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The Day My World ChangedTuesday, September 11, 2001 From the mundane to the fantastic in the click of a button: I had woken like any other day and switched on the television to catch the morning news while my fourteen-year-old daughter prepared for school. I was to spend the next twenty straight hours in an obsessive quest to understand, to somehow incorporate into my worldview an act I would have found conceivable only in the context of a work of fiction. As the screen came alive I watched with horror as a plane slammed into what was clearly an office tower, next to another which was already bleeding smoke and flame from a great gash in its side. The announcer explained that this had just occurred, that it was in New York, that it was the World Trade Towers. Within the next twenty minutes I witnessed both towers collapsing in real time, learned of another plane crashing into the Pentagon and kissed my daughter as she left for school - reassuring her that everything would be all right and that we were safe. The words seemed as hollow to me as they probably sounded to her. Anita sat with me afterwards and we simply held each other close in mute, and mutual, horror. I spent the rest of the day watching television and reading every news website that I could reach; often they were so overloaded that I could only get an error page. Sometimes the entire Internet would become inaccessible for a few minutes or half an hour. I think this fact alone started the process of breaking through my shell of incredulity. Knowing that I was not the only person searching for some hard facts meant volumes more to me the video images that repeated endlessly on my television. After all, hadn't I seen images like those hundreds, even thousands, of times on that very same box while watching 'entertainment'? But knowing that Internet DNS servers were being overloaded by millions of other people seeking those same facts seemed strangely more real... It truly sank in at that moment. I began to repeat "All those people, all those people..." over and over. They became real to me. I imagined what it must have been like for the first victims, working away at their desk and then maybe looking up as they caught something out of the corner of their eye; to confront the specter of a jet airliner aimed straight at them. For all the others, those facing wild-eyed terrorists waving knives as they became witless components of an insane weapon of destruction, those fighting panic as they tried to evacuate in an orderly fashion and, worst of all, those who found themselves helplessly trapped above the flames with choices limited to roasting and throwing themselves off the building. For their wives and husbands and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and children who must wait until they could either cry tears of joy or learn that knowing for certain can actually be worse than not knowing.
As I put together the bits and pieces of facts from the television and the Internet I began to understand the 'how'. The awful mechanics of the act. The amount of planning and training that must have been involved to pull off this despicable deed. Oh, the 'how' was easy enough for anyone with a little knowledge and more imagination that is good for him. Hell, give me a couple of hundred thousand dollars and fifty madmen and I could do far better. But I had more trouble with the hardest question: 'Why'. What could motivate someone intelligent enough to learn to fly a large multi-engine jet aircraft to carry out this act, especially knowing they would perish in the process? Why would another intelligent person waste his fortune directing such deeds from a safe place far away, apparently unwilling to commit his own life in the same way? For what reason would multitudes in the Palestinian West Bank and Egypt and other places dance and shout with delight over this murder of innocents? What in the world was wrong with these people? Were they just evil or simply beyond my comprehension? And why did they pick the targets they chose? What is it about the World Trade Center anyway? Why the Pentagon when they could have targeted the White House? Was there some spiritual significance to those sites in their eyes? Some symbolic meaning beyond my ken? I still don't know the answer to the 'why'. Oh sure, I know about Fatwahs and martyrdom and religious fanaticism. I know about the political situation in the Middle East. I know how thousands of years of history and struggle are playing themselves out in this one event. I really do know all this. I do. But, unlike the victims, I am unable to put myself in the perpetrator's heads. And, unable to understand them, I am finding myself wanting instead to wreak upon them the same havoc as they have rained upon my people. I guess that means I do understand them, a little...
In the meantime I sit here safe. I type words on my computer as I try to understand. I know that this thing has not affected me directly in any way. Not yet. I also know that it well may. Oh, I doubt I will personally become the target even if there are more acts of terrorism to come. But the long-term effects may include a financial crisis, a war, shortages and changes to my civil rights as people seek to trade freedom for the illusion of safety. There is a general feeling that the world has changed forever, and not for the better. You see, I can stand the things the world might bring to me. But what about Anita? What about my daughters? No amount of intellectualizing can help me to shake the dread. My world has changed. And it will hurt the people I love the most. Seattle |
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