The Twin Towers

Remember, Remember…
There are certain events that happen and everyone remembers where they were at that moment – when the first man landed on the moon, when Princess Diana died, when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York…
I remember that day well. I was 18 years old and living in Japan for the first time. I had only been there a couple of weeks and my host-mother came to wake me up. She showed me the images on the TV – the planes hitting the towers, fire, people panicking… I didn’t understand what was going on. My host-mother spoke not a word of English and I could only say “the cat runs and the dog walks” in Japanese – not very useful. We had no internet and she kept saying “London, London” – it felt scary not knowing what she was trying to tell me and what was going on. It looked like a film, not something that was happening in real life.
All I could do was leave for school and check the computers there for the news in English. Even though I read the words, it was hard to comprehend what it meant and why it had happened. I still don’t understand now…
We visited Ground Zero on our recent trip to NY. I remember coming here a few years ago and it was a giant building site. Now it’s been transformed into a huge empty space – two squares with water gushing out into the floor that leave a footprint of where the towers once stood. It’s hard to describe it – so here are some photos.

It’s a peaceful place and a place for remembrance, but it didn’t feel like a place you can sit, think and reflect. White roses had been placed inside the inscriptions of some of the victims – a poignant touch that relatives and friends see it as a kind of graveyard.
It felt more like a tourist destination than a memorial – I’ve been to many memorials all over the world and often I’ve been hit with a sense of death, suffering and sadness. Here it felt a little eerie seeing people touching the rims where people’s names were written and posing happily for photos. I do think the design is beautiful and it’s amazing to be surrounded by those huge buildings everywhere and then all of a sudden you are in a big empty space, where towers used to be. It gives a good scale of how big the buildings were and how scary it must have been to be inside or watching everything unfold.
What do you think of the memorial? Do you remember where you were when the planes hit the Twin Towers?