Twenty-five years after 9/11 — GHK Lall — Opinion

Twenty-five years after 9/11

September 11, 2026·3 min read

Published in

Kiskadee Watch ·Sep 11, 2026

Dear Editor,

It was a Tuesday morning. Picturesque skies. Indian summer cool in New York City. The crowds now streaming in and out of subways and buses. The skies above giving no sign of what was just minutes away. A fairytale beginning that swiftly turned into a hellish nightmare. I was there, so I can share. September 11, 2001, the first morning, the beginning.^[1]

The first jumbo jet came out of nowhere, caught everyone flatfooted. Frozen into place. What was that sound? Why is there smoke curling lazily out of that tower, staining the clean sky? Some were already dead in those first few mystery minutes, with uncertainty reigning. Yet the first creeping then racing, fears were still some seconds away. Men and women in smart business suits craning necks, aiming eyes upwards, to get an understanding of what struck, what this was all about. America under attack and the new age of terror weren’t part of the thinking. Not just yet. It soon came to a brutal, shattering, ending. A second plane swooping at full throttle straight into the fortress that was the World Trade Center, a symbol of American economic power and might. Down it went in a slow-motion crumble of steel and showers of cinderblocks and that thick enveloping smoke. I was there. Fortunate to be here today. Upstairs has some downstairs plans for me.

Gosh, it is 25 years. It doesn’t feel like yesterday. It’s right now. America’s cocoon of security shattered and scattered from the Trade Center to the Pentagon to a Pennsylvania field. Friends and colleagues soon dead. Never accounted for in one piece. Never to be seen again. Guyanese dead. Victims from many places. The vivid memory of firefighters running up the inside stairwells of a building that collapsed on them. Dozens more dead. It took a long time to put the pieces together, to make sense of the puzzle that wasn’t a real puzzle. What started out as a puzzle then isn’t one now. From Saudi Arabia to Venezuela, with Guyana swept into that orbit, presents a blinding picture. It is how heroes and villains and martyrs are made. Strong stuff.

I made some mistakes along the way. Learning and admitting do not come easy. But they come, eventually. I find myself thinking of almost 3,000 dead within a few hours of one day, and that must qualify as a record. At least, a grim American one. Civilians taken for target practice. Those earmarked for death, without knowing it. It is the random nature of the draw. Who goes, who stays. Only the good die young. It’s not tiring for me, because I knew some of them. Shared a glass or two, attended weddings, and had a dance, then a few more. There were good, and those good times.

Went back once. The smell of death was everywhere. The eeriest aspect being that there was no blood, no bone, no bodies. Just that smell that sinks into clothes, then pores. Never paid too much attention to the conspiracy theories. How can there be place for those, when battling reality was the biggest priority? People reduced to shells of their former selves. Men and women looking suspiciously at neighbours. Particularly those that sounded and looked different. Being a travelling man, airports were a trial by fire. Checkpoint. Check shoes. Check pockets. X-rayed and scrutinized so much that there should be a nice pile of radioactivity inside. Eight hundred flights have that effect.

So today when there is reminiscence, the intrusions of loud men, the swaggering of those who try to project strength, bring a shaking of the head. Seen and heard this kind before. And what did they represent, but flapping of the gums, and suits empty of substance. Yet pretending at Superman. Twenty-five years have come and left. It seems that I am still standing in the same spot, and nothing has changed. Something did. It hasn’t been for the better. Most definitely, palpably uglier.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

References

Dispatch From New York: The World Trade Center Falls — slate.com ↩

Published in

Kiskadee Watch ·Sep 11, 2026

Dispatch From New York: The World Trade Center Falls

slate.com · 2001-09-11

Dispatch From New York: The World Trade Center Falls # Dispatch From New York: The World Trade Center Falls Sept 11, 2001 11:36 AM I live in Brooklyn, just over two miles, one bridge, and six stories from the base of the World Trade Center. Normally I have a picture-perfect view of the World Trade Center–it’s the highlight of the tour of our one-bedroom apartment–but this is what my fiancé and I see now: first, ashy gray smoke billowing over Brooklyn. (The television shows the sky north of Houston Street calm and blue. But here, in the path of the smoke, there’s a V-shaped, charcoal-colored cloud splitting the sky, with a little of the regular morning blue around the edges.) Second, people posted on rooftops across the neighborhood. And beyond that: nothing. The entire jungle gym of lower Manhattan is blocked by what looks like a severe fog. The view right now is terrifying, but it will be even scarier when the smoke clears, and we see the two totems gone. All morning, the feeling around here has been: It’s worse than you think. Every nauseating shock is followed by a more severe aftershock. First there was the tap on my shoulder at the gym, pulling me away from my paper and toward the bank of TV screens. Then I sprinted home to find my fiancé in shocked tears: He had watched with his own eyes as the second plane headed up the Hudson toward the Twin Towers–W hy are they allowing planes in that air space? he wondered–and hit. Since then, we have been sitting on our couch, watching the same picture in duplicate: out the window and on the TV screen. When the first tower slid down, we actually felt our building rumble. And we’re separated from Manhattan by New York Harbor. Ron ran out briefly for groceries, thinking that we’d be hunkered down at home for the next few days (Slate’s New York office is in the Chrysler Building, which was shut down shortly after the attack.) He says that everyone on the street exchanged eye contact; nobody spoke. I don’t know which is more unusual for New York.

New York – September 11, 2001: A First-Hand Account | VINnews

vinnews.com · 2001-09-11

New York – While for so many New Yorkers 9-11 are a distant but somber memory, for those were on scene memories of the devastating attack that shook our nation to the core are as vivid today as they were a dozen years ago. ... Our Place director Yossie Yurowitz and community askan Chaskel Bennett were two of the many Orthodox Jews who raced to Lower Manhattan after hearing reports that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. ... “We were in the car together that morning heading to work and were running late because of selichos,” Yurowitz told VIN News. “We started hearing urgent reports coming over the Hatzolah radio but we thought it was a small commuter plane that got way too close. We waited to hear if more resources were needed. The Hatzolah dispatcher put out a second urgent call saying that another plane had hit the towers and asked for more members and ambulances. Clearly we were under attack.” ... The two headed into the city via the Manhattan Bridge, arriving on scene in less than ten minutes. Bennett, a Hatzolah member, parked his car just one black from the World Trade Center. ... Yurowitz said he began to realize the magnitude of the situation after seeing a man wearing an FBI jacket attempting to pick up a piece of metal that looked like an airplane part. ... According to Bennett, it quickly became apparent that they two had placed themselves in the center of a potentially hazardous situation. “I was very aware of the danger and tried my best to stay clear of the falling debris and plane parts that were falling from the building but it never dawned on me the sheer magnitude of the disaster until it was nearly too late,” added Bennett. ... Hearing reports from a police officer stationed nearby about a possible third plane heading from JFK to the towers, Yurowitz heard a loud noise and looked up, expecting to see another plane flying overhead. ... “There was a loud whooshing noise and I froze. I saw a huge mushroom cloud of dirt coming towards me. I looked to the other side and I saw the same cloud heading my way. There was nowhere to go. There I was in my suit and tie, carrying some of the Hatzolah equipment and I got down on my hands and knees in the doorway of a Hallmark store.” ... Yurowitz recalled the dust and dirt raining down everywhere. “I couldn’t breathe,” said Yurowitz. “I started wondering, ‘What were we thinking coming down here?’ How was I going to go home and explain to my wife that I was dead? I screamed Shema Yisroel at the top of my lungs. My whole life was flashing in front of my eyes, my wife, my kids, and I was thinking, ‘This is it. Do teshuva now. Say viduy now’.” ... . It was like ... everything is totally ... . My eyes were c ... them. I could just make ... the lights of the ... “We heard they had struck the Pentagon and were going for the White House,” recounted Yurowitz. “We didn’t know there were planes. We thought it was missiles. The whole world was following the news but we knew nothing.” ... After being evacuated from the area by fireman, Yurowitz headed north, snapping a single picture of the second tower as it came down. “I knew I had to get out of there,” said Yurowitz. “I was covered in soot head to toe and I walked over the Williamsburg Bridge back to Brooklyn. I walked for miles. I had no clue where I was going.” ... Eventually Yurowitz caught a ride back to Flatbush. At 3 PM he drove to Bennett’s house to return his Hatzolah equipment. ... “His wife opened the door for me and said ‘Where’s Chaskel?'” recalled Yurowitz. ... Unbeknownst to Yurowitz or his wife, Bennett was alive and well. “When the buildings came down, I literally ran for my life. I looked up and said ‘Hashem, I’m in trouble, please help me.’ And he did! As I was running away from the black cloud, a door opened up at the last second and I found safe refuge in a lobby of a building, 11 John Street, an address I will never forget.”