Random thoughts on 9/11

Vahe H Apelian

There are moments in our lives that do not pertain to us personally but we remember them and remember what we were doing when we first heard the happening. I remember the following, as the saying goes, as if it was yesterday - the news of Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963; the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israel six days war on June 5, 1967; the death of president Gamal Abdel Nasser on September 28, 1970; and a few others, among which is the terrorists’ attack of the New York World Trade Center twin towers on September 11, 2001, the infamous  9/11.

At the time I was working in the Chelsea Laboratories in Cincinnati, OH. It was a division of California headquartered Watson Pharmaceutical corporation. I was in my office that morning when a colleague burst in, and said as he was parking his car, he heard on the radio that an airplane hit one of the NY City’s  WTC twin towers. I quote Wikipedia:  at “8:46:40: Flight 11 crashes into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99. All passengers aboard are instantly killed with an unknown number inside the building. The aircraft enters the tower intact.^” 

 We hurried to the front office and when we got there, we saw the secretaries had already turned the television in the conference hall and were following the news. The word had already gone around and everybody started coming to the front office and watch the reporting as we watched the unfolding of the happening. Quoting Wikipedia on “9:03:02: Flight 175 crashes into the south face of the South Tower (2 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 77 and 85. All passengers and crew are killed together with an unknown number inside the building. Parts of the plane, including the starboard engine, leave the building from its east and north sides, falling to the ground six blocks away. Out of the four attacks, it is the only one witnessed by a live television audience and confirms that the North Tower had been deliberately attacked.”

No word came from the company’s headquarters. Understandably, being at the pacific time zone, it was way too early in California. We started debating whether to close the facility for the day.  An uncertain mood had taken hold on everyone. But what transpired next has remained etched in my memory as much as the event itself.  Not long after the second attack everyone, on their own accord, returned to their offices, desks, laboratory benches  attending to their tasks. There was no need to hear from the company’s headquarters. Chelsea Laboratories, a division of Watson Laboratories Inc. had resumed its daily pace. 

Google tells me that Gamal Abdel Nasser died on Monday. My friend Nerses Festedkjian and I had gone to the movies, seeing the film being screened in Cinema Capitole in Beirut, at its latest showing in the evening. The movie theater was in Ryad El Solh center, on the opposing side of Basta, a neighborhood that was inhabited mostly by lower middle-class Muslims. At least that was how Basta was known in my days. Not long into the movie when a group of men entered the hall shouting, Nasser died. Nerses, who was seated next to whispered to me telling something to the effect, “he died, every one dies at one point. Let us continue watching the movie!” We remained seated doing that, watching the movie being screened. But we were not the only ones remaining seated. Those who had entered the movie hall, surely took offense seeing us seated, hurled at us, and started giving us a beating, while shouting at us, “and you remain seated!.” A commotion broke in the movie theater with everyone rushing out. A veritable mayhem had broken on the outside as we exited the building. Nerses and I lost each other fleeing. I decided to go to the Hotel Lux my father ran, which was a few blocks away from the city center. Hurrying there, I came across Nerses and asked him to come with me. There was no way for us to return to our homes. We made to the hotel right on time because we found my father padlocking the iron gates at the two entrances to the building. Naturally, he let us in.

 Had we missed him, had we not been there right at that time, I do not know how would we have worked our way to our homes as the city was getting caught in a frenzy.  Mind you, it was fifty years ago. Let alone that there were no cell phones, there were no public phones in Beirut. Nerses, as well as I, called home from the hotel letting the  rest of the family know that we are safe and are not returning home and will be sleeping in the hotel. We watched from the veranda of the  hotel the crowd below on the streets swelling by the minute. The mob started attacking businesses, breaking the glass windows, signs, carrying effigies. A veritable turmoil had descended upon the city. 

At the end of the day on 9/11 in Cincinnati, we left work and returned to our homes as we always did. There were no mobs. There were no unruly demonstrators. Traffic was as usual. Later on, yes, there were reports for uncalled for reactions emanating from the other side of the Hudson river, in NJ, where there is a sizeable Middle Eastern community such as in Paterson, where a few had cries of jubilation at the sight of the smoke coming from the NY City from the site of the destruction. There may have been such uncalled-for cries for jubilation from elsewhere too, but Americans as a whole carried the day with amazing stoicism because they knew that their representative government hears them, and as president George Bush continued saying that “the rest of the world hears you…and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” 

Trump-Harris presidential debate happened yesterday, on September 10, 2024, the day before 9/11. If there is one fundamental message that emanated from yesterday’s presidential debate, it emphatically was the following, safeguard the country’s democratic institution. The entrenched democratic institution in the United States of America is sacrosanct. The issues the nation faces can and will be resolved peacefully as long its democratic institutions are safeguarded and functioning.