Billows of Smoke and a Blue Sky: My Own 9/11 Story
(Click below for the audio file.)
*** I don’t usually like to make a big fuss about the events of 9/11; it seems the media does a good enough job of that every anniversary, and I don’t like to add to what often feels sensationalized to me. But this year I decided I would share my own story. There might be something triggering for you, so please be aware of that as you read. And if you decide to skip reading this piece I understand…
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My old high school friend and I were sitting on a wooden bench overlooking the East River. It was a bench and Brooklyn promenade I knew well. I’d come here on summer evenings with another childhood friend to play scrabble! First we’d get take out from our favorite Thai restaurant. I looooved getting the pad see yew! Yum! Oh those thick wide rice noodles enveloped with the perfect umami taste! On our laps we would balance the white glossy cartons with red lettering, while sticking the chopsticks into the container, when it was our turn to put down a word. In between playing, eating and chatting, we’d gaze out over the calm river enjoying the mild summer breeze.
But this particular late afternoon was different.
I was with a different friend from my scrabble friend, and although the ambient temperature was pleasant, the environment was filled with heavy, heavy somberness. My friend and I sat there, side by side on the old wooden bench, hands folded on our laps, looking out in front of us.
Out across the river was a huge ocean liner- bigger than any cruise ship I had ever seen, with a large red cross clearly in plain view. And a bit to the right of it, were plumes of smoke. The sky-line we were so accustomed to was in a transition that would be forever completely changed. Instead of the two twin buildings, there was smoke to hold the space in the sky. Big, billowing plumes of smoke that formed pillow like clouds that were in stark contrast to the blue sky, blue coloring of the sky.
We sat mostly in silence and awe. But there were breaks in the quiet as we had made plans to catch up on life, and so I could wish him happy birthday, 2 days belated. Just three weeks prior, I had come back from 1 1/2 years of living in Zanzibar, Tanzania. I had spent most of my time back stateside at my parents’ country house in upstate New York, and so this was my first time back in Brooklyn to meet my friend in person.
After sitting for a while, we strolled up and down the promenade until it was time to go back to our abodes. We walked to the train station together but took different trains. Even though only a few stations from where we were, the sun had set by the time I walked up the stairs and out of the station.
I walked down to 7th avenue, the main street of my childhood neighborhood. I always liked to check out which stores were still open and which stores had been swallowed up by the next new investor. But this time was different.
I was walking down to the avenue and there in the middle of street were hundreds of people with candles in their hands. It was a vigil for the 14 of 26 firefighters who had died at the sight of the pluming smoke I mentioned earlier. Even though we were a borough away, our neighborhood firehouse was in better proximity to reach the site than firehouses in Manhattan, and so they were one of the first on the scene.
What happened to me next was kind of like an out of body experience. I remember it very well, but I can’t really relate to the thoughts and feelings I was having.
As I walked along the sidewalk, the crowd was mostly in the street- I imagined that I was walking through my own funeral. And I suddenly felt the overwhelm of heartache of everyone there grieving me. All this sadness because I had died! There was no ego involved, it was just a heart/soul deep feeling of despair. As an empath, I was overwhelmed feeling all my imagined loved ones’ grief, and I suddenly panicked like I’ve never panicked before. I started walking faster and faster, I just wanted to get through the crowd! Although the street lamps were on and candles were glimmering, it was otherwise dark and I couldn’t see beyond the dense, large mass of people. I felt like I was going upstream in a never ending flow of bodies.
And as if an answer to a prayer that I had screamed in silence for help, another old friend arose. I ran to her, hugged her tight, and bawled. I know she was confused about this outpouring of emotion and I don’t even remember if I had explained myself at the time. I mean it was one of those awful tragedies, when many people were dealing with lots of emotion- some obvious, some not so clear. After some moments, I remember pulling away and she asked if I was okay, and in some awkwardness I said yes, and thanked her for the hug.
I slowly continued on my way home, with some relief that the sense of overwhelm had dissipated although now exhausted from what I had just experienced.
What I had just experienced indeed triggered a trauma I had not yet healed from.
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About 8 months prior….
I hurriedly took off my eye mask, yanked out my ear plugs, scrambled to get my glasses from the back seat pocket, and looked out the window of the plane— the sky was a blue sky, blue color.
I had expected it to be dark grey with the way the plane had suddenly just shaken! Like the kind of shaking a bar tender does when making a mixed cocktail drink in the metal shaker thing. I mean that sky should have looked like the biggest storm was about to open up and pound down on the plane!
We had already been on the plane for about 5 hours—a flight from Heathrow to Nairobi and then to my destination Dar Es Salaam. I had been enjoying a much needed deep sleep after having already done the JFK to Heathrow leg, and an added weather delay in the UK before departing to Africa.
After getting a glimpse of the blue sky, I noticed there were many passengers starting their “morning” and the flight stewardesses were starting their navigation of metal carts down the aisle to hand out breakfast.
Moments later the plane started to shake again. Again I looked out the window from across the aisle (I was sitting in the middle section)- passengers were giving each other looks that said: “what was that? What’s going on?” There was no word from the pilot or stewardesses for direction.
And then without any warning, there was a sudden drop—like the kind of decent from the biggest rollercoaster, except 100 times that decent. The breakfast carts were shuffled around causing the packaged croissants to go everywhere. The person in front of me must have been holding a cup with ice, as I suddenly saw ice just floating in the air as if there was no gravitational pull on them. Witnessing several people falling down from having just hit their heads on the ceiling, I also saw a bunch of overhead masks drop down and then bounce from the rubber band strings holding them.
Although not as steep as the first time, the plane then descended down again. And I thought this is it.
I closed my eyes and without any belief in something bigger than myself or any traveling companion, I said to myself- “I think I need to say goodbye to everyone I love.” Images and visions of my dad, mom, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, my still living at that time grandma Rose, and all my dear friends came to my mind. I was terrified like I’ve never been before. My sense of being and understanding of my existence was forever changed in those moments.
Then the plane seemed to magically be “normal” again, and I cautiously opened my eyes again. My brain was having a really hard time trying to make sense of it all. It searched for some explanation, and my eyes went back to the window in hopes of now seeing gray clouds that maybe I didn’t see before. But the sky was that same sky blue, blue-sky blue as before. Without any logical confirmation of what was going on, my entire body tensed up more and my heart really started to worry.
An then as abrasively as the initial shaking of the plane, a voice came on the loudspeaker. “This is the pilot speaking! A crazy man just came into the cockpit and tried to crash the plane! But we are okay now!”
With my heart gradually floating back into my body again, I put my head in my cupped hands, and just sat in disbelief about what had just happened. I felt some physical relief as my nervous system settled, but there were no tears. And without the relief that emotion can bring, my body felt stiff in a type of rigor mortis that only comes from having just experienced shock.
About 15-20 minutes later, the pilot got back on the loudspeaker, this time in a very usual “this-is-your-pilot-speaking-mode”, said, “this is your pilot speaking. Yes there was an incident earlier. We have apprehended the passenger and he is no longer a threat. Because this is now a criminal issue, the police will be meeting us when we land in Nairobi. We will have to ask all passengers to remain in their seats while the police take him into custody. Thank you so much for your patience and we are very sorry this happened. Please let the stewardesses know if you need medical attention in the mean time.”
You know it’s a weird thing when something traumatic happens to you, but there’s no physical evidence- at least not on the outside. With the immediate danger gone, there were some passengers who were now holding ice packs to their head or arm. But myself and most others didn’t have any external bumps or bruises to tend to. And yet little did I know at the time that the experience had left me injured just the same.
When I finally showed up at my destination, Pemba, a small island off of Tanzania, I returned to the friends that had become like family from my 7 month stay a couple months prior. They embraced me fully and were glad to see me after my absence while I did a training stateside. They had heard about my “plane incident” and showed compassion for what I had experienced. “Pole sana”, my closest friends Lulua and Abdalla kept saying in Kiswahili. “Pole, pole, sana.” So, so sorry.
Over the next days and weeks, it became clear that I was experiencing PTSD. My confidence to complete tasks with my team had really plummeted. I was having what I later learned was dissociative disorder- where I would be walking around, and truly, I felt like I was in a dream. It wasn’t my real life—I was just going through the motions as if I had survived but my brain was telling me I hadn’t really. These experiences only happened a few times and would come into my realm of existence without any type of explanation. It was only momentary, but just as disconcerting as if it had lasted hours.
I’d try and explain the confusing things I was feeling to my friend Abdalla and I remember he offered: “well you know there was a neighbor friend of mine that was going along in his cow cart, and then suddenly he just dropped over the cart and died. Just like that! Dying is just part of life!” As much as I appreciated him trying to comfort me, I just couldn’t kick the unsettling feelings I was having.
Besides the cognitive issues I was having, there was emotional heaviness that wouldn’t go away especially when I thought about my family. When I arrived to Pemba, I called my parents who had heard about the flight- it had made international news. But my mom misunderstood and thought my luggage was on that flight, but that I had been on a different plane entirely. In the moment, I just couldn’t bring myself to say, “no, mom I was on that flight. I almost died.” That overwhelming feeling of telling my parents the truth was just something I couldn’t bear, so I didn’t.
But in the following days as the heaviness continued, I realized that I needed to just tell them what really happened. So with all the courage in me, I called and said, “you know that flight that you thought my luggage was on? Mom, I was on that flight.” And my mom said, “oh honey,” And then yelled into the background to my dad— “Art, Clara was on that flight.” I don’t remember much of the conversation after that. I was probably completely flushed with relief having finally told them, as well as still coming to terms of what I had been through.
My mom having the insight into what state of mind I must have been in, got in touch with the airline, and set up a counselor who was able to connect with me through e-mail. And as the weeks and months went on, I felt myself returning to normal. I was able to enjoy the beautiful island I was living on again. If there was a place for me to recover from this type of experience, this was the place to feel safe. Life was relatively uncomplicated but yet full. I was able to laugh again. Bouts of sadness subsided, my brain wasn’t doing weird things, my decision making and sense of confidence at worked returned, and I really settled into daily life.
In fact, I had no fear or emotion when I loaded onto the plane back to New York, eight months later! And I was crying only because I was leaving another family I had come to love. It was a very uneventful trip and even enjoyable, as I fully embraced being in my first class seat that the airline had intentionally arranged for me.
And then three weeks after I arrived back home, I found myself on that bench with my friend watching the smoke billowing out…The sky was the same sky-blue, blue sky. And the plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania had descended exactly the same amount, I had later learned, as the plane I was in had dropped- 10,000 feet.
This time though, I didn’t have a tropical island to recover on, and sort of move on from, or forget about my near death experience in the plane. I was back in Brooklyn, when the trauma and devastation at my beloved home also re-opened wounds from my own unhealed trauma.
In the next year I would be taking the journey to heal from symptoms of PTSD that had returned, while also transitioning home and all the cultural changes that come with having lived abroad in a starkly different place for almost 1 1/2 years.
**Afterword- If you are curious or would like to know more about what came next for me in this journey, I have since published another piece: Riding the NYC Trains: familiar and fun, and then uncomfortable and scary.