While I was lazily forcing myself to finish the layout project dad gave me, the National Geographic Channel’s special documentary on 9-11 hit me: It’s been almost five years since dad and I stayed awake the whole night to monitor what had been going on at the World Trade Center.
During that time I was preparing for an exam and I recalled stopping in my tracks as I was overcome by excitement over what was unfolding right before my very eyes through CNN’s coverage. I had no idea or personal realization of the gargantuan impact even as dad and I caught on CNN, live, the second plane that ran smack through the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
I had no idea, definitely no idea, that I would be caught with so much emotion over what happened almost five years ago.
Direct victims and their families, including people living in the United States, I know, would be shocked at this admission of the indifference I felt during that time. God knew I did try to empathize. I prayed until I could I pray no more. But no personal significance, no personal realization hit me even as I continuously read and heard news after news, stories after stories, days, weeks, months, years after the tragedy that forever scarred American history.
Then again, it’s never really too late is it? It’s never really too late for a seemingly ordinary documentary of a cable channel to touch lives, lives like mine that really had no idea.
Two months ago, the building where I used to work at held a fire drill. My office was at the 32nd floor and the building had 41 floors, less than half the number of floors the Twin Towers had. I remembered complaining incessantly over what the local city firemen instructed us to do. They had us descend the building through the emergency stairwell, all 32 floors. I wasn’t able to go to work the next day due to leg pains. In my blog I posted: "The drill procedure was so wrong. They (the firemen) should have instructed us to go up, not to go down as we are closer to the rooftop. My officemate was right in recalling what happened at the World Trade Center. Had our building also collapsed, those at the rooftop would be the first ones to get dugged out."
Though I still maintain that our local city firemen would have committed a fatal error had there been a real disaster and considering that the entire drill was, but naturally, scripted, I know now that it’s really more than that.
Over my efforts not to slip as I was carefully descending the stairwell in my new pair of stilettos, people at the World Trade Center, five years ago, cared less if they were to slip or get their bodies bruised so long as they could get out of the buildings.
Over my complains of feeling faint due to the heat at the emergency exit, direct victims at the World Trade Center were breaking glass, scrambling for fresh air, even as it stung them, just to get temporary relief from their burned and bruised bodies.
Over my excuses of suffering from leg pain from the very time I descended the 32nd floor stairwell to the time I woke up the next day, hundreds, thousands of people from the 89th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center were not minding anymore any body pain they’re feeling just so they could speed their way down.
Over my exchange of jokes with my officemates and other building tenants and smug remarks about our local firemen while descending the building, no fireman, no police, no unnamed and faceless hero who ascended the twin towers of inferno while bumping into people who had nothing else in mind but to go down smiled and said everything’s gonna be okay. They knew the stark reality they were all facing. It was not okay. Even if they lived right after, it would never be okay, for them, for their family, for the people who loved them. It was all but in a day’s work. It’s a tall order. But they had a deadline. A DEADline looming on them, fast.
Hearing the accounts of people who managed to survive and at the same time seeing the documentary of the National Geographic Channel really had me almost breaking into tears. Realization of the magnitude finally hit me. As one male survivor, a bank executive at the South Tower, if I was not mistaken, narrated how building staff assured them that they need not panic and that they could go back to work as the tragedy was only at the North Tower, I could not help but have tons of emotions suddenly rushing and pouring out of me. Had I been in that situation, I would not go back to work as I would have known instantly that I had every reason to panic. And that’s just not my intuition talking. Maybe I would have gone into an argument with the building staff over the urgency and severity of the situation of the building just right beside us. Maybe I would have made my officemates and other building tenants realize that I was not just being my usual me, panic-stricken and a scaredy-cat; that there really was cause to fear for our lives. Maybe I would have given cause for my brain cells to finally work as I debated on whether or not I should save my other personal belongings and help others at the same time. Maybe I would have thought of my parents and my other loved ones and instantly call them to both ask for help and at the same time assure them that I would be okay. Maybe I would have sent text messages after text messages to friends in a horrifying adrenaline of excitement that I was in the middle of it all, at Ground Zero.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
"Dad, I think the hijackers are going to crash the plane into a building or something. DON’T WORRY. IT WOULD JUST BE FAST."
Fast. All in a day’s work. Somehow, some way, it’s all in a day’s work, with deadlines to finish and roles to play whether these people desired it or not. Per force, one surrendered to the fate of having the position of the victim. Per force, one accepted the principle of martyrdom for Allah and took the initiative of accomplishing his suicidal task for the position of hijacker and terrorist.
