9/11 Stories
Anon 12
I’ve been dreaming about NYC since I left in 1998, after spending 4 years… I am not an American… I moved to NYC in ‘94 to attend an MBA program with the NYIT… During most of that time I worked at downtown, commuting all the way from Queens and then Westchester…
When I first came to NYC, financial district was the first place I had a touristic visit… I was a bond trader in Turkey, and I strolled over the Wall St. and other streets surrounded by these huge buildings, in which the World markets were given direction… That was the day I’ve met the Twins… I was walking on Broadway, right across the S&P building, then I made a right on Dey St… And there it was… They were the ikon which made me leave everything behind and the dream I was after… It was pretty much what NYC was for me… That was the image I made about 6 thousand miles, moved to a new and challenging world…
Throughout those years, I used to shop at either the SYMS or the Century 21, used to eat around the WTC, walked almost every other day in front of those beautiful Twins…
I now live in Istanbul, and on that day, I was speaking to one of my buddies in NYC, whose office is on B’way right across that Bull statue… While we are talking about his business, one my colleagues screamed into the trading floor, that while he was on dealing line with Cantor Fitzgerald in London, they told that there was a crash in their NYC office, right in WTC, where the first plane just hit… They have told that they had heard the screams and everything because the dealer lines are live for 24 hours… The TVs were on, I have the Reuters and Bloomberg screens but I could not see the breaking news… In about 3-4 minutes the news came on to CNN… I was shocked but in the meantime, I thought that was an accident, by a small plane…I was still on the phone with my friend when I saw the other was approaching… I told him to get out of his office, and run as quick as he could to home, upper east side, where he could be safe… If there’s a second one it couldn’t be an accident…. I was really shocked but yet fast enough to sell my bonds, close the position, I have been holding and get back to Swiss Francs…
But, you know, after all, I mean after the collapse and seeing all that tragedy behind, I still am embarrassed that I was still trying to sell my bonds… It is almost 7 thousand lives… 7 thousand different worlds…. 7 thousand different stories and sorrows and families behind…. And the worst part is it was my NYC, behind… I still cannot believe but I feel that it’s gone….I talk to my friends in NYC from time to time, and they are telling me that you can see troops in the city, sometimes pulling you over for regular checks… We are used to that in here but I do not want to believe that in NYC….
I know that it’ll recover… I know there may be new towers instead of those old twins… I know that the pain will go away, and we will forget these details…. But I also know that, we must stand still and together against what the terrorism want us to be… They want us to feel defeated, to feel as if we lost our dream, to be scared, to be paranoids living in anxiety… We should not let that happen…I am hearing that Manhattan is like a ghost town… Don’t let that happen….Do not turn the capital of the world, into a town after gold rush….
I wish I was there… But I do not know, if I ever go and feel OK without my twins…. And I am not sure the US Consulate will let me go… Because I am happened to be Muslim, although not practising….I was born like that, what can I do… Muslims are to perceived as terrorists, I know that well… Like every German as Nazi….Which is not true but I guess unavoidable… So this is the other thing terrorism aimed…That shouldn’t be allowed either… Please try to avoid this…It is duty of every man in the world but especially for the Americans, and more the New Yorkers…. Do not let terrorism win…