My 9/11: A Retrospective

The Twin Towers always seemed impossible.

From the moment I first saw them back in the Spring of 1996, to the moment that they were blocked from view by other members of the New York skyline, they always appeared to be impossible.  How could something so huge and so enormous be possible?  My teenaged mind marveled at the achievement on display there, the show of man's ingenuity and creativity.  That would be the last time I thought of the Twin towers, for a little over five years.  I look back at it now and wish I had just enjoyed the moment more.  Especially with what would come.

Six years later, I was attending class at the University of Texas-El Paso, sitting in my Mechanics I class.  At the time, I still had vast hopes and dreams of becoming an engineer, not knowing in a year's time I would abandoned the pursuit altogether and begin my long, arduous journey that would culminate in my receiving my degree years later.  But that is a story for another day.  At the time, I was still very much interested in the pursuit of an engineering degree, and still very much trying to pay attention.

And that's when I started to notice something was wrong.

The door was open to the classroom, as at the time, the Classroom Building at UTEP (yes, it really was, and I believe still is called the Classroom Building) didn't have the greatest circulation, and so the door had to be left open, otherwise the room would begin to get stuffy fairly quickly.  And it was through this open door that I saw people in a hurry.  Granted, people normally would be rushing through, trying to get to some class or another.  But there was something different about this hurry.  It was frantic, hurried, chaotic.  I imagine it was probably the closest that I will ever be to actually seeing what people fleeing from a zombie hoard would be.  These people were running, no, sprinting towards the direction of one of the labs.  And what became a trickle would eventually become a gradual flood.

This was the first class that began that day in UTEP, which was about seven o'clock, if I so recall.  Those of us that went to the class had only heard a casual mention of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, but hadn't assumed anything about it, just a terrible accident.  It was the early days of text messaging and internet on phones, but that wouldn't have mattered anyway, as phone reception in the Classroom building was so terrible that phones would naturally get switched to roaming.  As a result, we had absolutely no idea of what was happening.  We weren't aware that outside, the world was changing, and the world was darkening.

Slowly, I began to see a different story of person intermingled with the frantic student: a listless one, who seemed to be slowly shambling towards some location or another, with the frantic stream of students parting around him like water.  The faces were different, but the expression was the same.  Shocked.  Horrified.  Numb.  

I quickly knew that once class let out, once the bubble of the classroom had burst at the sound of the bell, I had to get to a computer.  I needed to get someplace where I could find what was happening.  The engineering lab was just around the corner.  Once my instructor let us out, I ran towards it, becoming a part of the mob that was not running to class, but to try and get information. I rushed inside the lab to find the front desk, where there typically was some overly perky, attractive female engineering student that would check in your ID, deserted.  I turned into the main lab room, and saw that the projector TV, which we never knew we even had, was set up.  

Displayed, on the side of the wall, was hell.  

I won't rehash my thoughts about what I saw.  We've seen the collapse over and over again, repeated in a never ending killer loop as lives were ended in a maelstrom of fire, hate and ash.  We all know what we saw. and were made to see it multiple times.  It doesn't make it less terrible.

And that's when that same shocked, numb haze, settled over me.  

I sat in Computer Lab 2, popped in a CD, Gorillaz, and began to research what had happened.  The CD had a scratch on it, and for that reason, the only song that it seemed to plan with any sort of consistency was the song Tomorrow Comes Today.  It was entirely appropriate for that day, as I looked back on Yahoo!'s now frantic updates as far as what was happening.  I have never been a big news junkie, and yet I devoured everything that was being updated.  I had to know what was going to.  What the hell was going on?

Though we take it for granted that wealth of knowledge of what occured that day, I cannot explain just how utterly chaotic it was in those first few hours to find out what was happening.  Were we being invaded?  Where there other attacks (and tragically, there were)?  What places were next?  And which planes still flying above were still thought to be suspect? What was going to happen?  Where was it going to happen?  I stayed there for close to four hours, and left just slightly the wiser.  It would remain that way for several days, as facts slowly started to trickle in, and events began to be constructed.  But I cannot nearly begin to explain just how helpless and uninformed I felt, even as it seemed the entire world was changing.

Even though El Paso, Texas is as far away from New York, New York as could be, the border itself changed dramatically.  Planes were grounded, and those planes already airborne, heading to other destinations, suddenly found themselves in a strange place, and nowhere near home.  The border, that artery that connects the two sister cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, was shut down, stranding people from their families.  Federal buildings were closed and placed under lock down, and Fort Bliss was suddenly on high alert.  Overnight, my city, which takes a lot of abuse for being boring, or being regarded as somewhat of a backwater, became almost like an armed camp, as every place went on high alert.  This was not my hometown that I was used to, and even for days afterward, I remember seeing a lot more police cars on the road, and the roads being a lot less traveled, as people stayed in.

Along the way to my next class, I remember seeing something else.  UTEP is a very multi-national university.  Quite often, because it is located on the border, it's thought that it was strictly a very Latin American institution, as there are students there from Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil.  But there are also European students, African students, and yes, Middle Eastern students.

And, in the middle of the corridor, I saw something that stuck with me.  It was a shouting match between two groups of students: one middle eastern, another American, both restraining themselves as much as they could, as professors and later, a campus security guard, attempted to break up the confrontation..  Profanity, rhetoric, and all other sorts of terrible, violent words were being exchanged.  It was enough to snap me out of my fog, long enough to ask a question from one of the members of the crowd next to me.

"What the hell happened?"

"The Arab students were cheering on the attackers, and the other guys are threatening to kick their asses."

I left, my faith in humanity even lower than it was earlier that morning.

Indeed, a lot about that day was surreal, from the way professors were ignored as they attempted to lecture, to the crowds standing in the student union, watching the TV's, the pool tables and other amusements located within ignored.  For the moment, they were unimportant.  

I remember coming home, and just watching the news, watching the destruction, over and over again.  It was horror on an endless loop, seeing the collapse, especially as more amateur footage came in, and news networks decided to air it, showing different angles, different perspectives, different prisms in which we were viewing the lives of thousands being snuffed out.  I remember hugging my parents, my sister and brother a little harder than usual, as I was glad, just glad that my family was together, even as half a continent away, more families were being torn apart.

I've heard different people say that in two years or so, high schools will have the first generation of children that have no first hand memory of 9/11.  I would argue that that generation has already arrived, for this reason.  My younger brother was six at the time.  Far too little to perhaps comprehend that people had died, that people could be so evil to want to turn pieces of our daily lives into weapons, into deathtraps, into tombs.  How could you explain that?  Could you explain that? 

My parents did what any normal parent would have done, and that was to try and protect their son.  As a result, my brother was largely kept in his room when the news was on in the den, watching my anime collection, and happy as a clam by doing so.  And, for a time, he remained untouched, unmoved, unaffected by the outside world.  I imagine many other parents did the same thing.  I don't blame them, nor judge them.  

I will, however, judge my University.  I would learn years later from one of my professors that UTEP, not long after the attacks had occurred, issued a email to all their staff, requesting them to not discuss at all the current events, and proceed like nothing had happened.  Do not discuss what is happening outside.  Just conduct business as usual.  I imagine that the University wanted to avoid problems, namely between students, but I also imagine that they probably felt that the professors weren't qualified for that type of discussion.  So why bother?  All of my engineering professors certainly did so, which is a shame.  But again, I cannot blame them, as they probably felt,  inadequate, I suppose, to talk about such events.  I would learn, years later, that there were plenty of professors that chose to ignore the email, and try and have a discussion with their classes.  There were no riots or problems or assaults that resulted from those talks.  I do not blame my professors for not talking, or wishing to discuss what happened.  But I will never forget that my University, an institution for higher learning, a place which prides itself on being a place where ideas and events are meant to be discussed, interpreted, and cultivated, instead shrank from the chance to do so, and instead chose to ignore it.  But please, buy season tickets to see our latest terrible football team.

Things would remain surreal for the next few days, as life seemed to be in a standstill.  Federal buildings were closed.  Emergency staff volunteered to go assist in New York, as well as Washington.  Blood banks were flooded with people, as were charities with generous donations for those in need.  People, for a brief period in time, stopped calling themselves liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, ethnicity-American, or what have you.  For a time, what divided us didn't matter.  What politics we had didn't matter.  What we thought of one other, what prejudices we had towards one another, what grudges, what petty arguments, what dark thoughts we might have had for each other, didn't matter.  We were just one people who were trying to help those in need, trying to help our fellow man in whatever way we could, however small. We were just Americans. 

In the years following the fall of the towers, I have seen a lot more death on TV, as more men have tried to use evil and death to try and spread their own messages and agenda, only to have said messages and agenda to be lost by their methods.  I have seen a lot of my generation, and other generations, go overseas to fight enemy threats, both justified and non-justified.  I have seen a lot of my generation, and other generations lose countless men and women, who had it not been for the selfish actions of a few men, perhaps could have made an huge positive impact in our world had evens maybe been different.  

And yet, though I've seen ample evidence of man's evil, that has paled in comparison to the evidence I've seen of man's goodness.  Even though we see so much evidence of death, of destruction, we have even more images of people trying to help their fellow men, people running into the inferno, to save people they didn't know, and yet to them, it was like trying to save a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a child.  We have seen courage, of strength, of passion, which far outweighs the evil that was committed, and will always continue to do so.

On 9/11, I saw what humanity at it's worst could be.  I also saw that humanity, at it's best, would always overcome it.  And it's something I try to remember, and tell people whenever I can.  Humanity is a good thing, a beautiful thing, and though it may be capable of some truly awful things, there is always enough goodness to overcome that.  We just need to remember that, believe in that, and have faith in that.  

Always believe in our goodness.  I will continue to do so.