** Feature
Tragedy inspires action and fuels hope for widows’ future
By Brian Wright O’Connor
S
usan Retik-Ger’s sun-splashed study shows the usual evidence of a busy life — papers and notes scattered across the desk, books and notebooks open and her laptop blinking with incoming email messages. But the Needham, Mass., mother of four has something unusual in the corner of the book-lined room: A battered cardboard box of soccer balls with flying doves the color of the Afghan flag imprinted on the synthetic leather surface. The soccer balls, hand-stitched by Afghani widows left destitute by the deaths of their husbands, offer a glimmer of hope to those who, like Retik-Ger herself, have suffered both loss and longing as a result of war. In Retik-Ger’s case, the loss came with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Her husband, David Retik, flying from Boston’s Logan Airport to Los Angeles on a business trip, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, leaving behind Retik-Ger, their two children Benjamin, 4, and Molly, 2, and their unborn daughter Dina. A few months later, the United States retaliated, bombing terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and launching a ground invasion to oust the Taliban and their theocratic rule. “As our 42
Exhale • Spring 2011
Afghanistan has over two million widows. In Kabul alone, there are 50,000.