The world has changed ... Much that once was is lost ...
We still hear the "whispers of a nameless fear" that haunt us. We must try to heal ourselves ... and each other.
The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. … Rumor grew of a shadow in the East—whispers of a nameless fear. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. …
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
A part of what follows is an excerpt from Light: A Memoir. It’s copyrighted to me and my family. Please don’t copy, OK?
If the Earth herself normally changes at a “glacial pace” … this being a pace becoming increasingly more rapid and far more dangerous … human affairs turn on a dime, and the world we had before slips into history without even giving us a chance to say good-bye. We look back on the days that changed the world—the day the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were killed, murders that precipitated World War I—Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the day the United States stock market crashed—December 7, 1941, the “date that will live in infamy” FDR called it, on which the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and dragged the United States into World War II.
Such a date is September 11th, 2001. In Orlando, Florida, where I was living, it was the night before 9/11 that I was terrified. Everything was too still, as if the world was holding its breath. I stood on the verandah listening to the crickets. Somewhere in the jungle underbrush just outside the stucco wall, a panther screamed.
The next morning, the sun dawned bright, and rays shot through the canopy of the palm trees. It was still hot—and still humid all the time—and still sporting Cape Verde hurricanes that roared to life in the open waters and then stripped the land of every house, every tree, and, for some people, every hope.
It was 8:40 a.m. when I got in my bright green Ford truck and pulled onto a main thoroughfare, three lanes wide in each direction, and pulled up to the stop light in the middle lane with cars on all sides. I’m not a radio person when I’m driving and don’t do TV in the morning, so I didn’t know.
8:46 a.m. Hijacked plane hits the North Tower
Hijackers on flight 11 fly the airplane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. The impact occurs between floors 93 and 99. The crash instantly kills hundreds, including all those on board. Almost immediately emergency responders are sent to the building.
It was about 8:50 when I first realized something was wrong when I peered into the window of the beat-up rust bucket of a Ford F150 to see a mountain of a man sobbing. The traffic started moving, and horns sounded. As I looked around at other drivers, all of them seemed to be coming apart at the seams. At the next red light, I rolled my window and hailed the woman in a white Mercedes who’d pulled up next to me. She was shaking violently. Her eyes were the size of moons.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“A plane flew into the World Trade Center and it’s on fire.”
“Oh, my God!” I said. She drove off, and I turned off the main streets and took the “back way” through Disney World. It was another 10 minutes before I reached my office.
When I went in, every one was standing. The TV was on and the image was unimaginable.
The North Tower was on fire. The clock chimed 9:00 a.m. The newscaster speculated that the plane had mechanical problems, couldn’t maintain altitude, had no heading control, and hit the North Tower out of control.
9:03 a.m. Second hijacked plane hits the South Tower
Three minutes later a Boeing 767 flew into the South Tower. Now it was clear this was no mechanical failure: this was an attack on the United States.
“We are now at a de facto state of with Al Qaeda.”
It was all I could think of to say. The fact was, I was not surprised, for this all began with the bomb-maker and terrorist Ramzi Yousef in 1993, when the World Trade Center was attacked the first time.
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The attack in 1993 told us everything we needed to know about what was coming.
The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
Excerpted from the FBI’s history files:
On February 26, 1993, at about 17 minutes past noon, a thunderous explosion rocked lower Manhattan. The epicenter was the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, where a massive eruption carved out a nearly 100-foot crater several stories deep and several more high.
Six people (including a pregnant woman) were killed almost instantly. Smoke and flames began filling the wound and streaming upward into the building. Those who weren’t trapped were soon pouring out of the building—many panic-stricken and covered in soot. More than a thousand people were hurt in some way, some badly, with crushed limbs.
The shockwave from the attack continued to reverberate. Following the unfolding connections, the investigating task force soon uncovered a second terrorist plot to bomb a series of New York landmarks simultaneously, including the U.N. building, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the federal plaza where the FBI office in New York is housed. On June 24, 1994, FBI agents stormed a warehouse in Queens and caught several members of a terrorist cell in the act of assembling bombs.
The bomb-maker was Ramzi Yousef. He escaped to Manila, then to Pakistan, and planned multiple other attacks:
In 1993, he attempted to assassinate Benazir Bhutto.
In 1994, he bombed Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing one passenger and injuring 10 more, and ripping out the aileron and steering cables. The flight crew improved and landed the plane safely, saving 272 passengers and 20 crew. Yousef was aboard the plane, assembled the bomb in the lavatory, and got off at a stopover in Cebu.
In 1994, Yousef bombed the Shi’a Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Iran, killing 25 and wounding at least 70.
In 1995, Yousef and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (his uncle), plotted to kill Pope John Paul II in an elaborate three-phase attack called the Bojinka Plot. They planned to blow up 11 airliners in flight from Asia to the United States, kill at least 4,000 people, shut down air traffic worldwide and crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The plot was foiled when one of the bomb makers accidentally started a fire in the group’s apartment. Yousef fled.
Ratted out by Istaique Parker, Ramzi Yousef was arrested in Pakistan and deported to the United States. He is serving life without parole + 240 years in solitary confinement at the Colorado Supermax for his role in the 1993 WTC bombing.
The Pentagon and Flight 93 … the Twin Towers Collapse
9:37 a.m. - Third flight crashes into the Pentagon’s west side
By 9:37 a.m., all America and much of the world reeled. They didn’t yet realize there was a third plane circling Washington, DC. It crashed into the Pentagon’s west side. Its burning jet fuel would collapse part of the steel-and-concrete building.steel and concrete building.
9:59 a.m. - South Tower Collapses
In a matter of just 15 minutes after the Pentagon was struck, the South Tower, hit at 9:03 a.m., collapsed. The 22,000 gallons of burning jet fuel melted the building’s superstructure both above and below the point of impact.
10:03 a.m. - Fourth plane crashes in western Pennsylvania
“Let’s roll!” is a phrase indelibly imprinted on the collective memory of this culture.
“I know we’re all going to die,” passenger Thomas Burnett told his wife over the phone. “There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.”
The passengers of Flight 93 fought the four Al-Qaeda militants, managing to force the plane to hit the ground at a speed of 580 miles per hour in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. They prevented a second attack on Washington, D.C.
10:28 a.m. - North Tower Collapses
The first hit, the North Tower stood almost an hour and a half before finally falling. Mayor Giuliani was already evacuation southern Manhattan. People had already flung themselves out of windows to avoid being burned to death.
As the day wore on, the death toll began to emerge. As people die of the toxic effects of aerosoled building materials, the toll grows.
Counting the Cost
The official tally of confirmed victims from the World Trade Center site stands at 1,653, with 1,100 victims remaining unidentified. The total for 9/11 is 2,977, of which 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 on Flight 93.
The long-term human cost of that exposure is devastatingly clear. More than 140,000 people are enrolled in health programs designed to monitor and treat those impacted by the aftermath of 9/11. These include firefighters, police officers, construction workers, federal employees, and civilians who lived, worked, or studied near the World Trade Center site.
Over 8,200 individuals have died from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since the attacks, a number that continues to grow with each passing year. Nearly 50,000 people have reported cancer diagnoses linked to the toxic air they inhaled during rescue, recovery, and cleanup efforts.
The World Has Changed
In the coming months, I would find my friend from Morocco sent home from the job she loved by a “new” imam in Saudi clothing who told her it was her job to have babies and keep house. The next time I saw her, she was in cover for the first time and looked as if she’d been slapped. She told me her husband was being criticized by Muslim leaders newly arrived from overseas, leaders who said he was too Americanized. A week later I was run out of a Middle Eastern market by a tall Saudi who told me this was Muslim ground and that I was not allowed as an Infidel and as a woman.
A week later, a 92-year-old Jewish woman and I stood between a terrified Muslim woman in cover and her two children while a huge guy screamed at and threatened her. After the police arrived to arrest him, the Jewish woman burst into tears. “This is what they did to us,” she sobbed. “I’ll never let bigots do it to anybody else.”
Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. …
No, there are many of us who still remember, and that’s good. There are no American shops. There is no “Muslim ground.” I am losing rights as a woman, but it is not too late to get them back.
But 9/11 did change the world, and it changed all of us. Some people still hang on to the xenophobia that 9/11 is still used to excuse. That can change, too.
But for the terrified and the injured and the dead and the grieving, every September is a reminder that the world can be a very fragile place, and if would be defended against the wrongs done to it, it is we who will have to stand our ground.
I remember that day.
A friend of mine called me very early. (We were in California.)
“Turn on the news,” she said in a dead voice.
“Which network?” I asked.
“I don’t think it matters,” she said. So I turned the TV on and watched an airplane crash into a New York skyscraper.
My mind went blank for several seconds before I came up with any words at all.
“This is war,” I finally said, numbly.
And for the rest of the day and for a long time afterward, all I could think about was how many people must have died that morning, and how thousands more would inevitably be killed in retribution. As nothing but an ordinary person, I felt utterly powerless to prevent what I feared and guessed would be a tsunami of deadly rage.