(Eric)
Yesterday marked the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. As people recall this time, they talk about how things were surreal here, and how Americans actually humbled themselves for a little while, and became nice.
I wouldn't know.
It feels distant to me, like it's a chapter in our history of which I'll never truly be a part.
On Sep. 11, 2011, I was serving a church mission in La Asunción, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela.
That night, I wrote a letter to my family. Obviously, some of the details that I heard were inaccurate, but this was the perspective that a 19-year-old American missionary in Venezuela had on that infamous day:
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"This morning we found a family and taught them... We continued working on the same road and Elder Scott said that he wanted a malta (the most disgusting drink on the face of the Earth), so we went to a bodega (a small roadside store / stand where drinks and snacks are sold) and he bought some malta (I got Oreos... mmm).
As we stood there and ate / drunk, the owner guy asked us if we were from the U.S. We said yes, so he informed us that the Pentagon had been bombed. We were totally shocked. He told us that there was also something in New York, but he didn't know what. As we left and began walking to our next appointment, we shared our feelings ("Holy crap." "Wow." "Yeah.") and realized that whoever bombed the PENTAGON was really asking for it.
"We got to our appointment and asked if they'd heard about what happened. They told us that yes, they'd heard, and also that two FREAKING AIRPLANES had kamikazeed into the twin towers in New York. We taught them the charla (lesson) even though I couldn't stop thinking of what had happened.
"We soon after went to another house where the people asked us, "Did you hear what HAPPENED?!?" They invited us in to see it for ourselves on TV. We must've been there for almost an hour watching CNN (en español). HOLY CRAP. We saw Bush's little statement (which I admired), saw the images of the second plane crashing into one of the towers, people running around New York, the Pentagon, one of the towers collapsing, Colin Powell's statement, people rejoicing in Jerusalem over senseless deaths of I-have-no-idea how many people because they happen to be citizens of the greatest nation in the world, and various other things that I'm sure you saw on Sep. 11.
"I'm still in shock. My companion thinks that we're on the verge of WWIII (though I think that's overdoing it). I don't know the details of the Pentagon bombing. I do know that (at least) four plances were hijacked, and that one ended up in pieces in Cleveland, one near Pittsburg, and two in the twin towers. I only saw one actually collapse, but I doubt that the other survived. Just think, you guys visited what used to be two of the tallest buildings in the world only two months ago. Now they don't even exist.
"I saw and heard stuff about that all day, so I can't imagine what it was like for you guys. I know that the borders are closed and that Bush is in some secret location, though. I'll pray for the families of the victims. See you later. -Eric"
"Sep. 18, 2011: ...Wow, I heard the U.S.'s ultimatum that if that jerkface isn't delivered, the U.S. is gonna kick the crap out of Pakistan. I support that decision 100%, but that's not to say that I'm not worried. I really don't know the details of what's going on; I just know the general stuff from seeing newspaper headlines (it's the top story every day) and talking to people. I trust that some day the gaps will be filled in for me, whether it be by you guys or in a history book in twenty years. I sure hope things stop escalating; otherwise, we'll be engulfed in WWIII before you get this letter."
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As I mentioned in the preface, many of the details that I learned from people on the streets of La Asunción were wrong. Still, I understood the general feeling of the whole affair. The people of Venezuela also expressed much sympathy, though I was affected no more than they were.
Although the events of that day are now more clear to me, I haven´t brought myself to research and relive this event the way that most Americans did. Some have shared accounts of our nation's feeling and reaction at the time, but that's all I have to go by. What was it like?
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2 comments:
What was it like? Hmmm...I'll go with horrific. It was horrific. I was sitting in my journalism class during my senior year at the U. of Pittsburgh (80+ miles from where the plane actually went down), when another student walked in and said a plane had hit the first tower. We were all sitting in front of painfully slow (possibly dial up?) computers, so we sat there trying to pull up cnn.com for about 10 minutes. The servers were all jammed up. By the time one of us got it pulled up, the second plane had hit the second tower. My prof. was/is a reporter for the post-gazette, so she called her editor. After a little while we realized some bad stuff was going down and she dismissed us and told us to stay close to campus. I headed to the student union building where we all sat like zombies in front of the TVs watching all of the replays, and watching the new news roll in. The air was filled with a weird mixture of dread, fury, confusion, and heartbreak. Being relatively close to NY, we all knew of at least one person who worked in the financial district, so there was a lot of concern for loved ones and friends.
A lot of people became more united that day. I am proud of that. But a lot of people became bitter bigots that day. I have no pride in that. 10 years later we still have a part of our populace who refuse to understand that this event was spurred by an extremist, not a religion, or a race. So, in that respect, I think my feelings about 9/11 are still pretty horrific.
Eric, I remember thinking you were actually, unusually, lucky to be in Venezuela at the time. The Taliban had nothing out for South America. Even though we were on the other side of the country I remember being so scared- these guys hijacked commercial airplanes! How many more were there? They were crashing into major landmarks? Like, the Salt Lake Temple?
And you should also be grateful that you didn't see some of the images, like bodies falling from the towers. I didn't sleep well for a long time, and even 10 years later, after reflecting on the day again, I'm still so disturbed, even 1000 miles away from the incidents, that I had to take a Tylenol PM to get to sleep.
It's like the way bad version of the first man on the moon- everyone knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard. It's the Pearl Harbor of our generation- it dramatically changed the world for the rest of time.
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