9-11: Fourteen Years Later

Some things never leave you. Some nightmares are never forgotten.
Fourteen years can pass, and with the whisper of two numbers, you’re transported right back to that moment in time, that instant when you heard the news and your entire life changed.
I consider myself lucky. I live on the West Coast. The events that transpired on 9-11 were a continent away. Many news blurbs of East Coast issues are things I can tune out. It doesn’t affect me or anyone I know.
This time was different. It affected us all. It didn’t matter where in America you lived. We all felt anger, fear, shock, disbelief. Many of us knew at least one person in New York City. Some of us have family there, or friends who work in the Big Apple. My sister happened to be on the phone for an insurance claim with a man in one of the Twin Towers. Their connection was instantly cut off as the first plane slammed into his floor. She’s still haunted by the fact that hers was the last voice that man heard.
9/11/2001 is a surreal day to me. I don’t even remember most of it anymore. Even as it was happening, it was like a dream. Now, the details have faded with time. What will never fade, what I can never forget, is the moment I heard the news.
I was at college for some extra math lessons (my worst subject) and it seemed like far too many people were crowding around the computers. Something about President Bush, New York … like I cared about that stuff. Politics wasn’t my thing. So I studied, I did the supplemental assignments, and I left the math building. I paused at the top of the swooping staircase leading to the campus commons and pulled out my bulky cellphone to call my boyfriend, who lived near campus. I was hoping we could meet for lunch before the rest of our classes. In general, it was a normal Tuesday.
I was halfway down the stairs when his voice came on, high and panicked. “They’ve flown planes into the World Trade Center! The Pentagon’s been hit, too. They think there are planes going to crash into other places. It’s World War Three!”
I came to a dead halt, right there on the stairs. I honestly thought he was telling me the worst joke in the world, and I told him so.
This was something out of Hollywood: Wrong is Right: two suitcase bombs; Born in Flames: a bomb is set off at the top of the north tower; Shakedown: an almost prophetic plane heading straight for the Twin Towers; Independence Day blew up most American iconic buildings including these; Armageddon shows both towers damaged and in flames; the Iron Man 90s cartoon had the World Trade Center hit with missiles and then enemy plans to fly a fighter into the Pentagon (creepy); The Lone Gunmen had probably the most creepiest prediction where the heroes thwart a plan by the U.S. to fly a jet into the World Trade Center so they can blame a dictator and start a war. What ups the creep factor? It was released merely six months before the attacks occurred!
So seriously, Americans had seen Hollywood blow up the Wold Trade Center—or try to—so many times, it was practically cliché!
The Pentagon was another matter. That place is a fortress. Who the hell would dream of flying a plane into it? I kept thinking that. The World Trade Center, cliché, but … the Pentagon! That was a loud and clear declaration of war.
Still panicking in a voice I had never heard before in him, my boyfriend insisted on picked me up from campus, since the news was warning about potential suicide bombers on buses and trains. Classes were probably canceled, or if not, not a single one of my professors gave us a mark for missing that day, or the next.
The rest of the day and weeks to follow are a blur of wild speculation, frantic warnings of more to come, talks of war, retaliation against a bogeyman we had not yet identified, candlelight memorials, patriotic hymns, and the news filled with images that have now become iconic. Every car was suddenly adorned with window flags. They passed these out at the college, a way to unite us as a country and lift our bleak spirits through patriotism. There were also black arm bands with the American flag on them to honor and mourn the dead. I still have mine. We wanted to unite behind a cause of justice, but at the same time, we had no clue yet who did this.
Realize, we did not know many things then that we do now. Most Americans were blissfully unaware that a handful of radical Muslims had any problems at all with us. Words like jihad were unknown to the general public. Most Americans would not have been able to point out Pakistan on a map. Al-Qaeda? Bin Laden? No one had heard of him or his group. For that matter, it took a long time, what felt like an eternity, to even know who did this.
We were a nation filled with fury and no one to blame.
When at last we heard who planned this tragedy, there was outrage. In the months to follow, things got dark. Racism abound. My brother had problems because his Native American skin-tone combined with a nose he broke at a kid gave him what many thought was an “Arabic” appearance. He worked in a jail, where he received death threats out of the assumption that he was Middle Eastern. Muslim students at college were harassed. One professor in my college pointed at a female Muslim student and shrieked at her, “YOU did this!” (That professor was later fired.)
Then came the flipside. The media stopped lumping all Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis, and Middle Easterners in general into one big umbrella of TERRORISM. We learned about different factions in Islam. People became intrigued with this religion that was like something out of a fairy tale to the average American. Islamic groups handed out free Qurans. (I took one because I was curious.) Muslim groups prayed in the central commons on my campus to show, “Hey, we’re here, we’re Americans, we’re no different from you, just a different religion.” Wearing a headscarf was briefly trendy as people tried to make up for all the ugliness we had displayed.
Needless to say, it was not an easy aftermath. To this day, even though we know more about Islam and the Middle East in general, America hasn’t fully let go of the pain, hatred and distrust. You’ll still hear from time to time a snide remark of “She looks like a terrorist” directed at a woman in a burka. If you even appear to be Middle Eastern and you’re going to the airport, you assuredly will be pulled aside and searched.
9/11 left a deep scar, more than just buildings. It shook America up. It came as a shock to many to discover that there were people out there who hated us for no other reason than we were American. We realized we could be vulnerable on our own soil, something we rarely experienced in the history of our country. In a way, we lost out innocence that day. We were blissfully unaware of so much.
Life for many of us became polarized: Before 9/11, After 9/11.
Time is slow to heal the soul of an entire country. Those two numbers still cause my heart to burn and my eyes to unfocus as I remember the dread and uncertainty of back then, never knowing if those burning towers and smoldering Pentagon and downed plane were merely a prelude to something much, much worse.
It is not easy to unlearn hatred and anger if you watched those events happen live and were old enough to understand the implications.
Americans intone solemnly on this day, “Never forget!”
We haven’t forgotten…
… Even if perhaps there are some things we should forget.

We Can't Forget

I clearly remember this day, 2001. I was in college, and I had just left tutoring in the math department (I suck at math). I went outside, called my boyfriend (now husband) up on the cellphone, told him I was done, I was free until afternoon, and maybe we could get lunch. That was when he told me. I remember I had been merrily walking down the broad staircase from that math building, feeling cheery, when his voice came over the phone pitched higher than usual. "They've flown planes into the World Trade Center," he cried out in a panic. "The Pentagon's been hit too. They think there are other planes going to crash into places. It's World War Three!" he screamed, perhaps exaggerating, but I could hear he was terrified.

I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of that broad stairway. I almost stumbled and fell as my head plummeted and the world seemed to tilt off its axis. "...That's not funny."

"Babe...this is no joke. Have you really not heard the news?"

I had noticed crowds around the computers in the math lab, but I thought it was some new program a geek wrote. Standing on those stairs, and I had a good view of the area. Only then did I notice groups huddled and crying, people wandering aimlessly with empty eyes, and pale faces looking stunned beyond the ability to think.>

"...The Pentagon?" I asked in a quavering voice.

Face it, before 9/11 the idea of flying planes into the Twin Towers was not unknown. It was a plot device used in movies and TV shows. I assure you, you will NEVER see those episodes on the air again!

So for those of us at the time, it seemed...stereotypical! Too "Hollywood" to really be happening.

But the Pentagon! At hearing about the WTC, I truly thought he was joking, but that...that's serious shit. You don't mess with the goddamn Pentagon!

"Honey, I'm picking you up. Classes will likely be cancelled anyway. They're talking about suicide bombers on buses and trains. I don't want you on that city bus. Stay on campus. I'm on my way. NOW!"

Suddenly, I joined the ranks of blank-eyed students. I wandered toward the parking lot and tried to process this information. Most of you seeing this were too young. You heard about 9/11 in school history class. Maybe...maaaybe you sort of remember your parents speaking in hushed voices. It's "history" to you.

But on that day, it felt like there would be no future. Time stopped. Our lives stopped. Airplanes grounded, trains stopped, schools closed, no one left their homes. For the next few days, people feared all-out war.

I went to my boyfriend's place just in time to see the Towers collapse. I'm a writer, and I honestly can't describe the chill and numbed disbelief that hit us all when we saw that. The scene has been replayed so much, younger people are immune to it, but when we saw it the first time.....

I would say we all prayed. All of us. Either to God, Allah, Buddha, a goddess, a higher power, or to that which we didn't believe in before that day... we all cried out in anguish for this to not be true, to wake up, to let this horrific nightmare stop...just STOP... please God, don't let any more people die!

And then the other Tower fell. Our prayers were not answered. There was no Superman or Captain America to save us that day. We were abandoned, left to fight this tragedy on our own. We realized how childish our country can be, sitting by our TVs as we watch the chaos in "other countries" and shrugging that it wasn't affecting us, so why worry. That day, the eyes of the world were on us, and we felt like the child-country we really are. Hell visited America that day, and we were watching the flames burn away our innocence.

I truly don't remember the rest of that day. It was a Tuesday, like today. My boyfriend drove me home. The freeways were empty for once. At home, my sister was in hysterics. She had been on a business call with someone in the Towers when the first plane struck, and she realized that the man likely died on impact. A friend lived in NYC across the river; he witnessed the whole thing and was helping to shelter survivors who fled over the bridge on foot. A cousin lived mere blocks away from the WTC, and we were terrified for her (she was safe, thankfully). I didn't go to school the next day. I got a call from the dean's office that the college would be closed all week. Like I said, time stopped, and all of America was waiting, left hanging, frightened at what more would strike us.

I think NOT having anything else happen was stressful too. We were waiting, expecting it. We were loading our guns, those same guns the government had been trying to take from us. If terrorists were coming to American shores, by God we would meet them head on and send them to Hell!

Nothing happened. We mourned. We heard stories of heroes. We wondered "who did this to us" and not knowing who to blame, who to punish, who to direct our collective RAGE toward was frustrating too. There was an enemy out there, and we didn't know WHO! Despite the uncertainties that hung in the air over the following days and weeks, America united unlike it had ever done in decades, probably since World War II. Flags waved from every car. People wore black bands around their arms (I still have mine). Bands played "America the Beautiful" to start every concert. For the first time in my life, I saw what it meant to be the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

"United" indeed!

If you live in America, you'll see lots of "Never Forget" signs today, but for those of us old enough to have truly lived through it, forgetting is impossible. Even when we sometimes want to...we can't! That bloody, fiery day of death and destruction, when terrorists thought they could rip out the very heart of America, indeed left a scar on our hearts.

But you know what? Scars make us stronger. Scars remind us.
We CAN'T forget!