Six years ago, after the attacks, a Humvee rolled up to my apartment building, which was seven blocks from the White House; we were not allowed to leave, for our own safety.
Six years ago, we entered an age of terror which we are also not allowed to leave, ostensibly for our own safety.
Six years ago, 3,000 innocents boarded a plane or went to work, as if it were any ordinary day; they never returned home.
At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads. [NYT]
Let this be a space for remembrance, for respect and for grieving, if you need. Everyone who reads this blog lost something six years ago, even if they didn’t “directly” lose someone in New York, D.C. or Pennsylvania; this space is for your thoughts, on this appositely grim day.
grimmest part of that day for me was me asking “are those pieces of concrete falling off the building?” and my boss saying “naw, i think thats people” and not being able to help…
Do you still work near Ground Zero?
well, i worked in midtown back then. i still work in midtown, all be it further north now.
Channel 4 in the UK showed the documentary “9/11: The Falling Man” a few days ago. a friend who saw it said it was very painful to watch.
Thoughts and prayers to all the families that lost loved ones. What ever has happened after, one too many people died.
I watched the documentary, it was hard to watch.
I work and live by the WTC site. The firm I used to work for lost 300 people of which many were Indian Wipro employees that were working at the downtown offices. I will try and find the memorial site little later.
Live and let live. That’s all I can say to anyone. On September 11, 2007 I took the train to WTC station around 8:30 AM and went about buying my coffee and bagel around 8:40 just like the scores of others on their way to work. Six years ago, if I were around here, it wouldn’t have been just another day.
Give me a break, knock off your glorification of suffering and get down the the business of compassion.
to the*
Way to keep it respectful, there.
I’m sorry you think I’m glorifying anything– I wasn’t trying to do that at all. One reader left a tip on the News Tab about today’s significance and I felt bad that we didn’t have a post up about it, since so much of what SM blogs about (WoT, racial profiling, hate crimes, feeling othered et al) is connected to September 11 and its aftermath. This thread is meant to be an open space, which, if you had liked, you could have used for discussing your thoughts on compassion vs. slamming me/the post/this blog/whatever.
You speak the truth when you say everyone lost something – anyone who watched those images feels like they lost a part of themselves.
Anna,
Thank you.
Peace.
Wow Richard, way to keep it classy…geez.
OM Shanti!
I watched the plane go into the pentagon and the smoke and chaos that ensued thereafter. I desperately tried to get through the day to go through my “normal” schedule but was met by locked doors and police officers telling me to go home and find a safe spot. I abhored that feeling of vulernability — that my HOME was vulnerable. I have not been the same since.
Anna, you have no reason to defend this post. You glorified absolutely nothing and quite frankly, there is a lot of honor in paying tribute to an event where a lot of people lost their lives. Including a friend of mine.
RIP.
No one has.
In 6 years World War II had ended, with all the major instigators of that conflict dead. It is now 6 years after 9/11. Nothing has ended. This will be a long haul.
I was in a class-room about two miles from the Pentagon when the plane hit. All my ‘ship-mates’ in the new Navy Command Center were killed, except the Commanding Officer who was at a meeting in another part of the building. Those people died a horrible death by burning alive.
No Om Shanti- not for this warrior. Ghandian ideology has no place in America, and will never work, except to the enemy’s advantage.
As most of the troops feel this war will not be over untill every al-Qaeda and Taliban is slaughtered along with their followers and spin-off groups. This may not end for anither 60 years so we may as well get used to it, Go about your daily lives as normal, but be vigilint.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget that other 9/11. Mel Chin has made a film juxtaposing the two.
I think it was in the best interest of the government to end that fight asap. I believe that it is in the best interest of the government today to keep it going as long as possible, making up new fronts on the ‘war on terror’, such as iraq. Therefore, this will be a long haul. not because it needs to be, but because the government can grab more power the longer this lasts.
Anna – Thanks for opening up this space. I logged on this morning looking for some word from you folks about this day, so I for one was glad to see it. Pondatti – you’re right; no one has been the same. I think that the post-9/11 world is a stinging reality that none of us can avoid. It’s good to have a day to reflect upon what it means.
Remember being woken up (was in CST) by the sound of TV. My roomie was watching the coverage of the first plane striking WTC. Got up in time to see the second plane hit WTC live! Still can’t fully realize that it happened. What else do I remember? The sneering comment from a white college kid “hey where have you hidden bin laden?” as I walked down a street with a group of desi friends, two of whom where wearing salwar kameez.
later that morning, my parents really wanted me to go home. I obliged. When i got to GCT to catch the train, they were hurding people on the train to get them out of town. I got on the train. While on hte train, heading home, a big whyte lady started talking about how its a problem that all of these ‘palistinians can get into the country just like that’, and how its easy for people from ‘the wrong places’ to come, like that dominican kid who was caught cheating in the baseball little league world series, because these ‘kids of countries’ dont have a ‘tradition of ethics’. She then said that its really hard for people from ‘the right countries’ like ireland to get here. The crowd on the train was cheering “YEAH!, YEAH!” after every sentence condemning “the wrong kind of people”. i was really happy to get off that train and into puli appas car….
Or those other two that are also of some special significance to South Asians, either.
I also found a fuller listing of other significant 9/11s in history here.
Epochal as 9/11/2001 was, some of the others were pretty important too.
“Inside your a**”, is what I would have retorted.
Though I am loathe to admit it, after September 11, whenever I put a sari on, I think twice about it, if I’m going to spaces or places that won’t have other brown people…I try and push the paranoia away, but the process of even doing that recognizes that something within has changed. I know; I’m craven about being “foreign” these days.
I was ready to head off to NYC to do my last bit of paperwork for financial-aid (my freshmen year!!!, i started late). I was ready to start this new chapter….
The most f’d up thing in the world:
I am now working with people who’s entire collegiate (and in my view, opinion forming) experience existed post 9/11.
hear some young dude in his early 20’s talking about which people are ‘evil doers’
My sister went to college a few miles from Shanksville, PA. The day of the attacks she was accused of being behind the attacks by a group of fellow students. She was walking with one of her friends at the time (who also happened to be a very burly and a US Marine). Upon my sister bursting into tears, her friend took the guys around the corner and slammed their faces in.
That being said, I do worry about “standing out” post-9/11, especially when boarding airplanes.
thats just whyte peoples loss. they look at a grl in a sari and think “foreign terrorists”. i still think “hot”.
WGiiA? and Rudie,
I’ve listened to this story a few times today:
To me, that image is the most harrowing one from a day full of very horrific pictures. I love ATC, but this is difficult to listen to and perhaps more powerful, because of that. I don’t think I’d last through the documentary you saw, Rudie…not when I sometimes cry over Dateline NBC (well, I did last night, because it was about this awfulness).
A N N A,
thanks for the NPR link. that image of the man falling (and other people jumping) is one of two defining images of that day for me. i see from the wikipedia link you’ve provided that the documentary aired last night in the us.
There’s an interesting piece in USA Today about books that have come out since 9/11 – a total of 1,036 in all, they say. Has anyone read any of the mentioned books, including “Falling Man”? How do we feel about writing fiction about a historical event so close to its occurrence? Just curious.
I think most humans feel compelled to “make sense” of the senseless and some of us feel the need to bear witness to the pain of others, especially if it’s part of our own process for creating compassion within ourselves; walking a mile in another’s Bata chappals, if you will. Some could also be writing as an act of release.
Every time I see the planes smashing into the towers my mind goes ‘wow – genius’. Shame that the genius is used for evil rather than good.
I was in Italy with a friend on 9/11/01. When we finally ventured away from the tv in our hotel room, we were met with many unfriendly stares from the mostly European crowd in the small restaurant next door. They must have been thinking our skin tone was too close for comfort to that of the hijackers? I remember that both of us starting talking loud enough for our neighboring tables to hear our obviously American accents. The looks softened after that, but we both wondered how on earth were we going to be treated at airport security whenever we were able to get back home if anyone brown was automatically going to be considered “the enemy”.
” SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.” -Robert Frost
I remember Sept 11 well because I was a videotape news editor in San Diego and watch the tapes over and over and over for several years. For me, as an American with kinship ties to the Middle East, this was a horrendous day for so many reasons, but September 12 is the day we started our collective descent into indecency. Do I resent the hijackers? Yes, because they killed thousands of innocent people, but do I blame them for the fact I am now the citizen of a rogue state? No. I blame the “government,” the American people who rolled over and the media (me, too pre- late 2004 when I went freelance) who made this possible.
THis is partially what I wrote on my blog for the 5th anniversary:
Isabelle Allende once said in an interview:
“You learn to live with things. For example, something is taken away, like let’s say, the freedom of the press or… yeah, let’s say that you’re telephones are tapped so you say “Okay, I can live with that” and then the next day something else, and then you say, “Okay, I will have to live with that too,” and so forth. And then after a few months, you realize that you have lost everything. But, you got sort of used to it. And then there’s a point when you’re talking torture at breakfast time with your kids. And all of a sudden you have this epiphany or this revelation in which you realize what kind of life you are having… and then there is a point where I left.”
I refuse to live like that and I began to write again, and to produce artwork in resistance to what I saw as a despicable tendancy to silence civil discourse. And I found that I am not alone. Over the years, our voices have grown. As has interest in the Middle East and its cultures. And I have learned that I have to be vigilant and active in this effort because “they” do hate our freedoms- and it is not an external enemy we face, but an internal one which is both ourselves and elected representives who do not and will not stand up for what is right-an America in which civil rights and discourse are respected, racial profiling is riviled and both torture and offensive wars are what others do. And I will not be silent because no one will come to save us. We must save ourselves. It will never by September 10, again. Every day is September 12.
true. these women were hated because of their foreign policy.
Is this any different to the beliefs of the crazy Jihadists. Each side wants to kill the other.
Why is this the most f’d up thing in the world? Almost everyone I work “with” was a young child on 9/11. They will experience a different kind of history, just as I have because I missed Pearl Harbor or Partition or the Crusades. This is the nature of life, no?
Anna: Thanks for your post. Over at SAJAforum, we have collected a bunch of items for the anniversary, including lists and profiles of South Asian victims and updates of about some of the more famous stories. Please take a look: http://www.sajaforum.org/2007/09/911-anniversary.html We welcome your comments.
My baby brother started his first real job ever this week. He now lives and works in Manhattan.
Is that why I’m having nightmares of late?
I started my first real job ever in Small Town, Texas in the summer of 2001. I had just managed to convince a few hold-outs among my colleagues that brown did not equal extremist terrorist – and no, I wasn’t going to blow up the plant. We finally got together for a nice shrimp boil the weekend of September 9th.
By the middle of the following week, we were back to the (im)polite fiction. They barely tolerated my presence at work.
Having said that….a vast majority of my colleagues at the time were wonderful, hospitable folks. There were two of us girls at that plant who were South Asian…and I can’t tell you how many of the technicians came by, hard-hats in hand, and offered us escort home, to the store, anywhere we needed to go in the next few days – “just in case people get stupid.”
I should add that this was armed escort that they offered.
(We were in Texas, after all.)
I don’t know what moved me more: the realization that people don’t necessarily know better, even if they have learned better – or that there are people who don’t necessarily know better, yet remain friendly hospitable to all of their neighbors.
On September 11th, 2001 I learned how cursed and blessed I am.
i woke up that morning to the television on – which my mother accidentally left on on her way out – I was not working but already deep in trauma due to a situation I was dealing with at the time. my first thoughts were: I wonder if aaron went to work today. knowing that my best friend worked at cantor fitzgerald. we were no longer on the best of terms and I was later the victim of a hate crime, when people implied that I was happy with his death. I have been in trauma ever since. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had the situation been reversed.
Apart from the colossal tragedy associated with the terrorist act, I will also remember 9/11 for a stupid faux-pas that I committed on that day. I had a meeting with my boss about 15-30 minutes after the planes crashed into WTC. I enter his office oblivious of the event and my boss asks me with great anxiety whether I heard the news. We generally don’t discuss “news” in his office and I was kind of clueless about what he was talking about. Then he mentions that some planes had crashed into WTC . Immediately I remark (stupidly) about the number of people in the plane who may have been killed. With a tone that I felt smelled of condescension/irritation, my boss questions my surprise about that number when I should be worrying of number killed in the building. Though he hadn’t mentioned that the building had crumbled too, I felt kind of naive…..
There were total of 2974 fatalities : 246 on all the planes, 2063 in NYC ( tower and ground ; including 341 fire-fighters ) and 125 at Pentagon. The total American troops killed in Iraq so far is 3774 and the number of Iraqi civilian casualties is estimated to be 70,000. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks
Now after 6 yrs I am kind of feeling disgusted with the Eye-for-Eye concept…
46. Prankaj- not knowing your friend of course, but I cannot imagine a friend, no matter how estranged, who could take pleasure in such an awful, senseless death of another friend. And the people who suggested such are simply awful. I sincerely think that Aaron would have been greatly grieved by the loss as you are by his.
And Brij, I am sure the number for the Iraqis is higher. Check out Dahr Jamel’s site for other numbers. As for the US numbers, neither green card soldiers nor interpreters (usually provided by Titan, etc) have been included in that number so, again, the official account is questionable. And as a side note, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq are about an eye for an eye. And neither will be Iran.
I was travelling overseas, watched it on TV from about 9 a.m. on; my Mom, terminally ill, was due to land in JFK that a.m., my sister-in-law in the American Express building next to the WTC, and my niece at Stuyvesant High, a block away from the WTC. The phone lines were jammed, so I couldn’t reach anyone, except for my brother in midtown , who went walking downtown to find my niece. Worst moment? On the phone with my father-in-law, both of us watching CNN helplessly as the North Tower collapsed. The huge cloud of debris obscured the Amex building, and my dad-in-law kept asking if that building was safe. I had no answer. All of my family were safe, but not two people I knew who were in the WTC.
Wierdest feeling? My boss, whom I met later in the day, never even mentioned it, that day or the next.
Om Shanti, indeed.
I’m not real big on the concept of “kill ’em all,” in stark contrast to this kind of think, which is working oh, ever so well.
The logic here being, 3000 dead American civilians in a terrorist attack justify a 60-year war, countless more dead soldiers, and genocide? I don’t pretend to believe that I know what all the survivors of 9/11 think, but I’ve heard of at least one group of survivors and families of survivors who do not believe in war-as-vengeance.
At some point, it should be time to start examining the idea of creating a realistic, sustainable, and sane foreign policy again. I’m sick to death of people holding up 9/11 while bellowing out war-cries. It was a tragedy, and it was a horrible act by terrible people, but it’s just not sane to think that we are pursuing anything remotely like justice. And the whole “steely resolve in the face of our enemies” bit is really getting tired. So I feel sympathy for your loss, but I do not agree for one moment with the sentiment you express.