Tue. 11 Sept. 2001 || Tue. 11 Sept. 2007

Tuesday 11 September 2001. I remember every single thing of that fateful day. Memories are stuck in my mind for a lifetime. No words can express the utter disbelief that I felt then, six years ago to the day, glued to my TV screen, my vision blurred by the tears in my eyes. No words can relate that tragedy. The sight of that plane heading for the emblematic skyscraper, which looked suddenly so very vulnerable. I remember seeing, along with millions of other traumatised human beings, the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center tower #2. I do remember, but it is like remembering a dream, not knowing whether what you experienced was reality or fantasy.  I am not convinced that remembering a nightmare is actually less disturbing than experiencing it. A hell of a vision ; a vision of Hell. A sense that you are the only one left on Earth ; a sense that time has stopped. A sense of total disbelief, and yet the pictures on the screen seem so terribly genuine. 

I so vividly remember the apocalyptic rumbling, as the Twin Towers were collapsing. The debris and the thin white dust covering just everything, lain on the city like a lead weight. How ironic : lead and asbestos might eventually kill more people than the terrorist attacks per se. I remember beholding with awe what was from then on to be called Ground Zero, a graveyard in ruins. Not one single telephone, not one single chair, not one single human body that has not been completely pulverised. I remember haggard people, covered with ashes, as if wearing white veils, running around in panic, with no place to find shelter in. The white veil was actually more like a shroud. I also recollect the amazing sight of dozens of bodies falling from the towers in desperate and vain efforts to escape the heat and the smoke and the turmoil. I remember the fire-fighters' alarms echoing in all Manhattan. It was raining people, later said one of the many firemen present there that day. The deathly hush following the collapse of the Twin Towers, one after the other. The deafening silence that followed chaos, destruction and havoc, sound and fury. Retrospectively, it seems totally absurd and preposterous that people were actually ordered to go back to their offices, as if nothing had happened, as if no plane had ever crashed into the World Trade Center tower...

So, if there is one thing which MUST be remembered, that is that fateful day, the 3,000 victims of man's folly. Those terrible events, I will bear in mind on Tuesday 11 September 2007 : I will make a minute of silence at 2:48 pm (Paris local time) out of sheer respect for those who lost their lives on the 11 September 2001 in unthinkable circomstances. So that we never forget (but how could we forget, we direct witnesses of something impossible to fathom out?) May all the victims Rest In Peace and the real perpetrators of that unprecedented event be identified and punished.