Notebook Outside the Window: The Flag Nobody Waved
Column 'Notebook Outside the Window,' installment 5: reading the report of Window 5's marketplace crowd raising tags, the writer recalls a first-generation Drifter's testimony from her research for 'The Window of 1975' — a man who said he never waved a flag.
Among the dozens of first-generation Drifters I interviewed while writing "The Window of 1975," exactly one told me he never waved a flag outside the camp wall. "Everyone else was waving, and I was the only one who didn't. I couldn't believe it would reach the other side, and even if it did, I had no way of knowing whether that would be something to be glad about or something to fear." Even in my book — which scholars continue to ignore — this one passage is almost never quoted. Too modest a detail, I suppose.
Reading today's article about Window 5, this was the first thing I thought of. Everyone talks about the market crowd raising their tags, but surely someone on the other side never raised anything either. An article can't be written about what wasn't observed. Obvious enough, but it stings sometimes.
I floated the idea of working this into a full piece, and the desk turned me down for the entirely reasonable reason that "there's nothing to report about someone who didn't do anything." My notebook has plenty of stories that will only ever be footnotes like this one. I don't know if anyone will ever read them. But I think that's exactly what a notebook is for.
