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September 21, 2005

Four Years On: Remembering S-11

When I left the house on September 12, 2001, a strange solemnity stung the sky, and in the afternoon it was joined by heavy clouds. As I walked through Northbridge, the Mustang Bar had the Stars & Stripes fitted to a pole and it fluttered in a stiff breeze. By the time I had reached central station I had spotted two people wearing the same flag as a cape. The clouds were very dark now.
Against these clouds rose the modest sky-line of Perth, and images of plane-bombs entering the buildings inhabited my imagination. My poor imagination—it had been hijacked, like everybody else’s, by the grotesque bizarreness of a reality that could not have been imagined. My dream-state was exhausted and I had no time for flags—I caught my train and hurried home, determined to chew this all over with friends…

We got some good scotch and we opened it and we still didn’t believe in flags. We also knew that death was still there, will always be there, and that terrorism fell shy of, logically, cancer as things we should worry about. But that night, and for many after, cancer didn’t sit at the top of the table because we had seen—live—pictures of mothers and fathers leaping from their 87th-storey windows.
The symbolism of that day was heavy, and it was widely read, quite rightly, as an astonishing attack on each and every American. Unfortunately, the response was an equally heavy participation in symbolism and Wal-mart reported a half-million flag sales in the days following S-11, but I doubt if the majority of purchasers could discuss the Gettysburg address…
For my friend and I, who believed more in scotch than brightly coloured symmetrical shapes, not many questions were answered in the days following. Indeed, four years later much has changed, but very little has been answered except our fears.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at September 21, 2005 5:44 PM