Memories of 911

I just spent about half an hour perusing a site dedicated to Father Mychal Judge, the NYFD chaplain killed by falling debris during the 911 horror. I haven’t felt so in touch with my emotions in a long time, despite some of the site’s more maudlin aspects. Don’t go there without some tissues in easy reach.

It brought on a flood of memories. I was sitting in a Japanese restaurant in Hong Kong having dinner when my closest friend from America called me on my mobile and told me he had just heard on the radio about the two planes hitting the World Trade Center and that experts were trying to determine the odds of two such “accidents” taking place within minutes of one another. It was just an accident, totally amazing, a fluke. It wasn’t until I got home half an hour later that I learned what had really happened, and I, like so many millions, stood there transfixed and in utter disbelief as the America we knew vanished before our eyes. I tried to call my parents but the lines were jammed all night. Not being in America, I think I had no way of knowing, of feeling just how anguished the country was. I remember talking with some English colleagues shortly afterward, and hearing them say how awful it was, but that maybe it would be a wake-up call to Americans about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Somehow they saw that little sliver of a country as being responsible for bringing death into this world and all our woes, and being the source for all of the Middle East’s inhumanities. No, I don’t mean to get into a discussion of that now….it was just that in Hong Kong, I didn’t feel the pulse of what was going on in my country, television simply couldn’t do it.

Interrupted by a phone call, which I will definitely write about shortly.