The Falling Towers

My security pass the last year I worked at the WTC

Do you remember what you were doing on 9/11, when you heard the news about the World Trade Centre attack? I was just roaming around my home in Victoria, getting morning coffee, calling my friend Christina, starting to chat, when she said, “Oh, You don’t know.”

When I asked her what she meant, she told me to turn on the news. I did so, just in time to see the second plane hit the south tower. The news started to come in about the Pentagon attack and the highjacked plane brought down in a Pennsylvania field by the heroes who sacrificed themselves in order to abort the third planned attack, surmised as having been meant for the U.S. Capitol.

It was horrifying, and personal, as I used to work in the W.T.C. as a legal proofreader, at Brown, Wood, Ivy Mitchell and Petty Partners at Law on the 56th, 57th, and 58th floors of W.T.C. 1, the North Tower. I always knew the place was a prime target, and never entered or left without rehearsing my exit in case of emergency–which staircases, as I knew the three banks of staggered elevators wouldn’t be working, or wouldn’t be safe, and I’d have a long way to descend.

For months after the 9/11 attacks, every time I closed my eyes I saw the smouldering stumps of the towers amid the impassable wreckage. Bin Laden’s aim, demoralization and punishment of Western ideological confidence and economic domination, worked. For a time…