The silent scream

On September 11, 2001, I was eating a McChicken Sandwich at a McDonald’s in Moscow. After ordering a Double Cheeseburger, my travel companion told me that the girl behind the counter said something about the bombing of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The Pentagon? New York? Nah, we thought. She’s gotta be mistaken. We chalked it up to the language barrier, to miscommunication due to patchy grammar, to a Russian’s limited English vocabulary. We finished our burgers and fries, and left.

Back at the hostel that night, our Swedish roommates talked of hijacked planes and collapsed buildings, of suicide missions and acts of war. Their English was flawless. But we still didn’t believe it. We clung to the belief that something was getting lost in the translation.

But on a toaster-oven-size television at the hostel, we watched the images that do not bear description. Russian commentary tumbled over us in a tangle of Slavic sounds. We only understood what we saw, and barely that. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if we’d heard it all in English; regardless of the language, none of it made sense. All of it was unspeakable. And, for the most part, remains so.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t tried, in the last year, to find words for what happened. The very next day in Moscow, a Russian television station came to the hostel looking for Americans to be part of a studio audience for a live show about responses to the attacks. We went to the station, walked down dimly lit halls with doors labeled in all-caps Cyrillic, and into the studio, where the TV lights made us blink.

We were given ear pieces that would transmit a simultaneous translation. The host of the show, a dark-haired woman named Maria, entered to applause and explained what this special program was about. "Emotional responses," buzzed the translation in our ears. "Let’s open up a dialogue, let’s have a conversation." Let’s talk, in other words. Just 24 hours after the horrific event, expressing ourselves seemed the only option. And still, so it seems, that’s the only thing that really satisfies. We’ve amassed a sturdier foundation for our responses to September 11, but the need to express ourselves as we try to make sense of what happened is just as pressing as it was 12 months ago.

People in the audience spoke of disbelief, of feeling like they were watching a movie, of how the world had been turned on its head. One man stood and said, "It is no surprise what happened. America deserves this."

"Nyet, nyet, nyet," Maria interrupted. "We are here to express feelings, not point fingers. We are trying to find words for grief and fear, not for blame."

People spoke about how the attacks would change America forever, that the US was no longer the country it was 24 hours ago, that this was something from which even the United States could not recover.

I wanted to give an American’s perspective. I wanted to say, "Hell yeah, we’ll recover." But I couldn’t. I was afraid they wouldn’t understand, that I wouldn’t be able to get across what I wanted them to hear. I’m still struggling with that one year later. We all are.

— Nina MacLaughlin

A sharp thing

At the risk of sounding callous or naive, I must say that life hasn’t changed much for me in the past year. Other than my blood pressure being a little higher with each new ridiculous W pronouncement — "axis of evil" or some other silly thing — my day-to-day operations are much the same. But I did lose my favorite letter opener because of September 11.

I travel fairly often, and have been thoroughly searched roughly 10 times in the past year. It doesn’t bother me in the least. The searchers are always friendly, we chat, they’re amazed by the video games I carry around with me to amuse myself on the plane. It’s almost fun to take my flip-flops off and show them that, indeed, there’s nothing taped to the bottom of my foot.

On my 10th frisking, however, I lost my solid-silver letter opener, acquired three years ago in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a trip I took with my now-wife to celebrate our engagement. You know the type, I’m sure. It’s small, heavy with silver, and stamped to prove its authenticity. It opens letters effortlessly. And it never left my leather briefcase for any purpose other than to open letters.

Well, it made it past those well-trained, incredibly astute, and attentive guys manning the x-ray machines nine times. But on my 10th pass-through, one of them paused and started rummaging through my briefcase. Ten minutes later, I asked him what the heck he was looking for.

"Something sharp."

"You mean my letter opener?" I pulled it out of its slot and showed him.

"Yep," he peered over at the x-ray screen. "That’s it."

He said I could mail it to myself if I wanted to keep it, otherwise he’d have to confiscate the two-inch-long, totally dull instrument of mail mayhem. Right. I could go back out into the airport, get an envelope, find a place to mail it, then stand in the hourlong line again to get back to my gate. All within 45 minutes of my flight. Sure.

"Well," I said, being laid-back and friendly, "I guess I’ve got a gift for you. Enjoy it. It’s solid silver."

"Thanks," he said. Then he threw it away, right in front of me.

—Sam Pfeifle

A new life

Over some frosty mudslides on a sunny September afternoon, John and I decided it was time to make a baby. After 12 fortunate years of late nights, spontaneous weekends, and carefree travel, it was time for us to grow up (at least a little bit) and procreate. On Sunday, September 9, I left a frantic voicemail for my nurse practitioner: I was going off the pill the following day; was there anything special I should know? She called me at work the next morning and told me to take a daily vitamin. She wished us good luck.

The night of the 10th was a long one. All kinds of selfish, I-am-not-sure-I-am-ready thoughts jammed my brain and kept me up all night. I felt like I was stepping off a cliff.

Heading to work the next morning, I stumbled into a local coffee shop for a strong dose of caffeine, annoyed that the radio was blaring Howard Stern. Rose, the manager, yelled something like, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center, and it looks bad. I think we’re going to war." And so the day unfolded. That night, I was a different person tossing and turning in bed. Now it all seemed clear and right. What was I so worried about? All those deaths — it only seemed right to try to create a life. It took six months, but now we have a bun in the oven. She arrives in December. On the days when my distorted body gets in my way and the sight of my favorite foods makes me nauseated, I remind myself just how lucky we are. Sure, the "fun" life we knew is over, but the one we’re facing is more exciting and challenging, and after the 11th, a whole lot more meaningful.

— Liz Matson

At the movies

I see a lot of movies. When I say a lot, I mean 60 a year. In the theater. Perhaps that stems from being raised a fundamentalist who saw theaters as "dens of iniquity," as places in which I dared not set foot until I was 15. But from my first guilty matinee on, I was hooked. Film has become one of the primary lenses through which I view our culture. In a darkened movie house, you can chart America’s social progress and setbacks alike, from the way previously unacceptable things become more acceptable on the big screen to how our most unyielding prejudices remain embedded in image no matter what the dialogue says. So, of course, I expected to see September 11 throw its shadow into the multiplexes at some point.

Mercifully, movies and movies-of-the-week aren’t the same thing, and Hollywood didn’t churn out 9/11 movies with the speed of, say, Fox covering the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. We will have to wait awhile for steady doses of Osama-era terrorists and fallen public servants to become blockbuster fare. Yet the events have already altered the visual language of American movies, subtly and poignantly: it’s not so much that a shadow is cast over things, but that two very long shadows are missing from view. The Big Apple skyline, so often used as shorthand for prosperity and power, was cropped by the terrorists, who knew all too well that they were knocking down cherished ideas, not just buildings.

At the first post-attack movie I saw set in New York (Zoolander, of all things), I held my breath as the camera swooped along the streets and then upward — would the towers be there? Up, up, and — cut. They were gone. I felt like I had been punched. In a mere two weeks, these icons were already ghosts? Later, I would read that the movie had been hastily edited to remove all images of the towers. Other movies — shot as much as two years before the attacks but only just being released — quickly followed suit. In so doing, they effectively back-dated the attacks, erasing shining images of the real past in deference to a terrible present.

After that, I went to the movies resigned to the likelihood that the towers wouldn’t reappear. When they did show up again, in the finale of Vanilla Sky, they looked so tall, so strong, and so permanent, that I caught my breath. Sadly, as part of the film’s elaborate mind game, the New York skyline, including the towers, is not real. Audiences are allowed to see the towers so nakedly because they are an illusion. But I was grateful for the image nonetheless. If it’s possible truly to miss two enormous and decidedly unattractive buildings, well, I did. For a moment, the movies had given back what the terrorists took — until the lights came up, and I returned to a very real and more difficult America.

— David Valdes Greenwood