Sonny was eleven or so when I met him. I was nine. We were Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorer Scouts together in the same Pack, Troop, and Post, in Brooklyn New York. As a result of our closeness during those ten years, our families grew to be close friends; a friendship that lasted long after us boys had left Scouting and gone our separate ways.

The summer I turned nineteen, I was visiting the first in a long line of “shiksa” girlfriends. Donna lived in Falls Church Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. I got a phone call from my father telling me that Sonny’s dad, Bill, had suffered a massive heart attack and died at the absurdly young age of forty-eight. I hastily packed and returned to Brooklyn for the funeral the following day. After we returned from the devastating ceremony at the cemetery, Sonny and I lay on his bed in his room and talked. I asked about the circumstances of Bill’s death. Staring at the ceiling over his bed, he told me the story:

Sonny had been introduced to a girl named Cecilia by his Uncle Zelig, Bill’s brother, and after seeing her for a year or so, she and Sonny decided to marry. One of his grandfathers (I forget from which side) had strenuously objected to the whole thing, (she was not Jewish) and had been making Bill’s life miserable with constant arguments, phone calls, and threats. On the day he died, Bill and Sonny had just left a particularly fractious meeting with the relative in question. Aggravated and previously diagnosed with a bad heart, Bill fell to the ground and died in his son’s arms. At forty-eight. Dead in large part because an old man had failed to realize that he now lived in America, and not in some Eastern European Shtetle.

In the years following Bill’s death, my father apparently all but adopted Sonny, his mother, and his two younger siblings. I say apparently, because my father simply did this without any fanfare or notice. I found out about this characteristic act of instinctual generosity on my dad’s part only at his own funeral seven years ago. Upon hearing of his death, Sonny had insisted on delivering a brief eulogy at the funeral.

Of all my old Scout friends I stayed closest to Sonny, perhaps because I knew he managed a “schlock” store in Times Square that sold electronics. Whenever I was in the neighborhood, I’d stop by and we would reminisce in the manner of old friends, reliving old experiences and catching up on current events in our lives. He and Cecilia had had two daughters. I recall one day when I dropped in on Sonny at work, he came out from behind the counter and asked me to walk across the street to Sbarro’s to meet his youngest daughter who worked there. On the way across Broadway, he talked about her, his head high and his chest thrust out in pride.

On arriving at the pizzeria, he introduced me to a beautiful, eighteen-year-old with an impossibly radiant smile. I saw immediately that she favored Cecelia rather than Sonny as far as looks were concerned, and congratulated her on her good fortune in that particular department! She had Sonny’s outgoing and friendly personality, and I liked her immediately. On the way back to the store, Sonny continued to regale me with stories about Monica, and I could clearly see that, as in most families, his youngest was his favorite.

In the ensuing years, I saw my old friend about once a year, but the visits became shorter and less frequent. Life does that to you I suppose. We take for granted that people will always be there; all the sudden losses we suffer in the course of our journey seemingly teach us nothing about making the most of the time we are allotted. I knew that Sonny’s eldest daughter had married, and during my last visit he told me of Monica’s engagement, a façade of irritation about the cost of a second wedding not able to make a dent in his obvious underlying pride and happiness. That was the last I saw of him for years, the inertia of our separate lives seemingly scoring their final victory over our friendship.

I next spoke with Sonny after my mother passed away two and a half years ago. I called to ask if he’d care to attend the funeral, and he politely declined. He said he doubted his ability to survive a funeral. After a long silence, he added a sickening and ironic coda to the story of his father’s death, now so many years ago. It appeared that the selfsame fear, ignorance, rage, and stupidity that had fueled his grandfather’s objection to his marriage to Cecilia, had not died with Bill or his grandfather. Nor had they finished the hatchet job they had started on Sonny’s life.

Monica had been at her desk at Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit.

In his own words, “She went to work, and never came home.” Not even a body to bury, or a grave to visit. I said absolutely nothing; at that moment what the hell could I say? I simply let him speak. He was a mess. His “life was over.” Cecilia was in even worse shape. All the platitudes and words of small comfort that come so easily to our lips in times of loss came to mine, but I had the good sense to let them die there before they made things worse for him. No, I didn’t know how he felt. No, he wouldn’t “get over it in time.”

I knew he was back in his old bedroom, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. In fact, he was probably there on a nightly basis. Except now he was wondering what his child’s last moments were like. Did she die instantly? Was there time for her to be frightened? Why was he not there to help her, to take the hundreds of gallons of flaming aviation fuel on his own skin? Why was he still walking around in the sunshine when his daughter was, in the words of Jimmy Breslin, “in the sky over Manhattan?”

Monica is not alone in the sky. New casualties of hatred and intolerance are joining her daily. Almost without exception, they are young, courageous, and idealistic. And no, they are not all Americans. We are in a bar fight, and no one has the sense (or talent) to break it up. What you do is get the two drunks apart, and let the passions subside. Then everyone has one more drink and goes home to bed. Let there be no doubt that solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict wins the “War on Terror.” That is the only way it ends; both parties come to their senses and start building resort hotels instead of car bombs. Simplistic? Perhaps. But if this is a conflict over little more than territory, then a negotiated settlement is possible. Why are we not putting all our energies into brokering such a deal? If this madness is rooted in religious and cultural hatred, then separate the warring parties and personally guarantee a demilitarized zone. It would certainly be lots cheaper and less deadly than fighting endless wars and suffering the side effects of ill-conceived occupations.

What the hell is wrong with us? We elect steely-eyed ideologues to manage affairs and let them get away with murdering our children. For let there also be no doubt that our kids are now dying simply for the manic ambitions, pathetic pride, and gross incompetence of a few old men.