9/11: Twenty Years Later

It’s September 11, 2021. Twenty years later. My parents ask me how the atmosphere is in NYC. I tell them I don’t know. I don’t plan to attend any tributes, and I’m sick. This worries them. My dad calls me. I don’t answer. He leaves me a voicemail. His voice breaks. I don’t know what today means for him. He was in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I don’t know if he wants to talk to me about a silly cold and confirm I’m alive or if he wants to talk about that day and what’s it like in NYC today. He’s not open with his feelings about things. He doesn’t share. I remember we hadn’t heard from him practically all day twenty years ago. The subways were down. The lines were down. He came home around 11 p.m. He had parked his car back in Harlem and took the subways down for his training in downtown Manhattan. He heard the first plane hit. Once he arrived at the training site, he and his colleagues looked out the window. At what was unfolding. I don’t know why his voice broke in his voicemail. All I know is that I am sick, and I get to be selfish. I don’t want to talk right now. I have never broken my promise to speak with them on Sundays since moving, even when they have. Today is not Sunday. And I feel guilty because they don’t ever not pick up when I call. Even if it’s not Sunday. I think I am unhappy. I am frustrated that they brought this up. 

I started today feeling so immensely blessed. My good friend (who is also the handyman in our building) called me to tell me about what he does to get over a cold. Everyone, and every culture, like mine, it seems, has some voo doo magic that can cure the common cold. As he puts me on speaker, I hear Diana* jump in and offer to get me some soup and share her cold medications. Another friend, Tiana*, comes down to the lobby where they are, tells me to feel better, and informs me she’s off to an Indian restaurant pop-up and asks if she can bring me back some chaat that would surely help. Diana jokes that if I take her up on her offer when I had just declined hers of soup even though she needs to head back up to finish some work (the tax extension deadline is fast-approaching and she is an accountant), she would truly be offended. I smile. I am so grateful. This is my Manhattan…20 years later. None of us said anything about that fateful day. It’s business as usual. I think back to my mom’s text. Does today feel different? I flip through my usual social media channels. It’s a mix of normal posts and remembrance posts from people far and wide. I blow my nose and look out my window, down at the city. I remember back to the framed posters on the precinct wall when I was filling out my portion of the police report after my phone and wallet were stolen. Remembering the heroes of that precinct who answered the call of duty on 9/11. I remember the murals and the posters of the fire station I pass by to get to the subway or to Central Park or to a studio. Suddenly, they’re razor-focused in my mind. That day is with New York everyday, and today, those posters, those murals come into focus. If you visit the 9/11 Memorial, there’s a somber ponderance. Not just on anniversaries. Every. Day. It lies heavy. It lies quiet. The last TikTok video I saw was of a theory that certain souls of 9/11 have reincarnated in children (shortly born after 9/11) as they have talked about their past lives and what happened to them on that horrible day as they reached the ages of three to five. They know details they could not possibly ever have known. My neighbor’s landline rings, and he answers it merrily. He’s a lifetime New Yorker. He’s one of the last people I know with a landline. I assisted my friend (also a lifetime New Yorker) last night with a shoot. As we walked through the streets past overdressed people (overdressed even for NY…it’s NY Fashion Week), she tells me her friend invited her to hang out in Atlantic City this weekend. She lost friends on 9/11 – she was in her 20s then. She doesn’t want to stay in the city any anniversary. She doesn’t know how to feel. She doesn’t like being here on this day. All the networks had some sort of memorial segment early this morning, but then quickly moved on to other things. Two thousand, nine hundred ninety-six people don’t get to move on with their lives. They don’t have the luxury of remembering or forgetting. And for the rest of us…well, what can we do on this day?

Below is a post I had written on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 – my memory of that day and a visit to the memorial. Yesterday, I sat and reflected on 9/11. And, almost twenty years later, a new thought occurred to me. I remember, as a child, as you will read below, looking at the screen and seeing Osama bin Laden. I remember thinking, “He kind of looks like me. Will people be mad at me because I look like him, and he did this bad thing?" But what had not occurred to me until yesterday was…Why would an eight-year-old ever think that? And now I know. Because I had never seen anyone who looked like me on TV before. In American movies. And the one time I did…well, it was for a very bad thing. And I didn’t know it then, but in the years following, my brother and cousins would be “randomly selected” every single time in line at TSA for additional screening. I didn’t know it then, but there were brown-skinned people distrusted without reason, targeted, and attacked. What I didn’t know then was how powerful of a medium that TV is. That film is. How it influences our collective consciousness. How not seeing someone who looked like me on screen would have serious repercussions because the one time I did see someone on screen who looked like me, well…he did a very bad thing. I think about America, and how my parents used to say “America” in their accent with wistful, glassy eyes. They made it. This was the stuff of their fairytales. I look down at the city through my window again. How could a place like this ever have been under attack? How had we been so close when it happened? How did we bear to hear stories from neighbors, friends, and loved ones? Everyone knew someone who was there that day. Twenty years later, and we’ve left Afghanistan – America’s longest war. Twenty years later and that day is not a memory. Memories stay in the past. This isn’t a memory. It’s in everything, every day. It’s with me at airport security, as I walk past the fire station, it’s in every conversation I have ever had with anyone significant in my life. We all remember that day.

It was with me when I chastised my mom for listening to a pastor’s passionate sermon in her native tongue, Malayalam, as I glanced quickly to my left and right. She was playing it loudly as she was gardening in the backyard; we live in a predominantly White area. She yells at me in Malayalam because it’s “The Word of God.” She doesn’t understand my problem with God. She doesn’t stop to think of how others may perceive it. How it sounds. I hate that I have to think about these things for everyone all the time even if they don’t.

It was with my brother months following 9/11 when he was pulled aside by airport security. He was four. He had taped two walkie talkies to his stomach. My parents thought the worst – did someone do something to him? We were all confused. He told us that if something happened to our plane, he would throw down a walkie talkie to one of us so we wouldn’t get separated and could call for help. 9/11 did that to him. It’s something we all live with, and for 2,996 souls…it’s not:

“15 years ago today, Principal Magnini came on the intercom at St. Francis school in northern #NJ & said that there was an "accident" & "2 jets" crashed into the #TwinTowers in #NYC. 2? Not an accident. She led us all in a "Hail Mary." My dad, who worked in the #Bronx, was in #Manhattan for training that day. We heard from him once. He came home late. My 3rd-grade teacher told us of a spot where you can watch the smoke. My mom drove us up there. She could see it. All I could see is how overcast it was. Stories started coming out about neighbors, relatives, etc. A Home Depot employee who came to do an estimate a year later told us of his son-in-law who told his daughter that he was okay & was coming home, only to scream as the line went dead. The 2nd plane flew through his floor. His daughter was struggling through therapy. The school advised us not to watch the news. We did. I watched the towers be built up, collapse, repeat. This was interspersed with photos of Osama bin Laden. I thought, "He kind of looks like me. Will people be mad at me because I look like him, & he did this bad thing?" Years later, I learned of accounts of Indians being persecuted following 9/11. (In 2011, I was in Washington D.C. for We the People Nationals. The world received the news that Osama was dead. A classmate celebrated on the White House lawn.) We saw video of people jumping to their deaths rather than face the terror inside. A schoolmate's father wrote a beautiful patriotic song. As we were the best "singing" class, we performed it for people, veterans at events. As horrible as the days following were, it brought us all together in a way that is inexplicable. 10 days ago, we visited the 9/11 museum and were reminded of the trivial top news of the day at the time, heard voice recordings of survivors & the final moments of those who did not. And outside, as we were snapping photos of the #911Memorial, we turned around & found a fresh, solitary #whiterose on the name of one of victims. 1 minute it wasn't there. The next, it was. Our friend joined us in trying to identify the rose-layer. We never found the individual, but I am sorry for your loss. And like you, we will #NeverForget.”

Even as an eight-year-old, I had heard Principal Magnini’s hesitation…the pause before she said “accident.” Even then, I remember thinking, “Two? That’s no accident.” I was a very precocious child. And for a Catholic, and former nun, it seemed Principal Magnini did not have qualms about lying to children when she felt she had good reason. I remember they sent a note home the following day sharing that kids of a certain grade and below shouldn’t watch the news. Or was it a phone call? I remember speaking with my classmate, Katarina*, by the sinks in the restroom. We both snorted at that because our grade fell into that category. Too late. And what a joke. In retrospect, I think the school was trying to be helpful. To try to do something helpful during a time that was, well, and forgive me because this word has been truly overused for the past few years, unprecedented. And hopefully, it will never be…”precedented.” Our lives are forever changed, for as long as we get to keep living. And that’s why we can never forget.

*Names have been changed.