Chapter 4. Austin, Texas

The fourth chapter of my novel deals with Austin; September 11; and the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

After his Master’s studies, my father applied to several doctoral programs, and decided to accept a scholarship offer from the University of Texas at Austin.

This was the main campus of the University of Texas System, and had several graduate programs among the Top 10 in the United States. Despite being a public university, it also had the second-largest endowment among all universities (after Harvard), thanks to the revenues derived from oil production in the state.

Again, we were fortunate to be able to get a subsidized house for married students, which was in the west of the city, near Lake Austin.

Like Eugene, Austin was a progressive and democratic bastion in the middle of a state that was becoming more and more conservative and Republican. Texas Governor George W. Bush (son of ex-President George H.W. Bush) had been elected President in 2000, and his successor as governor was also a Republican.

We arrived in Austin on August 2001, and a month later the September 11th attacks, organized by Al Qaeda, took place. About 3,000 people were killed on that date, both in the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York, at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and on a plane that crashed in a field in the state of Pennsylvania, which was thought to be headed for the Capitol building or the White House in Washington.

Bush did not anticipate the attacks, although Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, had warned and threatened to attack the United States; the CIA and the FBI knew that cells of the organization were operating in the U.S.; and there had even been allegations that Muslim students were studying in aviation schools, who said they were not interested in learning to take off or land, but only to fly planes.