8 years ago today, on September 11, 2001, 2,993 innocent Americans and foreign nationals lost their lives in a stunning series of attacks.
In the days and weeks that followed, I collected a series of photographs from the internet and stored them on my computer.
I was determined, you see, never to forget.
Never to forget the day America was attacked.
Never to forget the shock, the horror, the disbelief, the tears of that terrible September morning.
Never to forget the punch in the gut I felt upon seeing this picture (and others like it) of a man leaping to his death from the World Trade Center.
Or the indescribable grief that roused again weeks later when I watched the French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet's documentary footage on 9-11 and heard the thuds of bodies falling--saw fireman flinch with each sound, saw the horror in the bleak eyes of the fireman who asked "Can you imagine how bad it must be up there, if
that is the better option?"
Or the tears I shed, even today, reading the heart-rending Esquire article,
The Falling Man, by Tom Junod.
Or the anger, the outrage, the determination and the patriotism that Leonard Pitts, Jr, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist from the Miami Herald captured so perfectly in his Sept 11, 2001 column,
We'll go forward from this moment.
I was determined never to forget the dazed, numb, helpless feeling, as I asked again and again the inevitable and yet utterly unanswerable question of that terrible day....
....Why?
More people than I can count have tried to answer that question. Some have blamed muslims for "hating us and our way of life". (I have muslim friends. My friends don't acessorize with suicide bomber vests, call Americans "Crusaders" or fantasize about establishing a global Caliphate and subjecting the entire world to Sharia law.) Some people blame religious extremists who have brainwashed generations of muslim men and boys.
Some people blame us.
Osama bin Laden (supposedly) wrote a
diatribe against America laying out all the reasons why "We Got What We Deserved" and telling us to expect more of the same. Some Americans share his views. (If you are one of those, don't bother commenting. You are of the same mental ilk as those who blame a woman for her own rape, and I have nothing to say to you except, "Please, exit from the gene pool
quickly!") Some people blame it all on Bush/Cheney - "They knew! It was all a right wing extremist plot!" (Um, you get the same response from me as the "woman asked for it" crowd.)
In the end, there is no one answer (though I utterly and completely reject the "You asked for it! You deserved it! You planned it yourselves!" wingnuts). Even if Osama bin Laden
did write that letter, and he believed every word of it as did the 19 murderers who highjacked those planes and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that field in Shanksville, PA--
that doesn't mean their beliefs in any way justified in their actions. 
Do terrorists feel they have legitimate grievances against the citizens of the United States? I don't doubt that in their own mind, they do. There is a saying among writers: every villain is the hero of his own story. But no matter how valid their cause (and I'm not even going to attempt debating that here), I emphatically reject the idea that anyone (regardless of their grievances) has a right to wreak acts of terror upon innocent civilians. Sorry, folks. Murder is not heroic. Murder is not martyrdom. Murder is not noble.
And make no doubt about it. What happened on 9-11 was murder. Mass murder. The men, women, and children on those airplanes and in those buildings eight years ago were not soldiers (Pentagon military employees excepted). They were not politicians. They were not invaders of foreign countries. They were not armed and able to defend themselves. They were just people going about their business. Bus boys, waiters, secretaries, stock brokers, doctors, mothers, fathers, reporters, firemen, police officers, executives, tourists, priests. They were American, British, Mexican, Japanese, Phillipino, Australian, Columbian, Indian, Italian, Jamaican...people from
52 countries around the world. They did not deserve to die.
But die, they did.
9-11 changed my life. It changed the underlying theme of the novel I was writing--a manuscript called Tairen Soul, which became the published novels,
LORD OF THE FADING LANDS and
LADY OF LIGHT AND SHADOWS. In the books, and through the books, I have examined many of my own conflicts, thoughts, and feelings about what happened to America on 9-11. It made me think about good vs. evil and the nature of humanity.
And every year, on September 11, I go to my computer, open my photos of 9-11, and I remember.
I remember exactly how I felt that day. How I wept, how I grieved, how I could not believe it was happening.
I remember for the same reason Holocaust survivors keep the memory of Auschwitz and Dachau and Treblinka alive.
I remember, because neither I nor America can afford to forget.
A special thanks to all the brave service men and women who give so much to keep America safe, and to their families who share the burden of their service. Because I know none of you will ever forget either.
