Hard Times Essay Winner

Rosemary Mild

Tulips on Trial

When you plant tulip bulbs in October, you take a lot on faith. Will they reward you with gorgeous blooms in spring? Or will the squirrels get there first, burrowing in, digging up the bulbs, and feasting on them?

For me and my husband in Severna Park, Maryland, eight miles north of Annapolis, it was akin to buying a lottery ticket. Clever gardeners we're not. Nevertheless, my fragile hopes ran high in October of the year 2000, when we diligently planted fifty bulbs in the modest flower bed fronting our house.

We had bought our pack of bulbs in Alsmeer, The Netherlands, home of the largest flower auction in the world. But these were not your ordinary bulbs. Our precious tulips came fraught with symbolism, and represented a grievous journey. We bought them a week before traveling to Kamp Zeist, southeast of Amsterdam. We were headed there to attend the trial of two terrorists: Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. These two Libyan intelligence agents had been indicted by the United States and Great Britain in 1991 for planting the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103. The 747 Maid of the Seas exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988.

Flight 103 was carrying the most important person in the world to me: my daughter, Miriam Luby Wolfe. She was 20 and my only child. I was one of forty-six mothers to lose her only child. Miriam was a junior at Syracuse University, majoring in musical theater, on her way home after a glorious semester studying with the Syracuse group in London. My lovable daughter had many talents: acting, singing, dancing, teaching, writing, and directing. Thirty-five Syracuse students died aboard Pan Am 103. Until 9/11/01, it was the worst terrorist act against the United States in our country's history. All 259 on board were killed, including 183 Americans and 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground.

In the Alsmeer gift shop, as I waited to pay for our bulbs, my thoughts drove me down two avenues: the romance of buying tulips in Holland; and their emotional context on the eve of our attending the trial. These captivating flowers would be more than a souvenir of our trip. They would stand, year after year, as one more of our memorials to Miriam.

So stubbornly had I fixed on these profound implications that I neglected to ask the gift shop ladies just where it is that you plant tulip bulbs. In the shade? In full sun?

Larry and I learned the answer by default. Across the street from our house, the sunny side, our neighbors' tulips sprouted early and bloomed weeks before ours. Oh, dear. Tulips belong in full sun. We, on the north side, get only half sun. Sometimes only quarter sun. In the winter, snow sits on our front lawn longer than on anyone else's in the neighborhood.

In mid-April 2001, the first bud popped open. I leaned over it and stared in dismay. So skinny and anemic. Would they all be like that? Did tulip blossoms get larger, more robust each day? Or, if they were born anemic, did they stay pathetic, unable to catch up? Amazingly enough, each day new blooms greeted me. And with each one, I rushed back into the house and announced to Larry: "We have seven, dear. Come look!" "We're up to twelve, dear!" I counted them obsessively at least once a day. Sometimes twice.

Our fifty brave bulbs gave birth to sixty-four blooms. And they all progressed from their anemia to a hearty cup shape. Not earth-shattering, not prize-winning, but respectable. I took pictures: many long shots, then close-ups, to capture their extraordinary beauty--a blaze of yellow bursting inside a scarlet cup; a white star nestling in velvety purple. Each day as I bounced out of the house for the morning paper, I greeted our tulips as if they'd be with me forever.

The trial of the two Libyans was conducted in The Netherlands before a Scottish court, at Kamp Zeist, a former American air force base. The United Nations had negotiated this unusual arrangement with Moammar Gadhafi--the only arrangement under which the Libyan leader would turn over his two intelligence officers. We attended the trial, along with twelve other Pan Am family members, the first week in October, 2000. Before leaving for Europe, I cried for days, filled with anxiety over the prospect of facing the murderers of my daughter.

In the courtroom, a bulletproof glass wall separated the spectators from the court. I stared at the two men accused of mass murder. And a wave of fear shot through me. Not because they looked fearsome. Not because I felt physically threatened. But because they looked quite ordinary. Author Hannah Arendt, writing about Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, talked about "the banality of evil." I had not understood the concept before. Now I did.

Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz calls Scotland one of the most pro-defendant countries in the world. From day one of the trial, I had felt the Scottish court was too fair. The Washington Post reported, before the trial even began, that a special chef had been hired to prepare meals for the two defendants. They had a prayer room in addition to their cell. And even, it is reported, an exercise room. Did Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry McNichols--or any other mass murderers in an American prison--ever get such luxury treatment?

On Jan. 31, 2001, the three Scottish judges convicted Megrahi and sentenced him to a life sentence of twenty years before he will be eligible for parole. Fhimah was acquitted. I felt sick to read that he flew home to a hero's welcome. Megrahi's sentence meant that he would serve less than one month for each victim.

Nevertheless, a sense of gratitude and triumph swept over me. At least we got one conviction. Evil had not won out. But my sense of triumph didn't last long. Megrahi launched his appeal immediately after his conviction. The appeal process lasted thirteen months. Larry and I had followed the nine-month trial, and then the appeal, on a special secure Web site established by the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime just for the Pan Am 103 families. As we printed out summaries of the appeal hearings, I anguished over each word and shred of the defense's arguments. When the appeal hearing was held October 15, 2001, I was horrified by the decision of the five new Scottish judges.

"It's a month after September 11!" I ranted to Larry. "How can they allow the appeal to go forward? The trial lasted nine months, and they had years to prepare their case. Why is Megrahi being given such outrageous leeway?"

As we read the appeal summaries each day, Larry remained coolly confident that the new "evidence" produced in such volumes by the defense was flimsy. I agreed with him intellectually, but my stomach knotted up with dread. What if the conviction were overturned? What if no one were made to pay for Miriam's death?

On March 14, 2002, at 5:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the five Scottish judges announced their verdict: "We have concluded that none of the grounds of the appeal is well founded. The appeal will accordingly be refused. This brings proceedings to an end."

At the time, Larry and I were spending the winter in Honolulu, Hawaii. Holding our breath, our eyes transfixed on CNN at 12:30 a.m., we heard the verdict. Appeal denied. We did not whoop and cheer. No. We fell into each other's arms and cried. A sense of relief flooded me. I could breathe again. But I still felt a lurking reserve--until much later that day, when I logged onto The New York Times online and read that Megrahi "was flown to Scotland late tonight to begin his sentence there." That single line somehow liberated me, released me. It was the first tangible news, something I could grasp and clutch and cling to. He is now physically caged in a Victorian-era prison in Glasgow. According to Reuter's news service, Barlinnie has borne the reputation (until very recently) as Scotland's toughest jail, administered under "Dickensian conditions." Yes! The bomber is being punished for his unspeakable act of terror, the mass murder of 270 innocent victims.

Megrahi is, of course, only one man--reputed to have been the senior officer in the Libyan intelligence service. Although Fhimah was acquitted, the U.S. government believes he too was guilty. And it is universally known that the two men did not act on their own, that the order to bomb Pan Am 103 came from Moammar Gadhafi himself. For many years, Libya has been on our State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism. But the circumstantial evidence was not enough to convict Fhimah.

Considering the nearly insurmountable odds of collecting evidence, the conviction of Megrahi seems almost miraculous. The plane exploded at 31,000 feet. Debris was scattered over 845 square miles. Combing the countryside in the rain, sleet, mud, and wind of the Scottish winter, investigators and private citizens collected personal effects. It took the combined heroic efforts of investigators from Scotland, Britain, Interpol, our FBI and CIA, and volunteers from the saintly town of Lockerbie. They found a brown Samsonite suitcase, unaccompanied by a passenger. It contained a Toshiba cassette-recorder in which the bomb had been hidden.

A group of Pan Am families has filed a civil suit against Libya. The Libyan government wants desperately to be removed from the U.S.'s list of terrorist nations. It craves to be free of the rigorous sanctions imposed on it by the United Nations, United States, and Great Britain. The civil action will not be settled unless Libya meets--first among many demands--the families' cornerstone condition: Moammar Gadhafi, as head of the Libyan government, must take public responsibility for the bombing and renounce his state-sponsored terrorism.

We returned home from Hawaii at the end of March, 2002, and now it was time for our darling tulips to perform for their second season. As we wheeled our luggage up the walk, I cheered. "Larry, they're coming up!"

Well, sort of. A few scrawny leaves greeted us. In the next few weeks, I expected them to burst forth with buds--even stronger, healthier, and with more blooms this year. I expected them to join Larry and me in celebrating and symbolizing our victory.

But April and May, weeks of suspense, came and went. In our entire flower bed, only twelve clumps of leaves appeared. Twelve clumps. Not one tulip! There the leaves stood--lonely, straggly, disheartened. Some weren't even standing. They were lying down, pale and yellowing, without the strength to even make an effort. And surrounding them, I discovered dents in the soil. Dents and deep holes. Many holes.

Several years ago, we planted a large pot of gerbera daisies, and the flowers popped out in huge blazing yellows, oranges, and purples. But by the next morning, each dazzling bloom had disappeared. Rabbits had turned them into breakfast. After a week of this, I got so frustrated that I roared across Ritchie Highway to Frank's Nursery and bought a bunch of silk roses, complete with fake dew on their delicate pink petals. For two whole summers, our friends raved about our stunning roses. Until they tried to smell them, of course.

So this past spring, here I stood, staring at our straggly tulip leaves. They looked oddly naked, with nary a bud in sight. Larry studied the dents and holes in the dirt. "Hmm," he said. "Must be the squirrels." I nodded, too disappointed even to agree aloud.

But after a day of letting it all sink in, I could visualize what must have happened. Our resident squirrels undoubtedly followed the trial and appeal. In my mind's eye, I could see them gathered in a huddle, their plumed tales quivering.

"Listen up, fellas and gals," the head honcho squirrel said. "The trial's over. The appeal's over. Let's eat!"

Yes, indeed.

My daughter had a joyful personality, and her optimism sustains me every hour of my life. In one of her journals, returned to me by the Scottish Police, Miriam kept an account of her exhilarating three-day trip to Wales. Sitting on a hillside, gazing at Kidwelly Castle, she wrote: "The sky was bluer today, the sun was yellower today, and the whole of the earth seemed to be rejoicing in its own perfection!"

It's time to take my cue from Miriam. Instead of brooding about spring blooms and what will come up or not, I think of our precious Dutch bulbs and pack them away in a corner of my memory. I smile at the squirrels prancing along our red maple branches. My decision is made. I jump in my Toyota Corolla and head for Frank's Nursery. I hear they have exquisite silk tulips.

[Copyright © Rosemary Mild]

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