La Salle Debain

As many people reading this may know, my wife Jyoti was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. When the first plane hit, she joined some colleagues at her employers offices on the 78th floor of the South Tower to see what was going on. A few minutes later she went downstairs to her desk on the 77th floor to call me and tell me about it. That's when the second plane hit. Everyone on the 78th floor was instantly killed as she would have been if she had decided to stay. She and some friends, covered in debris and soaked in jet fuel, blinded by thick black smoke made their way down 77 flights of stairs (the elevators were out of action) and even though she was seven months pregnant with our daughter at the time she went all the way down without stopping to rest. An NYPD officer Ramon Suarez helped her out and to an ambulance. He went back to rescue others and died half an hour later when the North Tower collapsed.

I was at home. After getting ready and saying my morning prayers, I was leisurly preparing breakfast before starting the day. I started getting phone calls asking "Is Jyoti ok?" Of course she was. Why wouldn't she be? I somehow don't remember who said it first but I was told to turn on the TV because a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I spent the rest of the morning glued to the screen in horror as information on what exactly had happened. Absolutely the lowest moment of my life was when I saw, in real time, the twin towers fall. It was several more hours before I actually got to talk to Jyoti on the phone, confirmation that she was still alive. I didn't get to actually see her and hold her until the next day owing to the curfew around Manhattan.

So that's what happened that day. We have repeatedly been told "Never forget" but truth be told some of the details are already fading from my memory. For my wife too, while she occasionally had panic attacks at first, every day life is foremost now and it is only on days like this that her ordeal comes to mind. Our daughter Shailaja is now 10 years old and an honor roll student who just started 4th grade. She knows the story but is not affected by it. These are good things in my opinion. What the jihadists want most of all is apocalypse. They wanted the world to change course but ten years later America remains as generous, bull-headed, lively, spiritual, garish and crude as ever. That's the sweetest revenge lovers of life can have. Don't give up your rights and your daily routines to fear but make the bastards give up theirs. Or as the cliche goes, the terrorists will win.