September 11

September 11, 2001 is a date that will live forever in the annals of history as the day the United of America, my country as well as city of birth was though not exclusively attacked by Islamic terrorists. I am sure I do not need to acquaint anyone with the facts that transpired on that day as I am convinced that everybody who is past a certain age and has the gift of literacy has had more then enough time to become acquainted with them.
Therefore my intensions in writing this article are first to present my fellow Americans and those around the world with my personal view of how I saw the events. Second to tell how someone who has read what I would call an enormous amount of history books would classify this day in terms of history.
I like I have already stated was born in New York City where I was raised and spent 20 years of my life, me now being 40 years of age. By September of 2001 however I had adopted myself to live in Warsaw, Poland where I was residing with my then wife of 4 years and my daughter who was 3 years of age at the time who I might add is prominently mentioned in the story called �The Little Opera Singer�. My adoption to Poland however had not been limited to having courted and eventually wed one of its many lovely ladies whom I would go on to have a child with. My adoption also included having become a fluent speaker of the Polish language as well as having opened a language school.
Perhaps to many it is rare to hear of an American immigrating out of the United States specially since most of the stories weather film or book focus on those who immigrated to the United States in search of fortune and all those things that move people from their country of birth to another. I however going against the trend made an exodus from the United States in September of 1994 to Poland where I settled down and where less then a year later met my wife to be while we were both on a short trip to another city called �Zakopane� (the name of this city meaning �buried� when translated in to English).
The day of September the 11th of the year of our lord 2001 started like any other for my family and myself. My wife going off to her place of employment while I dropped off our daughter at preschool before making my way to work where I teach English as a second language in the school I had opened the very same year of the events of this day.
I can not claim much about the day with regards to something happening to me which went outside of the ordinary. I taught the lessons which I was supposed to with nothing going particular well or badly for that matter. I remember going home when my work day was done and arriving at a little past 6 in postmeridian where upon arrival more from force of habit then expecting to hear anything of consequence turned on my TV set. After having turned the TV set on I went to the kitchen to get something to eat and drink.
When I got back to the living room I saw the images that my TV was displaying which I earnestly considered to be from one of the so many mindless action films that exhibit scenes of devastation with visual effects that seem to be creating an art out of mass destruction. I even in a slightly ironic twist of fate thought the special effects as I witnessed a plane smash in to one of the towers of �World Trade Center� to be less then convincing giving me the false impression that this was a B film of some kind which was being advertised.
Just when I was about to use my remote control to turn to another channel the announcer cried out �to nie jest film! To jest prawdziwe!� (This line meaning �This is not a movie, this is real� in Polish). These words hitting me like a flash made it that I could not take this with out seriousness as shock had replaced my prior disinterest in what I was seeing. I instinctively turned to Cable News Network (CNN) were these images which my eyes had failed to accredit the first time were being shown erasing all doubt in my mind as to their authenticity. Once I turned the channel to CNN I saw one by one how the once might towers of �The World Trade Center� fell to ground making such an impact that it would cause other buildings to either fall or have to be demolished as their structure had been weakened to the point of being a dangerous.
The thought of who was responsible had not even occurred to me yet when the picture changed to Washington D.C. where the Pentagon was shown to have been struck. The image of the Pentagon however was not on for long as it was soon replaced with the one of what would have been a fourth airplane which had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania.
My usual active and imaginative mind had come to a halt and as I looked up at the screen still in astonishment as I heard the words �America under Attack� which created the illusion in me that we were under attack by another country. But which country would be capable of carrying out a blatant act of war against the United States? I had not heard of any diplomatic fall outs in the media that the United States was mixed up in at the time so who could it be? If this had occurred during the �cold war� I would have naturally assumed it was the �C.C.C.P.� or �U.S.S.R.� who was behind it but the cold war was over.
Eventually it would be unveiled to all that terrorism, which in and of itself is the act of carrying out acts of violence in order to achieve political objectives was behind it all. This option I must confess did not enter my mind as from what I knew from experience, this was out of the scope of its activities. Terrorism’s acts I believed where limited to car bombs and little else that went beyond placing explosives were innocent civilians would fall pray to people whose political a
gendas could not be fulfilled peacefully.
My familiarity with terrorism coming during the time I spent in Lima, Peru from 1991 to 1993 in which �Cendero Lumuniso� (Shining Path) and the �M.R.T.A� were putting bombs all over the city after having terrorized the rest of the country in the same manner. It was there where I witnessed what my mind will never rid itself of which were images created by an act of terrorism in the distract of Lima, Peru called �Miraflores� in the month of August in the year 1992. The sight of those bombs blowing up cars and ripping through the air leaving 27 dead and a lot of damaged buildings in a place where I had been less then 5 minutes before was something as gruesome to me as it was incredulous. As one can imagine it would be as I had never seen till then the body of a dead person other then on TV or in a photograph. The panic, the chaos, the sight of corpses that I saw from the window of my friend’s house (which fortunately was not broken from the sound wave) that day was something that nothing I had been through or learnt could have ever prepared me for leaving me to wonder what if I had not entered my friend’s house when I did.
As one can see in my case it was not that I had not seen violent death in front of my own eyes before not that what was being presented to me on that day was being done in such a way but it was the originality of this act (if such a name can ever be given to an act of terrorism) that flabbergasted me. I had even witnessed an earthquake in South America which went on to form the strongest imagery of my infancy. It taking place when I was 3 years of age (same age as my daughter at the time of 9/11) that I saw the house where I was residing at the time with my grandparents fall to the ground. It might be said that all these events in my life helped to make me immune to what my TV was forcing me to watch which it did but only in a limited way as the magnitude of it all was something surrealistic even to me who had witnessed so much mayhem.
By then the initial stun in me had subsided at least long enough to call my wife over to the TV. My wife who was in our daughter’s room felt alarm by the way my voice called to her at the time, came to the part of the house where I found myself in. Hers was an impression of distress as she also never imagined that something like what she was seeing on the screen might be real.
With regards to the day that followed September the 11th? This day in my mind sticks out for all that it had connected to what happened the previous day. My friends at my favorite bar telling me how great their sorrow was for what had taken place in my country and last but not least there was the phone call I received from my Spanish friend who like me was living in Warsaw at the time. It was this lady from Madrid who had been a friend of mine for over a year and was the only one who actually called me with a word of consolation that made me see that people did care. This however would turn out to be a word of consolation which in a very unfortunate turn of events I would have to return when in 2004 it was her hometown that suffered at the hands of terrorists when the �Atocha� train station was hit by bombs costing over 200 people their lives.
As for my personal feelings toward the �World Trade Center� (a.k.a. Twin Towers) I can not claim to have been an admirer of these buildings as they architecturally speaking were not to my liking in matters of esthetics. However these buildings though not among my favorites were a part of the New York I knew and lived in as they were across the street from the building that for two years was my place of work. The building I am referring to for the curiosity of those who care to know is the lesser known �World Financial Center� which like the �World Trade Center� was located on Liberty Street.
It was during those two years of 1993 and 1994 that I took the subway to the �World Trade Center� whose underground passages and covered Bridge allowed me to get to my place of work without the need of going outdoors. This being a benefit on rainy days.
My having worked so close to it and having passed it everyday make it hard for me to think of its destruction and not imagine the realistic possibility that I might have been there on 9/11 as I on many occasions during my lunch break ate in its many restaurants. I even speculate from time to time as I can not help but do such that perhaps several of the people I worked with at John Hancock Clearing Corporation� might have been unfortunate enough to have found themselves at the wrong time and place like so many others that day.
In a personal observation from the historical point of view I would like to remark that strangely enough the �World Trade Center� will most likely be remembered in the centuries to follow not for having been the tallest building in the world at one moment in time (till �The Sears Tower� in Chicago replaced it), nor for having been the place were huge deals of globe’s money passed through but for having been destroyed in the spectacular manner in which it was. For in many ways The World Trade Center’s destruction like that of Pompeii reserved it a place in the pages of history. A place that it has obtained arguably for all the wrong reasons but a place that it might not have had if it had gone on to be demolished like any other building. This view from a historical perspective is not rare as is not Pompeii mostly remembered for having been destroyed by a volcano then the developed or promiscuous society it was?