Ten years ago today, at about 10 in the morning, I was sitting in physics class. Tuesday, September 11 marked the completion of my entire first week of high school, which felt like a major milestone at the time. I was 14 and still trying to process the idea of being a “big kid,” of adjusting to a new school with new people and new expectations.
When the school dean walked into my classroom, I didn’t think anything odd was happening. I figured that she probably needed to give a message to the teacher. Instead, she turned to the class. “Two planes have flown into the World Trade Center in New York City.” Thinking back, I wonder if I’m forgetting the part where she privately told the physics teacher first. It’s hard to believe that she’d just drop a bombshell like that in front of a teacher and her students without giving the teacher time to compose herself.
I entirely failed to grasp the enormity of the situation initially. Possibly I was numb, in denial, or both. Oh, an accident, I thought. It will be ok. I’m sure they’ll rescue everyone.
The Dean went on to explain that the planes had taken off from Logan Airport, less than 5 miles away from our school. “Rumors have been going around that more planes are going to attack local schools. I am here to tell you that this not true. You have nothing to worry about.” Actually, we hadn’t heard those rumors, but thanks for planting the suggestion in our heads. At that point, I started to worry.
My next class was English. The teacher herded us into the history classroom next door (which would have been our next class anyway, thanks to block scheduling), and sat us in front of the tv. We spent the next two hours watching footage of the towers falling down, over and over and over. It was like a horrific version of Groundhog Day. The planes flew into the towers and billowing flames erupted forth from clouds of smoke. The towers crumbled and fell. People screamed in terror in the streets, fleeing from the unthinkable carnage. After every commercial break, the towers stood whole and unscathed again, awaiting their pre-ordained doom.
I have no doubt that the teachers were trying to make the best of a bad situation. What adult could tear themselves away from the coverage? Nobody knew what was going on, everyone was terrified. The news was the only way of keeping track of the unfolding horrors. But to subject the children in class to hours and hours of these monstrous images? It was certainly a cruelty. I came from that classroom completely traumatized and in a state of utter panic.
I can never thank my Italian teacher enough for doing the right thing. As jittery and upset as she must have been, she stayed calm. Instead of making our class even more wrought up with yet another hour of news coverage, she plowed ahead with her lesson. Perhaps Italian verbs weren’t the most important thing happening on that day, but to us they indicated that yes, life would go on, and yes, there would be a future. A future with weekly pop quizzes.
They said that there weren’t supposed to be any planes in the sky. None at all. Which is why a distant buzzing outside my classroom caught my attention. My Italian classroom was on the 5th floor, the highest one in my school. As the buzzing sound grew nearer, I realized that it was a plane. A low-flying one, at that. When it flew directly over the top of my classroom, so close that the roar of the engines was deafening, kids started screaming, shaking, and crying. Some hid under their desks. I later found out that it was probably a fighter jet patrolling the skies, but at the time I genuinely thought we were going to be utterly wiped out.
The school changed drastically over the next few months. Suddenly, the Pledge of Allegiance (never before used in our school) became mandatory. A flag brigade came around and made sure that there was a flag in each classroom (mostly, there weren’t). A girl suddenly found herself to be an unwilling celebrity of sorts after she lost both her father and her uncle in the planes. Gradually, things went back to normal, but it was a new and uneasy version of the status quo.
A little over a year later, there began to be talk of war in Iraq. The one in Afghanistan had already been going on for quite some time. Upset at the idea of yet more violence in the world, I helped organize a walk out from my high school, an act that was so successful that an estimated 500-1,000 students participated. Suspensions were threatened, but when faced with having to nearly shut down the high school due to the number that would have to be doled out, the administration caved and nobody was punished. I marched through the streets and into the Harvard Yard rally, screaming “Dick, Cheney, and Rumsfeld can fight this war alone! We support the troops – that’s why we want them home!” filled with the righteousness, rebelliousness, and passion of youth.
The extreme racism and bigotry towards Middle Eastern countries and the Muslim faith in the post 9/11 world was and is shocking and horrible. As any Muslim person will tell you, Islam means “peace.” To judge an entire religion by the actions of a very small, extremist group is inaccurate and wrong, yet so many people justify the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because of these erroneous assumptions.
Two years after September 11 happened, members of my acting class were recruited to help in a terrorism-readiness exercise. Children were painted with fake, gory wounds and given symptom cards. EMT’s and ambulances converged on our location, the staged site of a pretend biological warfare attack. We stumbled out of the building, were corralled by men wearing large, white hazmat suits. Some of us were forced to run through decontamination showers, though we were allowed to skip it if we asked because we were young and it was cold.
I was strapped into a gurney and fitted with an oxygen mask. The paramedic chatted with me in the back of the ambulance about school, then noted my pretend symptoms. There were so many ambulances called to the scene that they had to distribute them across 5 hospitals in several cities. Nevertheless, when 6 ambulances came to a screeching halt outside of one local ER, a woman outside fell to her knees and started crying. She knew nothing about the staged exercise, but instantly assumed that terrorists had struck again. That’s when I knew how much our world had changed. We now assume that terrorism lurks around every corner, knowing that it can happen. That it has happened.
And so, 10 years later, I write. This morning, I paused to remember the thousands whose lives were unfairly, tragically, and horrifically cut short by hate. And then I held another moment of silence for the thousands more whose lives were unnecessarily cut short in Iraq and Afghanistan, the soldiers and civilians who were victims of an angry, unending war. A war which sprung from America’s own hate. As Mahatma Gandhi so wisely stated “an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” When will it stop? Will it ever?
I wonder how my life would have been different had September 11th never happened. I try hard to picture a more carefree world, one in which I didn’t spend my teen years coming to terms with an incredibly devastating terrorist attack or protesting multiple fruitless wars or helping with anti-terrorism training activities. One in which an unattended package on the bus meant that Mr. Jones had forgotten to pick up his Amazon box when he got off at Main Street. One in which thousands of families were whole and complete, instead of being forever separated by the ultimate tragedy. A world marked, not by hatred, but by love. Perhaps it is naive of me, but I think that it is possible to someday have this kind of world again. The option is ours, but only if we choose to pursue it.
I salute you.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not,
but there is much that while I cannot give,
you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.
And so at this [time],
I greet you, with the prayer that for you,
now and forever,
the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
~Fra Giovanni, 1513
It is important to remember and honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks, but it is also crucial to avoid being consumed by hatred as a result of that fateful day. Until we learn to love again, we cannot begin to truly rebuild a more peaceful, loving world.
Take love.
Unfortunately, Rudolph had a little too much mulled wine on the way there and was arrested for flying under the influence.
After the kids lined up for their photo op with Santa and his reindeer, we went inside for some mulled wine (adults) and neon yellow festive beverages (kids), as well as a bunch of freshly baked mince pies.
