As an example of the kind of thing I'm referring to, one of the claims that would not be at all surprising to hear from such irritating characters would go something like this:
"I saw it comin', remember? I told you it was gonna happen that night when we were in the Blarney Stone and you tripped over that little dog and my second wife started screaming at that guy..." et cetera, blah, blah, blah...Another, and considerably rarer, such hindsight-inspired confabulation might be about something far less likely, such as having come into direct personal contact with Mohammad Atta, the apparent leader of the group that (allegedly) crashed United Airlines jets into the twin towers, such highly unlikely meeting having occurred before the tragedy, obviously, because Atta would have been multifurcated into a number of small organic elements when the light materials of the plane and it's squishier contents encountered the stainless steel structural members that formed the exoskeleton of those buildings.
I might stop right there and forget about posting this ridiculous story, but now that I've started I do at least want to get it down properly because I suspect that it might relieve me of the feather-weight burden of having kept it to myself for so long, so let's just get it over with. The absurd facts of the matter are these:
First of all, I did predict the destruction of the towers, and did so in the company of a coworker as we were walking up John Street toward the WTC one afternoon. He was already in awe of my programming prowess (which actually wasn't so hugely impressive by any professional standard), and I can only imagine how his estimation of me might have been augmented by virtue of my prediction having come true.
It's really not such a big deal, however. I worked downtown for 8 or 9 years and ever since the first attempt to bring down the towers had occurred in 1993 I hadn't been able to look up at those Monstrous Monolithic Monuments to the victorious ascendancy of Homo Economicus without wondering if I was in range if one of them fell over in my direction, and I can't have been the only one.
So that's the easy part, but then there's the other little oddity, and that's really all it is, which is that I'm quite certain that I met Mohammad Atta some weeks before the attacks.
So now I've said it, and it's out there in the world, wafting around the wilderness like a helium balloon released from the hand of a child. Everybody has their own personal 9/11 stories and this happens to be one of mine (and it's not over yet).
There I was, boys and girls, on my way to a pizza parlor during my lunch hour, crossing Fulton Street near the intersection with Gold Street when an American-made car that might have been light green in color pulled up beside me and the youngish driver leaned out to ask for directions. There was something distinctive and memorable about his face, and as I leaned toward him to listen to his query I could see three other young guys in the car and I recognized immediately that all of them were of middle-eastern origin, which struck me as unusual. It may not seem strange to anyone who knows that New York is probably the most diverse city on the planet and there are all sorts of people running around all over the city, but I was familiar with that area at that particular time on a normal workday and a car full of young Arab guys did not fit the pattern. To the contrary, it stuck out like a fluorescent elephant trudging along Broadway, but I also felt a twinge of guilt for perceiving them as being strange in some way and I instantly decided to compensate by being as obliging and friendly as possible. All of this ran through my head in an instant as I heard the driver ask in an unmistakably middle-eastern accent,
"Where is the world trade center?"At this the sense of strangeness I'd been feeling turned sinister and became something more like shocked recognition. My suspicion was at least sharply enhanced if not confirmed, the more so since any idiot or newly arrived terrorist in the downtown area could easily locate those towers by merely inclining his head upwards, and that is what I proceeded to do by glancing west over the roof of the car and up along Fulton Street. What I remember discovering, however, is that the towers were obscured behind the surrounding landscape of buildings and could not actually be seen from where I was standing, which would not have been shocking though I was still slightly surprised.
But in spite of my heightened wariness, I was still resolved to be friendly and, not being an ardent admirer of those towers, I responded in a way that might have expressed the complexity of my sensations at that moment. What I said to him in reply was this:
"Do you want to knock it down? Let me help you!"But then I pointed up Fulton Street and said something like, "It's right over there," at which point the driver thanked me and must have turned right in the direction I'd indicated though my memory of that departure is less certain than the startling fact that when I later saw a picture of Mohammad Atta some time after the day of the tragedy, I instantly recognized him as the driver of that car.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. What interests me now is the thoroughness with which I remember both the sequence of events as they occurred fifteen years ago and the nuances of my thoughts and sensations throughout the entire interaction that took place in the space of a few seconds.
As for the question of whether I actually did come face to notorious face with Mohammad Atta in the weeks before 9/11, I think I did, but now that I've taken the step of writing about it I don't think it matters one way or the other, and I don't plan to revisit this topic ever again.
THE END
No comments:
Post a Comment