Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century.
Twenty-five years is almost a new generation. It means new faces, new lives, new wrinkles, countless changes. There have been many joys and many sorrows, moments we remember and others we have forgotten.
And yet, some things do not change.
The feeling I still carry from that day is almost indescribable: disbelief, shock, sadness, anger, and an overwhelming sense of loss—the feeling that the world we knew had suddenly disappeared, and would never be quite the same again.
September 11, 2001 — San Francisco
I got up that morning as usual, around 8:00 a.m. Pacific time. Normally, before going to work, I would switch on the radio and listen to the local news, followed by some funky music.
But that morning was different.
I had returned from France only a few days earlier with my mother. Instead of following my usual morning routine, we sat together over breakfast and talked about the weeks ahead. My mother was going to be staying in San Francisco, and I was preparing for a trip to Africa for a mission that was supposed to last several months.
Because of that opportunity, I had decided to leave my current position. We had an interview scheduled that morning with a candidate who might take over my job.
I remember walking through Union Square on my way downtown.
Something felt strange.
It was unusually quiet. Oddly quiet.
I arrived at the office and found no one in the hallway. It was very unusual, although ours was a nonprofit organization and the atmosphere was generally relaxed. I didn’t think too much of it.
Then Jennifer, my colleague in the office next door, saw me.
“Did you hear the news?”
“No.”
I assumed there had been some kind of office announcement. Perhaps another staff meeting. Something ordinary.
But she looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before.
Almost like a robot, she said:
“Planes have crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Another one hit the Pentagon. It’s a major terrorist attack.”
Then she continued walking down the hallway.
Like a zombie.
For a moment, I wondered if she was drunk. But I knew she wasn’t.
I simply could not comprehend what she had said.
And, perhaps, I did not want to.
I entered my office, switched on the computer and the Internet, and told myself to stay calm. To be strong.
I walked back out into the hallway and found most of my colleagues—those who had managed to come in—in the meeting room. A television had been turned on, and everyone was glued to the screen, almost as if watching long enough might somehow make it unreal.
Many of them had family members or close friends back East.
Our director was in Washington, D.C., for a meeting. We eventually learned that she and the others with her were safe, back at their hotel.
Then my boss came to me.
He asked whether I had heard from the candidate scheduled for the interview, and whether I would still go ahead with the interview if he came.
I had no idea what to say.
What to feel.
What to do.
I remember calling my mother at my apartment in San Francisco. I told her that something very serious had happened and that all flights had been cancelled, but that she shouldn’t worry.
She didn’t understand much English, and somehow that made me feel that it was okay. She would not fully understand the magnitude of what had happened until she watched the French news (at the bookstore from French magazines in few days…).
Back at the office, my boss and I waited.
The candidate arrived.
He looked completely normal.
We realized that he had no idea what had happened.
My boss wasn’t sure what to say. But it was impossible to pretend that nothing had happened.
We asked him whether he had heard the news.
He hadn’t.
My boss told him, as gently as he could, what had happened. Then he asked whether he still wanted to continue with the interview.
The three of us decided to go ahead.
Perhaps we were simply postponing the moment when we would have to fully face reality.
The interview went ahead.
He eventually got the job.
I also received an email that day with my travel itinerary for Africa, where I was supposed to leave in a few weeks.
If flying would even be possible by then.
After that, I called friends across the United States. I emailed others around the world. I kept checking the news, perhaps hoping for a miracle, or for someone to tell us that this couldn’t possibly be real.
But there was no miracle.
And I could not bring myself to watch the images of the towers.
Even today, when I see certain images from that day, I instinctively close my eyes.
For years, I could not look at the New York skyline.
Whenever the World Trade Center towers appeared in a movie or television program—especially anything made before September 11, 2001—I would look away or close my eyes.
It was as if those towers had become frozen in time.
Then, almost twenty years later, I returned to New York.
I saw the new tower.
I went to Ground Zero.
Standing there, I felt again that unbelievable sense of how a few minutes on an ordinary September morning had changed the world.
Twenty-five years have now passed.
A quarter of a century.
Lives have changed. People have grown older. A new generation has grown up knowing September 11 mostly as history.
But for those of us who experienced that morning, there is a before and an after.
And no matter how many years pass, I don’t think that feeling will ever completely disappear.
Some moments do not simply become memories.
They become part of who we are.
NEVER FORGET
