9/11, 25 Years On

My thoughts on 9/11, 25 years on

9/11. I don’t think I have to explain to you what I mean when I say that, and that really says it all. Whether you were alive to witness the events of that day or not, you know what it is, and that proves its importance, even today.

The story itself is well known by now, so much that I feel clichéd even describing it. On September 11th, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists and deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York at 08:46 AM, impacting floors 93-99. 17 minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 followed suit, hitting floors 77-85 of the South Tower. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia at 09:37 AM. At 09:59 AM, the South Tower collapsed. At 10:03 AM, the fourth and final plane, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near the rural town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, however it is believed that the US Capitol building was the original target. A group of passengers revolted and stormed the overtaken cockpit. At 10:28 AM, the North Tower collapsed. In the end, the death toll reads 2,977.



This article will hopefully be published sometime on or around the 25th anniversary of the attacks, an important yet melancholic milestone that invites the collective grief to be reborn, and inspires contemplation. A lot has changed in the world, especially in security, but at the same time we are as vulnerable as ever. 9/11 has become a symbol of American patriotism and perseverance; however it has also been used as fuel for a lot of Islamophobia and hatred against innocent people that still rears its ugly head and persists to this day. It has created endless conspiracies about who was really behind it and who knew what was going to happen. But no matter who did it or who knew about it, that does not negate the tragedy.

The events of that morning left a gaping hole which may never be filled. It destroyed the western sense of security people long had. The targets were obviously significant.
The World Trade Centre had been attacked before in 1993. A rented van filled with explosives was remotely detonated in the underground parking lot. 6 people were killed, and many more injured. Smoke filled the area. In hindsight, this is a chilling precursor to 9/11. And then the Pentagon, the country’s defense HQ. That was supposed to be the place that helped other areas, not the one in need itself. For a short while, the U.S was immobilised.

In between the first and second impact, people believed it was merely an unfortunate accident. Of course now this seems to be strange thinking. The sky was a brilliant cloudless blue, almost an apology for what would be set in front of it. Nobody could accidentally do something like that. But then again, nobody knew what was going on, and it would be very presumptuous for someone’s first conclusion to be terrorism. People were horrified, but surely, hopefully, the fire would be put out and the tower would be repaired. But after the second plane, it became clear that this was all intentional, and far bigger than anyone could imagine.

The aftermath of the attacks briefly united so many people, but at what cost? Nearly 3,000 people were dead initially, not counting the untold number of those who succumbed to health issues following it. And of those dead so few were identified. Thousands of friends and family members have never gotten a piece of their loved one to bury, and they may never. To say that 9/11 was a tragic loss of life is an easy conclusion to make, but sometimes it is hard to visualise it. When you go to the website of the victim memorial, you will find a list of all of their names. You can scroll through them, and keep going… and going. And then you realise that every single one of those collections of letters that make up a name on the screen was a person, who lived and breathed just like you and I. Who had feelings, ambitions, relationships and things to do, all unexpectedly cut short. It is so easy to relinquish the victims into merely names and numbers, but we must remember their humanity, lest we gloss over them. The memorial that exists today with the large reflecting pools and all that empty space where the towers once stood is depressingly fitting.

I was 12 years too late for 9/11. I do not have the personal experience and vivid memory of the day. I never knew of the Twin Towers when they existed, and I did not see them fall. If I had been alive, I would likely have watched it on TV, like millions across the world in shock and incredulity. Every now and then I find myself watching a lot of footage from that day. Most often it’s not even around the anniversary. I am fuelled by a morbid, even unnecessary desire to find every point of view of the devastation. I can only see 9/11 through the fragmented visions of others, all of which are harrowing, yet have been long since set in a cold finality. You know what happens next. Everyone does. But some small part of the brain still begs for something to change, for the planes to magically divert away and for all to be saved. For it not to have happened at all.

One might often wonder how it would be if 9/11 never happened. Of course there would be an ‘anti-butterfly effect’ where countless spurs of history would be cut off. All of the victims would remain alive. And that day would have been like any ordinary one, as it should have. Quite literally ‘Just a Tuesday’. The planes would reach their destinations uneventfully. Everyone would clock in to work, and then clock out. But that dream can only ever be interrupted by the cold, cruel reality. We can only wish for what the world could be like. When discussions were being had on what to build at the WTC site, many wanted to bring the towers back. It is not entirely incomprehensible. It could have sent a message that the U.S, and the world, can rise above the ashes and come back. But I think that to revive them would have been unwise. It would be an attempt to return to a pre-9/11 world that does not exist. It could have traumatised survivors to see the building where they ran from, and lost friends and coworkers in, back again. And besides, I think that a new building could still convey the same message.

The eeriest aspect of 9/11 and its aftermath to me are the objects that were recovered. They are all warped snapshots of that day, and each tells its own story. A postcard miraculously recovered from the South Tower Observation Deck. Multitudes of identification and business cards, rendered meaningless with no owners to attach them to. A flattened serving tray. A fragment of a plane window that might have been someone’s last view of the world. But out of all of these, there was one that particularly stuck out to me as I was searching the 9/11 Museum’s collection, and in honesty it seems quite mundane. It is a small scrap of scorched notebook paper. It was one of the many that abseiled from the towers after the planes hit them.


Some words can be made out, but the text is functionally illegible. We will never know what this paper said, who wrote it and what area of the building it came from. It is frustrating.
But it has now been elevated to a relic-like status due to its unfortunate circumstances. It will likely be protected and displayed for many years to come, when otherwise it would be discarded without much thought as office scribble. In its hurt state, it represents all that has been lost and that can never be recovered.

It is no secret that conditions at the uppermost floors of the Twin Towers after the planes hit, with thousands trapped in them, was hell. Smoke and flames rose from the gaping holes and quickly heated up the building. In certain videos and images you can spot victims waving and leaning out of the broken windows. In these we watch ghosts, as no one above the impact zone survived. Despite firefighters’ best efforts, they truly had no help. Floors beyond were impassable. This now left these people with a bone-chilling decision to make. Jump some 80-100 floors to their immediate certain deaths, or stay inside and await their certain deaths. It is unknowable how many people fell from the buildings, but at most the number is about 100-200.


There is a photograph of the top floors by Thomas Dallal titled ‘Impending Death’. White streaks of smoke escape the broken windows and coil around the top of the North Tower. Zoom in and you can see people looking out. In the very upper floors was the Windows on the World restaurant. On September 11th it was hosting a conference for Risk Waters. No one pictured here survived. Attempts have been made to identify victims using photos like these.

Some were captured in video and image, this short, perilous limbo between life and death; however other footage saw them hit the ground. Not much of those are publicly released and known to exist, which is a mercy. I bet that if 9/11 happened today, with the saturation of technology and the ability to record and share anything, there would be far more hideous stuff like that. A disposable camera was reportedly recovered from the rubble that contained images from above the impact. This could obviously provide a very interesting and never before seen perspective, but the FBI has rejected requests to release it. Still, there is a possibility of these types of media hiding away in the crawl spaces of the internet, which many have tried to locate. But do we need to be looking for these? The content itself, especially the aftermath of so-called ‘jumpers’ is horrendous- I don’t even think I can describe it here. Perhaps there are some things too gruesome to show.

An aspect of 9/11 that I want to pinpoint is Flight 93. It is probably one of the most forgotten parts of the attacks, perhaps along with Flight 77. This is likely in part due to the fact that there was a considerably lower loss of life, only 40 passengers and crew (excluding the 4 hijackers), and I think also because it was less of a spectacle. There was no footage of the plane going down, no smoking building in the aftermath, and it wasn’t in a populated area like New York or Arlington for there to be a large response. Very few witnessed it. In fact it was over quite quickly.

It stands out in the fact that it was the only plane to be ‘taken back’ by the passengers and did not reach its intended target. People aboard had knowledge of the situation at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They were distinctly aware that a terrorist attack was underway and that they were next. Afterwards they were heralded as national heroes for preventing another disaster and an even greater loss of life.


At the memorial to Flight 93 it is striking how ‘middle of nowhere’ it happened. Even the names of ‘Shanksville’ and ‘Stony Creek Township’ conjure up a rural vignette of open land, bales of hay and the only notable structures being farm buildings. Before 9/11 it was an irrelevant, far out field, and now by a turn in history it is sacred ground. I almost want to comment on the irony of one of the most important events in modern times happening there. Residents had a false sense of security, and of course they did. Of all places why would it be here? But if the passengers had not intervened when they did, the plane would have gone down someplace else. They inadvertently chose that spot as their final resting place.

While I have mostly been speaking about victims, it is necessary to cover survivors as well. Whether they were in the buildings at the time or were meant to be (or even supposed to be on the planes), they were now left in shock, carrying trauma, guilt and in some cases health effects. I can’t speak for them, but I imagine the question most of them probably felt was ‘Why me?’. Why did I deserve to live when so many others didn’t? And how can one ever answer that question? It seems shocking to us now, but survivors were largely overlooked in the aftermath of 9/11. If anything they were seen as incredibly lucky- after all, they had survived. They didn’t even get special access to see Ground Zero up close initially. Eventually they did get attention and recognition (albeit by a woman called Tania Head, who actually lied about being a survivor, but that is a very long story for another time), and rightfully so. They are among the few people in the world who can tell of their very unique experience and keep the memory of 9/11 alive in such an intimate way.

But that memory is sadly not sacred. 9/11 has long since been swallowed up into the ever-churning vat of pop culture and consumerism. Even at the Memorial Museum, after being confronted with a barrage of pain and tragedy, seeing steel beams warped by the collapse, hearing phone calls from people knowing they are going to die, you exit through the obligatory gift shop where you can buy mugs, tote bags, keychains and more endless derivative souvenir gunk. To me it feels such a jarring juxtaposition, and a gross one at that.

At the present moment, 9/11 is a cheap joke to many. It has become a lazy form of shock humour. The slogan of 9/11 is ‘Never Forget’, but we appear to have already forgotten. Many people (certainly older people who remember the attacks) think that this is wrong, and that it is too soon to do such a thing. I agree with them. Perhaps I am being too serious, perhaps I don’t get it, but I don’t exactly find thousands dying cruelly funny. However that does raise the important question- at what point is it deemed OK for a tragic event to be accepted into the comedic lexicon? Is there a set amount of time; 50 years? 100? Is it when there are no living survivors, or people who directly knew the victims? Or is there never a time? We can debate on this but ‘acceptance into comedy’ has happened. Where does this behaviour come from? Maybe it is from an uninformed population that is also getting younger and thus further from the event. Or a population that does not care. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. I’m not sure.

It is important to recognise that 9/11 happening in the U.S is significant. No memorial is complete without an American flag of flags flapping beside it. Since the U.S is a 1st world, rather influential country it got (and still gets) a lot of attention. If it occurred here or in a less relevant or developed country I wonder if it would have gotten as much. Thousands die all in parts of the world in similar horrific acts, but they don’t get to build a memorial that millions visit annually. They don’t get an anniversary news segment. Because they didn’t have the privilege of living in a country that mattered to the West or was in it. Looking at South Africa, 9/11 didn’t really affect it all that much. While we lost two South Africans, which is still two too many, there was no massive outpouring of grief and the need for support. There was no need for it. But we were obliged to listen.

25 years later, we are all in some way still processing and responding to 9/11. Sometimes it is hard to believe it even happened. Describing it, it sounds like a clip from a cheap, overdone disaster film, but it was real. Whatever you feel about it, the fact that you feel is what matters. The fact we still talk about it matters. The attacks didn’t stop at 10:29 AM, and they didn’t stop on December 31st, 2001. The ripples from it and the hurt it created will never end. While we can’t change what happened and return to the naïveté of ‘before’, whatever that even means anymore, as we move further away from 9/11 it is more important than ever to remember who and what was lost, and who was impacted by it.

I found a ‘quote’ recently that I think encapsulates my thoughts on 9/11 25 years later that I would like to leave you with. It was a portion of a longer letter left on the N-74 parapet for the Flight 11 and 175 crew.

All’s not the same without you.
-Unknown AA and UA flight attendant


– Sebastian