In the Shadow of the Towers

Last week,I saw a vendor in Times Square selling a T-shirt that read: Obama got Osama. God Bless America. Six simple,somewhat jingoistic words,but they sum up the last 10 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

Ten years is a long period,but it is hard to believe so much time has passed since that tragic day. I was in New York on September 11,2001. It was like any other day bright and sunny,with a slight chill in the air,signalling the end of summer. A day marred by an audacious act by 19 Al Qaeda terrorists hijacking four airplanes and then flying two of them into the Twin Towers. No one could have imagined that the majestic buildings standing on the tip of Manhattan could collapse,resulting in death and destruction,and changing our lives forever. It seemed surreal then. It still seems surreal.

The morning after the buildings collapsed,I remember seeing many people walking uptown with their heads and clothes grey from the ash of the collapsed towers. We had this urgent need to get home,to hug our children,and count our blessings that we were still alive and with our loved ones.

In the days to come,there were signs of tragedies around us the shrines that came up in different parts of the city in memory of those who had lost their lives,and the overwhelming smell of the fires that burnt at Ground Zero for several weeks. For South Asians,there were incidents of hate crimes,directed against innocent Sikhs and Muslims. There were cases of South Asians being asked to leave airplanes because other passengers or flight crews felt uncomfortable flying with them.

The hate-crime incidents finally calmed down. This May,when Osama Bin Ladens death was announced,I went down to Ground Zero with some friends and could not help notice that the couple of thousand people who had gathered there seemed unified,chanting,USA,USA. We were all New Yorkers celebrating the death of a monstrous man,right where his fanatic followers had created so much sadness.

Months after the September 11 attacks,we got used to the colour-coded terror alerts,the presence of heavily armed policemen in public places such as subway stations,having to show our IDs each time we entered lobbies of office buildings,announcements in subways about what to do if we saw suspicious packages,having random searches of our bags at airports,and something I found very annoying taking our shoes off at security before we boarded airplanes.

In between,the US waged two wars one nearly over and the other still on. Nearly 4,500 American service men and women lost their lives in Iraq. This August was the first non-casualty month since the Iraq war was declared in the spring of 2003. The war in Afghanistan has resulted in approximately 1,800 American deaths and the numbers have been higher in the past few years. There is no actual count of the number of Iraqis and Afghans who have died since the start of these two wars.

The Bush administration pushed through the wars,with false information sometimes delivered in messages through honourable men like General Colin Powell. We were told that the wars would make us safer. The jury is still out on that,given that Al Qaeda launched attacks in other parts of the world.

Frankly,there is no guarantee or evidence that America will ever be safer. Each time our governments convinced us that we were in a better place,the terrorists appeared one step ahead of us. The FBI and other security agencies foiled many plots,but no one could have imagined that Richard Reid was planning to blow up a plane by carrying explosives in his shoes. And no one could have imagined that Faisal Shahzed,a naturalised American of Pakistani origin,had the chutzpah to attempt to blow up a car bomb right in the heart of Times Square.

The September 11 tragedy created an industry that many people benefited from. This past week,the Village Voice carried an extensively researched article on people profiting off Americas greatest tragedy from fire-fighters who now go on speaking gigs,to the security and health industries,book publishers,and consultants of all sorts. And then there are the small-time vendors the guy selling T-shirts in Times Square or the others who sell junk memorabilia to tourists who visit Ground Zero,now just a large construction site.

Hollywood made films some decent and others not so good. Many documentaries were made,first on the terrorist attack itself and then on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year,the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the top Oscars to the Iraq war narrative film,The Hurt Locker.

So much has happened in the past 10 years and it will continue to happen. It is like we are living through sequel after sequel of a long movie which has no ending. A lot of the changes especially those related to security issues,have become a way of life for us. In other cases,we do not know how and when any of this will end.

But New Yorkers are a resilient lot. We bounced back months after the attacks. The anniversaries became a reminder about the tragedy and how potentially vulnerable we all were. After a few years,even the anniversaries became routine,televised events that few would watch. For family members who lost their loved ones on September 11,the anniversaries held a special significance. But the rest of us moved on in some ways,focused on our daily lives.

A 10-year anniversary obviously carries a lot more meaning. This week,we will be inundated with reports television shows and newspaper and magazine articles revisiting the day of the attacks. Security forces will be on high alert. But this too will pass.

Americans are already preoccupied with other more pressing issues,the economy being the foremost. The death of Bin Laden,no small achievement for President Barack Obama,has been overshadowed by the domestic economic crisis. We have 14 months for the next presidential election and the Republicans are already gearing up for the primaries. It is an indication that there is life beyond the September 11 anniversaries.

(The writer is a freelance journalist based in New York City)