Like most people, I know
exactly where I was when the Twin Towers came down.
I was having lunch in the
Groucho Club in London’s Soho with my best friend Elizabeth and the writer
Keith Waterhouse. A waiter came over to tell us that we should go upstairs to watch
the TV as a plane had just gone into one of the Towers.
I sat, in a crowded room, in
complete silence, watching, with disbelief, the sight that has now become one
of the most devastating in our lifetime.
Initial rumours were that 20,000
were feared dead, and in the French House, a local pub, a priest openly prayed
in the bar.
It will be 13 years on September
11th since the attacks took place, and time has not lessened the
impact on the city. Among New Yorkers, there is bitterness that the tragedy has
subsequently turned into an argument over money; another dispute centres on the
six minute film in the museum, which apparently fails to point out that the
majority of Muslims are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens who do not run
around blowing up buildings.
Others complain that the Freedom
Tower and its sister that have gone up in the original Towers’ place are not
tall enough. They wanted the biggest two-finger salute to Al Qaeda that it was
possible to build.
But for many New Yorkers, 9/11 is
too painful to talk about, and they have no desire to visit the site, nor
engage in any commemoration of it. As one said to me yesterday: “I lived
through it. Why would I want to be reminded?”
I went to the site yesterday
afternoon, a perfect spring day in the Financial District, where the streets
are eerily dark in the shadows of the buildings that stand sentry all around.
Older buildings that look as if they could do with a good clean lend a
grubbiness to the area, like poor relations who come to visit their better off
cousins who long outstripped them in terms of wealth. In Liberty Square, the
scent of tulips is overwhelming, the red and yellow adding some much needed
colour among the greys and browns of stone and concrete.
And then you see them: two unostentatious
towers of light like two angels that have descended unannounced, quietly, to
restore order.
They are exquisitely beautiful. Most
of my time here is spent photographing buildings rather than people, but this
something else. Of course, their presence is loaded with the sadness of 9/11,
which gives added poignancy to their place in New York history; but they also
stand alone, both literally and metaphorically. They are the light of the
future and, while the past will never be forgotten, they are a reminder that
courage, fortitude and love remain at the heart of the human spirit.
When 9/11 happened, I wondered,
if I had been a passenger on one of the planes, knowing it was the end, what my
one regret in life would have been.
It was that I had never lived in
Paris. Two weeks later, I was on the Eurostar out of London to pick up the keys
to an apartment in the 6th arrondissement, where I stayed for a
joyous four years.
Ever since 9/11, I have tried not
to live a Could’ve Would’ve Should’ve kind of existence. I cannot begin to
imagine what it was like to live through the tragedy, nor to lose someone in
such horrific circumstances.
But it taught me a lot about
life: that it really is short, but it is also beautiful.
Yes, there is darkness
along the way, but it can turn on a dime.
You just need to look among the
shadows for the angels.
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