Saturday, September 10, 2011

9/11: A Strange and Bitter Crop!


“Shan, you better hurry up in there you’re already late for work!” My mother shouted.

“I’ll be leaving soon” I yelled back from my throne, otherwise known as, the toilet! I always did my best thinking there.

“What are you doing? Hurry up. You’re as slow as Christmas” she said again.

I had been out until the wee hours of the morning working on my baby, a celebrity driven show that I was independently producing. Now, on this sunny morning, I sat on my "throne" replaying in my head the interview and how it should be edited.

“Shan, come here!”

“Oh, lord” I groaned. As long as I was home my mother wasn’t gonna give me any peace, although I wasn't doing anything but sitting in the bathroom staring into space. I wasn't even using the toilet I was sitting on.

“An airplane…” she yelled, but this time her voice sounded different.

“What?” I said as I unlocked the bathroom door and walked toward her bedroom.

“Hurry up you gotta see this!”

“See what?” I said again, as I rounded the corner to the bedroom.

I stopped in my tracks as soon as I saw her standing in front of the TV staring at the screen like, Carrie Ann, the little blond girl from the movie Poltergeist.

“Look” she said pointing to the TV.

Following her finger I looked at the screen. There I saw a hole in the side of a building with black smoke and papers billowing out.

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“A plane just hit one of the Twin Towers” she said as I watched the instant replay of the airplane slamming into the tower. I knew immediately she was talking about the Towers in New York City. They were a huge part of the Manhattan skyline and had unfortunately been attacked before.

“Oh man, the pilot must’ve gotten disoriented or sick, maybe he had a heart attack and the Co-pilot didn’t have time to react” I said in disbelief.

“This is a live shot of the towers. If you’re just tuning in, an airplane has hit one of the Twin Towers. We will keep you updated on…What is that airplane doing? Oh my god it’s gonna hit the other tower!”

While the news camera was focused on the tower that was burning, another airplane came into view and slammed into the second tower right before our eyes, black smoke, fire, and debris, roaring out. We both sat on the bed, I remember the silence we shared as the magnitude of what we were seeing finally started to take shape.

“Oh my God we’re being attacked! I gotta call Yagi!” I screamed and jumped up to get my cell phone.

I had known Yagi since 5th grade. Two people couldn’t be more opposite and still get along. We were Ying and Yang! She was as meek and mild as I was boisterous and blunt. She rocked afro-puffs like a true New Yorker, while I rocked straight hair like the quintessential Detroiter. I am the creative TV person who would rather wear the crazy patterns of Cavalli. She’s the strait-laced lawyer who would rather wear a navy, two-piece, Brooks Brothers suit. I’m tardy for the party, while you can set your clock by her, which meant that she was in her office located somewhere near the Twin Towers this fateful morning! How close? I did not know. I dialed her number quickly.

“All circuits are busy,” the recorded message said.

I hung up and dialed five more times only to keep hearing the same message.

“All airplanes are grounded!”

I had forgotten the TV was still on as I paced back and forth, phone in hand.

“People are jumping!” The announcer screamed.

This time I turned to see what looked like dolls falling from the gaping holes. I called Yagi for the sixth time.

“All circuits are busy.”

Where exactly did she say her damn office was? I stood up and started pacing, turning away from the TV once again.

“The tower is falling!”

At that moment I whipped around just in time to see the tower collapse like a deck of cards piled too high, making a perfect descent as if imploded on purpose, except, this was not on purpose! We watched helplessly as men and women who were once standing on the street, “safe from harm”, watching the towers in horror, now ran for their lives as metal, concrete and glass came crashing down.

I called Yagi again, this time praying I would get through. By the time the last tower crashed I’d received the same message about the “circuits” enough times to know I would not be able to talk to her that day, the circuits most assuredly on overload with people calling to inquire about loved ones. I only prayed that no news was good news, as I left my mother’s room to start getting dressed for work.

Like most folks on 9/1/1, I went to work in a daze, as every radio and television station replayed the events of that morning. There I learned the full scope of the attack. Not only had the Twin Towers been attacked but so had the Pentagon, and another airplane had crashed in a field, not too far away.

The Pentagon attack had raised concerns at work since Georgie, the guy who sat behind me, had left the day before to move his girlfriend to DC, just a block away from the Pentagon.

If we were a family at work, Georgie and I were brother and sister! I probably teased, and got on his nerves more than all his siblings combined! Now not only was I calling Yagi, but my supervisor and I took turns calling Georgie.

Late the following evening I finally got through to Yagi, luckily she hadn’t been directly in the fray. But for a long walk home, (from Manhattan to Brooklyn), she was ok. Earlier that day we’d gotten through to Georgie who was fine, his girlfriend, deciding to return to Detroit.

That night I listened to Billie Holiday’s song, strange fruit, the song juxtaposed the beauty of the south with the ugliness of lynching. In an unlikely twist of fate, the same ignorance, and hatred that fueled the deaths of so many in her time now fueled the deaths of so many in mine.

9/11 had proved that the world still had not learned that nothing ever comes from ignorance and hatred but a “strange and bitter crop.” ~d-the-VIP

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