"We don't," she had to explain, "not only because we don't want to call attention to ourselves as Americans, but also because that just isn't done in Europe."

Although expatriates by definition are culturally separated from their homeland, the events of Sept. 11 seem to have exacerbated this feeling for U.S. citizens abroad. An informal survey of Americans overseas found that an increased sense of "disconnect" with Americans at home was often an important concern. "I feel hugely disconnected from what is happening now in America," said John Palmucci, logistics manager at Hewlett-Packard in Cairo, who also spent Christmas in the United States. "Every car has a flag. Every house has a flag. Living abroad, we feel our own sense of patriotism but show it less. At this point in the United States it's a bit irrational. If you don't have a flag on your car it's like there's something wrong with you."

The flag-waving is but one example of the sense of alienation among Americans abroad. Expatriates also say they are disturbed by what they see as a relative lack of tolerance in the United States for foreign points of view.

"In the States, there is no room for dialogue on whether American foreign policy contributed to the problem of terrorism," Conlin said. "At dinner parties in London, there is considerable dialogue on all sorts of issues not really discussed at home, such as the role of U.S. policy toward Israel."

The disconnect has many other aspects. Americans abroad are not always embarrassed or angered by what they see at home. Sometimes they are envious, wishing they could be more like their counterparts in the United States.

"In New York, there are so many daily reminders that it's hard not to think about Sept. 11," said Tiffany Steckler, a public relations employee for Microsoft in Paris. "Here we haven't forgotten about the World Trade Center," she said, "but it is easier to move on."

In New York recently, Steckler found that when her friends went out to dinner, they deliberately chose a restaurant in lower Manhattan as a contribution to reviving the economy of the area around ground zero. "It was just one small example of people making an effort to help." For Americans abroad, she notes, it is harder to help.

Some expatriates now see the disconnect beginning to narrow. Michael Simpson, president of the American University in Paris, thinks "attitudes are beginning to change for the better in the United States," nearly six months after Sept. 11. Americans at home, he said, "are once again able to challenge policy without having their loyalty questioned," As an example, Simpson cites criticism of the "legal limbo" surrounding Taliban prisoners held at Guantánamo.

One aspect of the disconnect that does not seem to be changing much is that Americans abroad still hear far more criticism of the United States than do their friends and relatives at home.

As the Afghan war drags on, Americans abroad continually hear complaints about U.S. policy - about arrogance or naïveté, about overreliance on military force, or the bombing of innocent civilians or all of the above, in an earful rarely encountered by Americans at home.

Newcomers to expatriate life tend to find their first taste of such criticism disconcerting, among them Chelsea Clinton, the former president's daughter, now a student at Oxford University. "'Every day I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling," she wrote in a commentary for Talk magazine. But longer-term expatriates downplay the criticism, underscoring that there is also something of a disconnect - or at least significant disagreement - between different groups of Americans abroad. For veteran expatriates, the key is that the criticism has not degenerated into anti-American violence.

There are many other views, among them that the foreign criticism has no significance. Some expatriates make a distinction between complaints about U.S. policy over the Afghan war and anti-American sentiment, which they regard as something rather different.

Guy Stern, an asset manager with Credit Suisse in Frankfurt, explains: "I can't say it's anti-American sentiment. What I sense is an anti-military sentiment. These are people who don't agree with a military response in general." Eventually, the big question for Americans abroad is whether to return to the United States to live. For those who do go home, better career prospects there are often the determining factor. But many Americans say they have come to prefer their life abroad and hope to prolong it. The disconnect, they say, is one of the reasons.

Copyright 2002 International Herald Tribune

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