Never Forgetting 9/11 and My Long Road to Pacifism

I have never written down my experiences on 9/11, though I have spoken about them with friends. I know that with each passing year my memory is fading, in parts that I point out below. The vivid moments are still there and I lived them with others so I can confirm them. I realized the other day that all of my current students were born AFTER September 11, 2001. I’m not sure why, but that made me want to write it all down. I was 15 years old and a junior at The Browning School in Manhattan on that day. I’ve changed most of the names of those involved.

I cut first period to get a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a plain bagel. It was the second week of school. We were allowed to sign out of school so long as we didn’t have a scheduled class at that time — but no one at the desk had our schedule to know any better.

The breakfast place was just two blocks away, but we had to cross Park Avenue to get there. That’s when we saw the first plane. We didn’t know it at the time, but the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 was already 30 minutes old. Passengers from Colombia, Uruguay, Israel, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, Lebanon, and, of course the United States were likely in a state of panic, unsure of where they were going or what would happen next.

“That plane seems kinda low, right?”, asked a friend of mine. This elicited shrugs. We crossed Park once the walk sign lit up.

Second period was French with a teacher whose name I honestly can’t remember. She was not, though, our teacher from the previous year, Monsieur Pierre. A marathon runner, I had always thought he should be taller, especially as a 15 year old. Marathons seemed like impressive feats done by impressive people. Monsieur Pierre looked like an extra from a Jacques Tati film.

A few minutes in, Brian, one of the group who had gone to get a sandwich earlier, came in late and didn’t hide it. He just said, “Guys, that plane hit the World Trade Center.”

“What plane?”

“The one we saw! The one we saw crossing Park!”

“The plane was crossing the street?” one of the other students asked.

“Shut up,” Berk said. “You know what I mean.”

“Excuse me, young man,” the teacher said. She didn’t know most of our names yet, though Brian at that age had a penchant for trouble, so he was already a known entity. Yet I distinctly remember her referring to him as “young man”. Maybe memory is conflating it with another moment with this teacher. Given I can’t remember her name anymore, it is a distinct possibility.

“You have already come late and now are further disturbing our class.” Then, switching to French, she said (I think, my French then, as it is now, is très mauvais), “Please take your seats. Let us begin.”

In our school, we had a computer lab with about 6 computers. Each one had (very slow by today’s standards) internet access. Brian had apparently gone to it after we had gotten back to do something (what did we do on the internet back then? I honestly don’t remember). Somehow Brian had seen it.

“It was everywhere,” he said. “They’re saying it was an accident.”

What an idiot. This was my thought. What moron/drunk/coked out pilot would be so stupid that he didn’t see the TALLEST building in New York? This feeling was one of intellectual superiority. I would never do that — I am not so stupid as to train for years to be a pilot and then throw it all away by making such a foolish mistake.

When I am so sure of myself, I remember this moment, sitting in uncomfortable gray chairs, whispering with Brian and our group of friends about some stupid pilot who probably got a bunch people killed.

That feeling like I knew everything: arrogance. Like I could sit easily in judgment of others knowing barely more about what had happened to them than about the people themselves (of which we knew nothing).

And how fast I made that jump in my mind. It wasn’t even seconds. My brain connected the dots that I saw were there into an “obvious” pattern that comported with what I already knew.

The rest of French class was a blur except for sirens. Lots of sirens. I remember the teacher closing the window. Maybe it wasn’t the noise. Maybe it was too warm. That day was warm. It was beautiful.

I remember the bell rang, we left to go straight to the computer lab, which was off of the library. And it was jammed with other students, all trying to get a glimpse of what was on the computer screens.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Brian told us. The plane. We saw it.”

“There was another one. There are more.”

“What?”

I come back to that feeling almost every day. It’s hard to describe because, in English, we use separate words for separate feelings, as if they can be separated. But all at once, there were so many. Confusion, sadness, rage, worry, more. Putting names on all of them now? An impossible task.

But I remember the feeling. It was physical. Somewhere between the bottom of my sternum and my navel. Some people describe a feeling like being punched in the stomach. I think these people have never been punched in the stomach. I went to an all-boys school. I have been punched many times in the stomach and it doesn’t feel like that.

Later, much later, when I was in law school, I realized what it was. At that time, I turned that feeling of not really being punched in the stomach into rage. Of a sort. When I felt it again in law school, it dawned on me. That feeling was the awareness of my own helpless ignorance.

I knew nothing then; I know nothing now.

The next few hours were a bit of a blur punctuated by very vivid memories.

I remember a class with my entire junior class taught by Mr. Sanz, who, I even realized at the time, was sort of freaking out because he lived right next to the World Trade Center.

I remember Mr. Daughtry, our high school principal, pulling me out of class. When he did, I remembered my dad, who had dropped me off that morning, was supposed to have a meeting in the World Trade Center that morning. As we walked downstairs to the same doors I had left that morning to get a bagel from, I assumed he was going to tell me my father had died. But there he was. In the flesh.

It is incredibly strange to switch in such a short period of time from thinking someone you love is dead to seeing them standing there. You feel like you belong in some sort of insane asylum. In, ‘how could I be so stupid to think that? I must be crazy’ sort of way.

But it was not my turn to grieve. It was others’ turn. And that came with its own guilt. Guilt that got worse with every funeral (I only went to five but they all seemed to have bagpipes — was it just one?), with every missing person poster, with every schoolmate crying randomly in the locker room.

As we walked out of the school building doors — together, alive — I remember walking again across Park Avenue and looking up, as if the plane would re-appear. As if I could re-will it back into the sky and warn someone. ‘Why hadn’t I warned anyone?’ was an actual thought I had repeatedly over those days, weeks, and months. It took me awhile to realize how silly that was.

We were headed to my dad’s office on 48th and 3rd Avenue. The subway was usually quicker than walking. One stop on the 6 train from 59th to 51st. I had a student monthly card so it was free.

When we reached Lexington was when I noticed how many people were on the street. It was 11am. People should be at work. And when I instinctively turned down Lex to head to the Subway entrance, my father jerked me back.

“Subway’s closed!”

The New York City Subway never closes. Like never. A line might close overnight or a weekend for construction. But the whole system? Literally never. This feeling was different than the one before. It took over my whole chest this time. I would have this only three other times in my life, all in war zones.

It was panic.

On Third Avenue the number of people were even larger. And we were the only people headed south, towards the buildings. Cars were stopped in the road.

I remember my father filling me in. Both towers were not only hit but had collapsed. When we turned down Third we could see the smoke. There were other planes. He told me that one hit the Pentagon. He told me there were others. He didn’t know how many.

I remember thinking ‘why are we headed South to go to your office which is in a 50+ story skyscraper when there are planes still OUT THERE and everyone else is going UPTOWN?’

And I remember that I either I said this out loud, or my father anticipated my question saying at some point, “There are taller buildings than ours.”

And I remember a man. Covered in soot. I had never seen a chimney sweep in real life, but I imagine that if one put a suit and glasses on, he would have looked just like this man. And I remember my own surprise as he sat down, calmly, with his briefcase, patting dry his head which was bleeding profusely. At the base of the Lipstick Building by the Post Office.

I remember eating lunch (FOR FREE!) at a fancy restaurant that had no customers but was still open. The whole kitchen and wait staff out front watching TV. That was the first time I saw the footage. The first 50 times I saw it. It was hard to look away.

I remember the long lines at the phone booths. Cell phones were a thing then, especially in New York. They were enough of a thing that many pay phone were being taken out, though not all of them. But the main communications network in New York at that time was partly patched through the World Trade Center. So the cell phones weren’t connecting calls. Only land lines worked. And everyone was trying to call home to say the same words, “I’m okay. I’ll be home soon,” and then quickly move on so the next person could take their turn.

I remember having to drive home. And it taking hours. I don’t remember how long. I remember that we were driving with someone else who we dropped off. I remember coming home and thinking I must have had a dream, a nightmare. Then sleeping that night and not dreaming.

In the days and weeks following, I remember fewer moments, fewer feelings.

Rage. Rage mostly at our own government. Not for not doing more to prevent the attacks (something I would only come to logically later) but for not dropping some sort of nuclear device on Osama bin Laden.

This may sound crazy now, but in September and October of 2001, people — well, maybe just New Yorkers — were openly having this conversation. Why haven’t we invaded Afghanistan yet? And where exactly is Afghanistan again?

I remember watching TV like it was a patriotic duty.

Sadness. Sad handing out sandwiches and masks to firefighters and police officers with my classmates. I remember standing on the rubble. I remember blood on concrete. I remember most of all two things from volunteering: the smell of the site and the look on the faces of the firemen and police.

The smell is something I have never smelled since and so it is hard to put into words. Something charred surely. Once I used a newspaper to start a fire, and it had a hint of something familiar from the rubble. I have never smelled it since and hope not to ever again.

The looks on their faces were not sad. Resigned somehow. Not like police and firemen knowing that death could strike them down. I have only ever seen that look on miners and pall-bearers. And I suppose they were both.

I remember being caught up in a street protest against the Iraq War in Italy. My father saying, “Speak in Greek” (in Greek, of course) and buying a rainbow peace flag from a street vendor, wrapping it around me, and walking through tens of thousands of people who, one minute earlier, we didn’t even perceive of.

The feeling of relief when we were able to break away and get back to our hotel, my father saying, “Imagine what they would have done to us is if they knew we were Americans…and FOR the war.” Only later did I recognize the irony of our relief, given the death and upheaval we were ‘supporting’.

The death of our own.

The death of others.

The deaths of above all of other human beings, most of whom were without fault for any crimes or misdemeanors.

I remember going to Haverford College and being appalled that anyone could have been against the War in Iraq. I was quickly a Young College Republican and a Student for Bush. I remember the fun in enraging others and the bitterness of being enraged.

But from Haverford, most of all, I remember the conversations. The long, respectful, passionate talks. With dozens of people. About the Iraq War. About violence. About peace. A moment when I realized this community of people who are not Quakers, living with Quaker values, is something special.

Trust, Concern, Respect.

I remember being hopeful on entering law school then being crushed by my own ignorance and the declining future of myself and my colleagues, caught in the midst of the worst employment era for lawyers ever due to the Great Recession.

And I remember how that forced me into a class with Tim Fort. And how Tim spoke passionately about everything, but especially about peace. And I remember thinking, do I care that much about peace? And if not, why not?

And it forced me into a class with John Forrer. Who made me think. And made me listen. Not to just anyone, but to people, all kinds of people, who had seen war and terrorism and destruction. They made me see that we shared something and I wanted to know everything about them.

And they led me to Sharjah, to the UAE, to the Middle East. To a place where I live in peace with many people. People who when I was 15 in the fall of 2001 I didn’t even like the idea of.

People who now I call ‘neighbor’, ‘friend’, ‘colleague’, ‘student’.

And the thought of violence, state-sanctioned violence, in my name or anyone else’s seems now abhorrent. Because violence does not have to beget violence. Because peace is a better way. A longer way. A harder way.

But we are American. We don’t shy away from hard things. We embrace the challenge. Or, at least, I think we should.

‘Never Forget’ was a common bumper sticker after September 11.

And I haven’t forgotten. And I won’t forget. Not only that day.

But every day that came after.