I remember as clear as day. I was 13 years old and it had a real profound effect on me. I remember it being the first day back at school and everyone talking about it, but no one really understanding it. It was the first time I realized the world could be such horrible and inhospitable place
It does puzzle me how we get all this talk 2 months before the anniversary and then come November - nothing.
By bizarre coincidence, I was in Tunisia (a moderately Islamic country) when it happened, and on the day itself we were on a day trip taking a tour of important Muslim sites including two mosques. Due to the communications infrastructure there not being quite up to European standards, we knew nothing about it until we got back to the hotel to find the lobby full of people gathered round the single television watching CNN. We thought there'd been a bomb until the footage of the planes flying into the towers was shown again, then it dawned on us what had happened. Grim indeed. I had a very large brandy when I got on the plane to fly home a couple of days later.
I was working at the Press Association at the time and watched it unfold live on Sky News, seeing the 2nd plane hit live. They reported it initially as a single seater private plane going off course and accidentally hitting the first tower, so it's clear how easy it was to report it wrong. They also categorically stated the other plane that downed was shot by US fighters for a good couple of hours before changing their story. Of course that was wrong too.....
Watched it live from the 18th floor of an office block across the river in Newark, New Jersey. Just unbelievable that it could happen and it still has an effect on me.
I too watched it unfold on the TV. I suppose the fact that we could see it in real time in a place very familiar to millions ( via film and TV ) made it all the more shocking. I can't help though feel a little uneasy in that horrendous though it was there were plenty of places that the US had bombed and killed just as many people if not more where because they did not have the wall to wall live coverage we tend not to see those dead in the same way as the victims of the 9/ 11 attack. 9/11 was also the date in 1973 when the democratically elected government in Chile led by Salvador Allende was violently overthrown by General Pinochet not only was Allende murdered but so were over 10,000 others many being tortured in the football stadium in Santiago . Of course that coup was supported and financed by the USA. So just as we remember those killed by the lunatics in New York so we should remember those killed on the instructions of and approval of the USA.
