to an episode of the spin-off series Torchwood.
- Still no gingers, though.
- It was a much better story before the divorce.