Remembering

Hello and welcome to our first chilly fall Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is September 12th.

Yesterday marked the 25th commemoration of 9/11. When I was a kid, I marveled at people's ability to remember where they were the day JFK was assassinated. I wondered how an event could be so impactful that the who, what, when, and where of the moment would be forever cemented in one's brain.

Well, now I know. 

On September 11, 2001, I was living in Brno, Czech Republic. I had just gotten home from a day of teaching English at the Berlitz school. I was feeling pretty good and in high spirits when our home phone rang. (Cellphones were just starting to be a thing then.) "Kim, I'm so sorry, but there's been an attack in America. Planes were flown into the towers in New York City," my friend Susann told me in German. I felt disoriented. Susann rarely called the home phone. We always spoke German, even though my fluency was quite mediocre. And this kind of vocabulary - planes flying, America, New York City - was usually in the context of sharing travel plans.

She had to repeat herself twice more before the message sank in. Planes flown into the Twin Towers. On purpose. An attack.

I turned on our computer and started scouring the internet for the news. The coverage was live and unfolding. Our internet was slow, and the short clips did not have enough details. I hopped into the elevator of our apartment building, descended the eleven floors, walked as quickly and as safely as my pregnant body could go, and hopped on the tram to my Iranian friends' home to watch the news on their television. I spent the rest of the evening with them watching, learning, wondering how the world would change. I felt vulnerable. Would the world be sympathetic or critical towards the U.S. as a nation, and American people, specifically? Would I be safe?

I remember looking at my friends - this Iranian family - these loving people who just wanted to live peaceful lives - and thinking they would be the ones to face scrutiny, distrust, prejudice, and xenophobia. "We're not even Arabs," my friend would say.

Twenty-five years feels like both a lifetime - my first child's, to be exact - and an instant. So much change and yet, not enough.