9/11

Being outside of America and without access to the major media networks, I suppose it’s easy for a PCVs to forget the anniversary of 9/11. Though it hasn’t really been on my mind, I looked at my watch today and saw the date and it triggered this memory from 5 years ago…

I was in Boston, and was supposed to go to the State House that day for a lobbying visit – my first. I was pretty excited about it, and actually walked there, only to be turned away by the guards, who told me the building was closed and everyone had to leave on account of some emergency. When I got back to the office, I heard that a plane had flown into the WTC. “What an idiot,” I thought of the pilot of some imagined prop-plane that had accidentally flown into a tall building. In the ensuing moments I learned what actually happened – it was no prop-plane and it didn’t seem to be an accident.

The Internet news sites, their servers swamped, were about as useful as smoke signals to the blind. Most cell phone lines were busy. I tried to get in touch with a college friend whose apartment next to the WTC I had actually stayed in one winter break. He was unreachable. All work stopped as people sat around radios and TVs. Even though I was nowhere near the site of the attacks, nor were any of my loved ones, we called each other anyway, just to say we were safe.

We were sent home early from work. The Boston T was giving free rides to people, but before I got on I had to just sit in the Commons for a while and cry.

I can’t remember why my apartment didn’t have a TV at the time, but we didn’t. So I spent the rest of the day glued to the fuzzy reception of the TV in the apartment below mine. We didn’t really learn anything that day from the anchors, but we couldn’t stop watching the repetition of the planes hitting the building. It was like watching those old films of JFK getting shot.

At some point I remembered that a few months before I was in NYC with two friends and we bought tickets to go to the top of the WTC. $11, way over-priced I thought. As we rounded the corner from the ticket desk to get to the elevators, we saw a sign that read “At least a 45 minute wait from here to the elevators.” The line was at “here.” Screw this, we thought. We’ve got more important things to do on our day in the City. Besides, the ticket was good for one year. I still have the ticket.

Say what you will about the underlying causes of September 11th regarding American foreign policy; or the way its aftermath was handled by the administration, country singers, and the American public (ala Freedom Fries); or the way it continues to be a rallying cry for nearly everything under the sun – but that day was a world-shaker for me.

I’m not going to inflate the importance of my work here, but I really believe that PC as a whole is making strides toward its ultimate goal of world peace and friendship, and preventing more 9/11s in all countries against all peoples. Let’s remember that while living abroad, PCVs are supposed to be showing host-country nationals that we’re really not all bad – AND, when we go home we become our host-countries’ emissaries, showing Americans that everyone else is really a lot like us.