“When CNN gets here, I’m back over the other side of the railing,” he promised. “This war will be known as ‘the war of cowards and oil’ across the world!”Īs a Coast Guard cutter idled in the fifty-five-degree water below, the bridge’s guardians tried to talk Alarab into coming up. A Telemundo crew came out, and Alarab began to read a declaration about Iraq’s defenseless women, children, and elderly. As it happened, a number of TV crews were at the south end of the bridge, filming standups about heightened terrorism precautions. Alarab told them that he wanted to speak to the media. Responding to a “10-31,” bridge code for a jumper, four uniformed California Highway Patrol officers soon arrived at the rail, joined by three ironworkers who had been repairing the bridge. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat at. Alarab had chosen this day, the first of America’s war against Saddam Hussein, to make a statement of opposition. The day before, he’d told a co-worker that the prospect of civilian deaths in Iraq made him sick to his stomach. Clasping a typed statement to his chest with his left hand, he leaned backward, away from the railing, and waited for help to arrive.Īlarab, a forty-four-year-old Iraqi-American, was a large, balding, friendly man who kept a “No Hate” sign in his office at Century 21 Heritage Real Estate in Lafayette, across the Bay. Through the palings of the bridge rail and the rush of traffic, he could see the mouth of the Bay to the west and the Pacific beyond. His weekday attire usually consisted of a business suit with a “Peace” T-shirt underneath, but today he wore black gloves, black shoes, black pants, a black T-shirt, and black sunglasses. On a sunny day, as this day was, the view is glorious: Angel Island to the left, Alcatraz straight ahead, Treasure Island farther off, bisecting the long gray tangent of the Bay Bridge, and, layered across the hills to the south, San Francisco.Īlarab turned and looped a thick rope over the railing, then wound it around his right wrist five times and grabbed it with his gloved right hand. Then he lowered himself carefully onto the bridge’s outermost reach, a thirty-two-inch-wide beam known as “the chord.” It is on the chord, two hundred and twenty feet above San Francisco Bay, that people intending to kill themselves often pause. Midway along the walkway, which carries pedestrians and cyclists between San Francisco and Marin County, he stopped and climbed the four-foot safety railing. Shortly after ten-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, March 19th, a real-estate agent named Paul Alarab began hiking across the Golden Gate Bridge.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |