The 19 death messengers

I remember to be in Figueira da Foz in that afternoon, Portuguese time, I was enjoying the last days of vacation before school started in a house my family rented for summer. I was 6.

My mother, my grandmother and me were watching TV, a movie or a series I can’t really remember, sitting in a couch and relaxing while my dad and granddad were out for a walk, suddenly the emission is interrupted and the next thing I recall is seeing a building fall into pieces and seconds later I see an airplane going through the building that’s right next to the falling one, by the time I didn’t understand where or why that happened but that image has been haunting me ever since.

My mother was staring at the images, my grandmother and I didn’t know what to say until I innocently asked “Mommy, what’s that?” and she answered “I don’t know…” in this tone that implies a certain surprise with a sprinkle of fear, that was one of the only moments that my mother couldn’t answer one of my questions.

September 11th, 2001, the day that marked many lives, including mine, and took many others, the day that showed how vulnerable we were, the day that shook the world and still is part of the world’s memory as one of the worst days ever lived. 

It seems a little hypocrite from me to write about an event that didn’t affect me directly, an event that I barely remember and I couldn’t understand by the time and still tell it affected my life, but do we really need to experience these moments to be touched by them?

When people talk about this black event, the picture of an airplane crashing into a building comes to mind, actually I’m here about it writing and my eyes are glowing with tears, many can’t understand why it makes me feel like that but the truth is that it does affect me a lot.

When you think about the number of lives lost, or even when you imagine people fighting to get out of those building desperate to survive, imagining the panic of not knowing if someone I loved was alive, that makes me reflect about life and many times I end up putting myself on the shoes of one of those people.

“It’s all blurry, I can’t see, my breathing is so heavy, I lay down in the floor to try to slow it, but it’s not worthed, I try to drag myself to an exist, everything’s full of dust, I feel corps everywhere, some I know from work, some great friends and some I haven’t seen. I try to cover my mouth and nose with my shirt but it doesn’t make a difference, I keep dragging myself but I go nowhere, by this point I don’t whether if I going to make it or not and tears start so come of my eyes as I think about my family…” – This is one of many images that comes through my mind when thinking about this black day. It has no comparison to a real description of the event but it’s enough to make me feel vulnerable and acknowledge that there’s a fine line between life and chaos and that a simple thing can take that balance in the blink of an eye, that’s how little we are.

I mean 19 people’s actions led to the death of almost 3000 others and cause 10 billion dollars in property damage, those same 19 paralyzed the world with fear, those 19 proved that there’s no such thing as an invincible country and, most important, those 19 made everyone become more humble about themselves. 19 minds changed billions of others.

June 1st, 2014