Ten Years After

It’s the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC. Even a decade after, it still stings.

We were just living our lives. Then it all changed.

I once wrote an article in college called “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” which detailed my memories of the event. 9/11 was one of those “Where were you moments?” in history.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

______

On the morning of September 11, I was having History class at my high school in the small suburban town of Gaithersburg, Maryland.

It was hot; the sun was on full-dial. I was indolently shuffling through my note about the days of Reagan and voodoo economics.

That was when I heard a panic-stricken voice yelling from across the hall.

“A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

I shrugged and fidgeted for a moment. My first thought was a bewildered rejection of some sorts. Airplanes don’t hit the World Trade Center. That would be impossible. I was shaken by the mere thought that someone had just made the pronouncement.

How could this happen?

At that, my professor’s phone rang. He blinked rapidly once or twice, before carefully turning on the television set at the corner of the room. When the television turned on, the tepid air in the room seemed to rear up and split in half like a pencil in the hands of a frustrated tester. I was startled with what I saw on the screen: one of the World Trade towers was engulfed in flames, and was covered by a billowing smoke.

Some of the other students in the class languidly waved their hands in the air, some grinned almost triumphantly at the images on the screen which were decidedly so surreal that we all thought it was a film – complete with fast cuts and pumping, rhythmic crescendos with a winding build of tension and burst of music. A part of us knew it was real. But a bigger part of us were waiting for the credits to roll. Waiting for some validation that it was really a film.

Then the second plane hit.

“Please remain calm,” my professor said in his best impersonation of a calm human being. He couldn’t hide it though. His face registered fear. That registered that he must know something – that what was happening was really bad; and that it was true.

A report was flashed on screen minutes later that another plane had crashed intro the Pentagon in Washington D.C., which was about half and hour away from our school.

My seatmate clutched my hand, and appread to straing curiously forward. “How could this happen?,” she asked.

I don’t think anyone knew at that point. Brains were all running on synaptic misfires. What we were seeing had no answers. Only questions.

For the next few hours, we were ordered to remain seated in the classroom, which I unwaveringly accepted as I was just filled with blankness, conceived of denial, while the other students were becoming hysterical. Some were on the verge of teams.

The question kept echoing in the room and in our minds: How could this happen?

We were just living our lives.

______

I remember that right after September 11, the general cry heard across the world was that “we will never forget.”

Ten years later, it seems like we haven’t.