The anniversary of the fatal attacks of 9/11 bring with it the individual memories of where each of us were that day. Photographs of the World Trade Center still brings tears immediately to my eyes. Most of us were nowhere near New York, Washington, or Pennsylvania when thousands of people lost their lives. Most of us did not intimately know any of those who died. My heart aches for those of you who lost loved ones.
This posting I offer out of respect for survivors and the memory of the victims. Please share your story as well.
The morning of September 11th I was running late to school. Specifically I was missing my college course entitled "Islamic Religions". I had stayed the night at a friend's apartment. My friend and I got into my car only to find a police car parked in the driveway, blocking our only exit. The police car was not running. No keys in the ignition. There were no police in sight. Assuming the officer was perhaps inside one of the many surrounding apartments, I blared my horn repeatedly to no avail. We had no choice but to wait so I turned on my radio. It was tuned to the local college radio station, WIDR, known for it's somewhat obscure musical line-up. I couldn't understand what was on the radio station. Some weird War Of The Worlds type thing I joked. I dismissed it as some station antic and shut it off, irritated. My friend decided to knock on some doors to find the police officer responsible for our continued delay. I waited in the car. Again I turned the radio on. Same bizzare broadcast on WIDR. I turned the station. Same broadcast, a male voice, coming through strained and broken. Sentance fragments. A plane. A building. I must have turned to several more stations. My friend returned to the car. I said "Something is happening, listen". We sat in shock and in silence. Mostly we listened, confused. We decided to give up on getting to school, the police car was still blocking our exit and we wanted to get to the TV. Surely this could not be on TV, whatever it was. If it was not on TV it could not be real. Surely we had missed the punchline.
Through the fuzz of the old TV the first images came alive. A building, smoking wildly on the New York skyscape. Having no phone, my friend asked the neighboors to call the police about the car in the drive. They were sending someone out. It was not supposed to be there. We waited. We watched the TV standing. Images of people, of smoke, of fire. What a terrible accident. How does a plane smash into a building? Must have been some mechanical failure. Something that made the plane uncontrollable.
The police arrived at the apartment. Questioned us while we all watched television. Many police. All around the house. And the fire and smoke on the TV growing. Then the second plane hit. A second plane? Not possible. Not an accident. The police car had been stolen the previous night and abandoned in the drive. And there were buildings on fire, planes obliterated. New York. Washington. And another plane somewhere else, crashing into the ground. I stood quitely crying in front of the TV. The yard filling with police. The world had ended somehow, on a regular day.
It was hours before the tow truck came for the police car and the officers left. I called my mother from a payphone. Did she know too? Did she know this thing was happening? She knew. My sensible mother knew. This is real. We told each other how much we loved each other. We did not know where else the danger was. It could be us. It could always be us next.
In the days and weeks that followed I remember being in the Islamic Religions class. There were many Muslim students in the class. We talked and we argued. I was surprised at how we argued. We were in a class designed to help us understand each other. But there it was, out in the open. The rage, the fear, the hate and distrust all ripped open in that classroom. It was clear we did not understand each other at all. We thought our expensive educations, our mountains of books and articles, our wildly intelligent proffesser, would save us from the perils of ignorance. They did not. The class fell apart. We eventually returned to the syllabus. We read the assigned books. We took the tests. We stopped talking to each other.
All commercial flights were grounded that day. And the next, I think. I remember thinking, how strange. The sky is empty today. Only war planes there now. No one going on vacation. No one coming home.
The sky is empty.
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