This post is a few days late, what with their being so many ‘where were you’ posts on facebook and twitter, I didn’t want my ‘where were you’ post to get lost in the mix.  So, here it is friends, this is my 9/11 story. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever told this before.  I don’t really go back and read this blog and when I do I get that “oh my God, I wrote that?” feeling so I hurry on to a blank screen.  If I’ve said this before and you’ve managed to stay with Not Guilty for 6 years, I’m sorry.  But, here goes.  I’ll try to make it as short and interesting as possible, but I make you no promises.

Two weeks before 9/11/01, I boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight bound for Rome.  Six Americans and one Brit.  We’d rented a villa in the small fishing village of Massa Lubrense and were scheduled to head there a few days into our journey, so with some time to explore before our real holiday began, my friend Susie (a leggy British blonde) and I decided we’d head to Capri.  We’d both been to Rome and you know, who needs to go more than twice?  It was end of August, maybe, and as we lay sunning on a rock Susie said “I’m going to miss the Lira”  Now, youngsters don’t know, but there was a time when there was no Euro. Each country had it’s own money.  We would laugh in Italy when we’d pay for a tee-shirt with millions of lira saying that if it had been the 6 million lira man he wouldn’t have made it across the street. While I thought the statement was funny at the time. I think she was onto something.  I miss the lira too.

We left Capri after a few days and met up with our friends in Massa Lubrense.  We set up house and got into a lovely routine.  Two of us would get up in the morning and take the Vespa into town.  We’d hit the fishmonger, the baker and the vegetable stands.  Since it wasn’t a huge tourist town, the locals knew us and helped us find the freshest fish and veg.  One morning I fried up whole, fresh anchovies.  We ate them for breakfast with sliced tomatoes.  Then we swam from a rocky beach.  This was, September 4, 2001.  Sometime that week I crashed the Vespa into a bus while driving in the dark on the treacherous road to Amalfi, good thing I wasn’t going more than 15mph and we escaped with superficial scrapes.

We left Massa Lubrense on September 8 to head back to Rome but we made a stop in Pompeii along the way.  It was interesting to see an entire civilization frozen in time, destroyed by events completely out of their control and never able to rebuild.  After a day in Pompeii we headed to the airport.  Six Americans and a Brit.  We had a brief layover in London and one of our friends got left behind after a trip into town. The flight was uneventful and we landed in New York City on the 9th.  I can’t remember how we got back to Albany – car?  Train?  But we were back snugly safe and warm on the 10th.  No body scanners, I think we each had a bottle of water that we brought onto the plane and maybe even some full sized perfume.  We all hunkered down for a rest on the 10th before going back to work the next day.

September 11 was a Tuesday.  I had on a cute Tahari suit inspired by Ally McBeal. Completely inappropriate in retrospect, but no one seemed to mind.  I was the duty DA making the rounds in my favorite judge’s chambers.  We all know what happened.  And then everything stopped.  Everything.  The courthouse shut down.  I said “let the persecution of my people begin.” And it did.  And it hasn’t ended yet.

In the words of President Obama, let me be clear.  When I said ‘my people’ on 9/11, I meant muslims.  I didn’t know that non-muslim Americans would begin to savagely persecute each other, that we would vie for who could be the most willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of security.  I should have, but I didn’t.

I went to the local red-cross site that morning.  The line went around the building twice. Local restaurants and grocers donated food and drink to those waiting.  My parents lived outside of New York City.  They would have had no reason to be in the city proper that day, or anywhere near the towers, but the chaos and fear was intense. Phone lines were busy. I couldn’t get through. It’s rare that you get that recording “all circuits are busy” in the U.S.  On 9/11, that’s what I heard.  I called my best friend.  We cried on the phone.  How would we know which way was downtown without the towers to guide us?  How could this happen?  Why?  After many, many hours, they made an announcement that those with Type O negative blood should come to the front.  I walked up and gave my blood.  It was the only thing I could do.

I went home.  I called my parents.  I sat with my friends who’d all just come home with me.  We stared off into space.  My soon to be sister in law (I didn’t know it at the time since Drue and I didn’t start dating until end of October) was in China with her sister-in-law.  They were trapped for a week.  My best friend’s soon to be sister-in-law escaped the towers.  Many, many, many others did not.

A few months later my family was contacted by the producers of PBS Frontline.  They wanted to do a program on an Afghan family post 9/11. We agreed.  We took a ride to ground zero in November.  It was a graveyard.  It was nighttime.  Everything was gray.  We sat in the car stunned silent.  This was not the New York I knew. Cameras followed us around for a couple of weeks.  I had a felony jury trial and we got permission for them to film it.  Then the folks from Frontline disappeared.  I think, truly, we weren’t Afghan enough for them, not foreign enough.  We acted like Americans.  We weren’t threatened or afraid.  We just – well, we just were.  Who wants to watch people who just are? 

I don’t think we’ve acted well since 9/11, my friend.  I don’t think our knowledge of world affairs and U.S. foreign policy is deep or broad enough to really allow us to give an educated opinion as to why those planes flew into those towers.  I can tell you this much, it’s not because they hate our freedoms.  Although, that’s a good, tight reason to recruit young boys and send them off to foreign lands to fight.  If you have loved ones in Afghanistan, I am sure they tell you it is unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before.  It is light years removed from Iraq (literacy rate in Afghanistan is currently at around 28% which is a 100% increase from the pre-war rate.  Iraq’s literacy rate is 74%)  There are no words to describe it, possibly because none of us can imagine a country that has been ravaged by three decades of war.

But this post isn’t about our foreign policy in the near and middle east.  It’s not about the U.S.’s ties with the bin Laden clan (at this point you have to be living under a rock not to know about it).  It’s not even about all we’ve given up in the name of safety.  And, shit, have we given up a lot.  Those posts would take hours to compile and write and, if I did tell you, kind reader, would you even believe me?  Are you aware of the fact that the CIA recruited young muslim men from Mosques in the United States to go fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?  Do you know that Afghans, as a rule, will stab you in the eye before they’d take a cowards way out and use a car bomb, anonymously?  These are not things that are inherent in Islam, in Afghans, in humans.  These are things that are taught.  These men, boys, children, who willingly and joyfully strap vests full of explosives and walk into a building full of innocents do so not because they don’t want you to drink vodka, although that might be what they are told is wrong with us over here. They do it because we taught their superiors how to do it, in Afghanistan, then we left.  As far as being free – well, all you’ve got to do is remember the Patriot Act.  Need I say more?

I’ll never forget.  But I’m not going to wallow either.  I’m with Scott Greenfield  and Mark Draughn from Windypundit on this one.  We have let this terrible and tragic event define our decade in the worst way possible.  If one looks back you will not see a country coming together to stand firm in it’s commitment to it’s founding principals.  We have devolved and splintered.  In this ‘war on terror’ who do you think is winning?

I am never going to tell this story again.