From my office window, I can see the south Manhattan skyline. I wish I'd taken a photo of it before 9/11/2001, but it never occurred to me that it wouldn't always be there.
The south Manhattan skyline used to be dominated by the Twin Towers, but now I can barely imagine what they looked like. The only personal memento I have of them is this photo of their destruction, taken from my office window.
9/11 - 10/11 - in some ways my memory of 10/11 is even stronger. I know I'll never forget getting onto the bus on the morning of the 12th September, the day after.
The seats in the front section of the New York City buses run in a row along the sides, facing inward towards the row opposite. On a normal day, we'd all just alight, take a seat and open a book or the New York Times, perhaps make a cell phone call ....
But that day no one read, no one talked on a cell phone, we all just sat there, facing each other, but at the same time, avoiding seeing each other. We could not read, nor could we look our fellow commuters in the eye. Nor could we look away.
It was as if we were embarrassed to acknowledge the horror of the past 24 hours. There was absolute quiet and a feeling of awkwardness. Perhaps we felt that by looking we would be saying, yes it happened. And that was something we could neither believe or fathom.
Later I was to read Australian writer and fellow New Yorker Peter Carey's account his experience in the Manhattan streets shortly after the planes hit. It was eerily similar to mine.
I stayed away from Ground Zero for many weeks. Whenever I was anywhere near it, I would know exactly where NOT to walk because of the overpowering smell emanating from the ruins - the smell of death. There were enough reminders on the news, around the neighborhood, and in everyday conversations.
Posters and photos dotted lamp-posts, tree trunks and shop windows, asking for help in locating the lost, or for support for the families of the victims.
Unlike the South and MidWest, New York is not a place where people hang flags from their homes. That changed.
Flags were everywhere, in shop windows, hanging from apartment balconies, on attire - human and animal.
Eventually I travelled down to Ground Zero to see firsthand what I'd been seeing nightly on television.
I took one of my favourite 911 photos.
Flowers and other tributes, messages and religious icons dotted the fences keeping the public out. There was a spirit of hope at last.
People of many nationalities and faiths had died, and people of many nationalities and faiths openly mourned them.
Aftermath
By the first anniversary of 9/11 life was returning to normal. But images and memories of that day were firmly etched in our memories. Fireman were still heroes. Fire fighter gear was being sold in department stores and FDNY baseball caps were everywhere.
What effects did 9/11 have on me personally? Several.
One was to start feeling a loyalty to America, and especially to New York. On 9/11 New York became
my city. Of course Melbourne is still my city, but on 9/11 I realised that I had two homes. Melbourne and New York - two great cities - I am privileged.
That's the positive. A major negative was realising how different I now was to most of my close friends back home. Sitting in my apartment, in a city still suffering from an attack that certainly we New Yorkers had not provoked, I was dismayed to hear people 12,000 miles away saying to ME - "Well, they got what they deserved!"
In those early post 9/11 days I was too stunned to answer back. What WERE they talking about? Did they realise that they were talking to a NEW YORKER. Yes, by then I'd certainly become one.
I, like many other Australian expats, started to NOT look forward to going back for Christmas 2001. How would we cope? Already shattered by the trauma of September, how would we deal with such remarks face to face.
Yet we did, and time has now softened the differences, although they remain.
In 2003 a friend, another expat, but in Spain and not America, emailed me, asking me if it was true that Jews who worked in the WTC had been forewarned about the attack, and had stayed away from work that day. What WAS he implying? Words failed me but not for long. I sent back a scathing email and he never mentioned the topic again.
Sometimes I dream a post 9/11 dream. A nightmare really. It's always the same - that is, it's a recurring dream.
I am in a quiet and serene valley. There's a few of us there, and we are just going about our business that is, in the nature of dreams, undefined.
There's a dreamy feel to the dream - a sense of ease and security, and the trees and bushes in the dream valley are slightly blurred around the edges.
Out of nowhere comes a plane. It starts to descend, getting closer and closer, but slowly as if in slow motion.
Then I awake. Everytime. There's never an impact. I wake up with the feeling of the dream all around me.
In the first few months after 9/11 we New Yorkers would jump at the sound of several fire engines or ambulances. When a fire engine passed, people on the sidewalk would cheer and wave to the firemen, remembering the hundreds who had so recently lost their lives.
We don't do that anymore. The mayor has, for economic reasons, closed many fire stations. There was some objection, but not much. We now barely glance up, as a fire engine roars past. How soon we humans forget.
My dream plane still makes its appearance at regular intervals, and I have not forgotten the rift that I felt towards those friends back in Melbourne, who blamed the word "America" and not the men, the terrorists, for the assault on my city. We are friends still, but there is that nagging memory that I suspect will never disappear.
And now it is suddenly the fourth anniversary and another disaster has hit America. The Katrina disaster now dominates the news. But 9/11/2001 is not forgotten, at least not in New York.
Amongst the seemingly never-ending Katrina TV specials, community service ads ask us to "do something" on this coming 9/11. Do ANYTHING the voice-over orders. Do something kind to another person.
What will I do on 9/11? I will try to do a nice thing. And I'll certainly remember that day, four years ago, when hatred and jealousy and religious fanaticism injured my city.
I close with a little gallery of my 9/11 photos, and hope it will never happen again.
Anywhere.
Kate Juliff
New York
September 2005
