On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in New York City to interview some job candidates at my then-employer, Amnesty International USA. As I walked from my hotel to the AIUSA office, I came upon dozens of New Yorkers standing on the sidewalk outside a McDonald’s on the corner of 28th Street and 6th Avenue, staring at something going on downtown.
When I looked up, I saw that the North Tower of the World Trade Center was on fire. Nobody around me knew what had happened. I pulled out my cell phone and called a friend to tell her to turn on CNN. As we were chatting, I started yelling into the phone — “Oh shit oh shit oh God oh no no no. . . .” As I and all those around me watched in horror, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.
Before the day was out, I saw first the South Tower and then the North Tower collapse. I watched as a convoy of dozens of ambulances raced down 8th Avenue. I stood in the door of a neighborhood delicatessen as hundreds of soot-covered residents trudged past. I consoled friends and colleagues who lost loved ones in the collapse. I saw a city I loved turn into a silent ghostly shell of itself.
I also had spent much of the day desperately trying to reach friends in Washington to make sure they were okay. When the attacks had just taken place, there were dozens of what later turned out to be false alarms. CNN reported was that a car bomb had destroyed the northwestern corner of the State Department — which was where my office had been and where many of my friends still worked.
That night, as a result of a tip from a friend still in government, I managed to get on one of the few trains leaving New York for Washington. Sitting across from me for the first two stops was a firefighter who had lost over half of the members of his company. The trip took a lot longer than it normally did — we must have stopped at least a half-dozen times while engineers checked the tracks to make sure nothing was wrong.
That train felt like a refugee convoy – except these refugees wore suits, carried suitcases, and kept trying to use their non-functioning cell phones. The trip turned into a discordant symphony of repeated “call failed” signals.
I returned home to a city under siege, with military police in armored personnel carriers patrolling the streets around the Union Station. Although that worried me, my main emotion was relief that I made it home. But when I got there, I couldn’t go to sleep. Instead I stayed up almost all night, watching CNN replay the days’ events over and over and over again.
I am not a “survivor” of September 11. My life was never at risk, and none of those I love died. I have no right to speak on behalf of those who lost their lives or loved ones on that sad day.
For the next few months, that’s what I kept telling myself: what happened to me wasn’t that bad. But then I started to have trouble sleeping. When I did manage to get to sleep, I dreamed of planes crashing into my apartment building. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these were symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, PTSD is “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.” Those suffering from PTSD often have flashbacks in which they believe the traumatic incident is happening again, as well as other symptoms.
That’s what happened to me. That’s what the dreams were about: planes I could see coming but couldn’t stop. I had no trouble getting on a plane or flying, but the sight of planes in the air freaked me out. Living near the Potomac River, which is the approach path used by commercial airlines flying into Washington National, became a nightmare. Planes come in low and fast, and often look as if they’re veering towards the city. Every time I saw one, I would panic. A couple of times, I had to pull off the road.
There were also other symptoms, ones that weren’t as obvious but which often manifested themselves in unexpected ways. I got angry a lot — irrationally and blindly angry — often for no reason. I became moody. I snapped at people –- no, I yelled at people. Folks didn’t want to be around me. I withdrew from the world.
The good news is that I got better. Thanks to a wonderful therapist and caring friends (especially my future wife), I was able to understand what I was going through and start taking the necessary steps to get better. After some bumps in the road, including one significant relapse triggered by a completely unrelated incident (also not uncommon among those with PTSD), I no longer have the dreams, get angry for no reason, or panic at the sight of planes over the Potomac.
What I wonder is whether my country — our country — also has gotten better.
There’s another moment that day that I still remember. After I got off my cell phone that morning, when I and all those around me were still not sure what had happened, a woman next to me noticed the Amnesty pin on the lapel of my jacket. She asked me if I worked for Amnesty and when I said yes, she said “Good luck. You’re going to need it. We’re all going to need it.”
I had no idea how right she was.
We have, over the past seven years, suffered from a collective form of PTSD, one from which we have yet to recover fully. It manifests itself in many ways: the fear of the other, the blanket hatred of Muslims and Arabs (and, for a brief period of deep insanity, even Sikhs), the irrational anger, the use of torture and other heretofore unspeakable acts.
Is it too soon to suggest that we need to move on?
We must find a way to continue mourning those who lost their lives but stop trying to revenge their deaths. We must remember that we were wronged but stop using it as an excuse to inflict harm on innocents. We must recognize that what happened that day, horrible though it was, cannot justify moral relativism or situational ethics. We must accept that we do not honor the dead by undermining our values or abrogating our freedoms.
I believe that we as a nation can do these things. I believe that we can get beyond the symptoms of our collective stress disorder and start living our lives again — without fear, without anger, and with acceptance.
But we’re not there yet.
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