My September 11 in NY.

Death is always near, and although it is seen to come from afar, it is thought that it will never arrive until it presents itself punctually at an inevitable, sometimes completely unexpected, moment from which we cannot escape. The brain does not respond, the body expires, the soul travels and hearts cry.
Twenty years ago, in August, my apartment phone rang. I answered it and I heard on the other side of the line the singing voice of a very pretty and nice Chilean friend who was part of the group of Hispanic girls that met on the weekends to go to dinner at a nice restaurant or to go dancing at a disco that had Latin music and many men. Sofia told me with her cute Chilean accent that she had an amazing plan. A well-known Puerto Rican orchestra had arrived in New York and was set to play at the Windows on the World restaurant bar located on floors 106 and 107 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I had heard amazing things about this restaurant and bar because for a time it was the most pampered place and the most challenging and meaningful endeavor for the managers of the Hilton hotel chain for whom I had worked in Colombia for a year and a half. I never thought I would visit this place because it was meant only for millionaires and international elites. Suddenly the impossible dream of the past was now becoming a fortuitous invitation to dance to Latin music on top of the world. The plan sounded wonderful, an opportunity I had to seize. I had already gone to visit the impressive international financial center in the company of an Arab friend with whom we also went to the observatory located on the top floor of one of the towers from where, for the first time, I admired the magnitude and beauty of Manhattan Island, felt the power of financial wealth, and noticed the magnificence of New York architecture. I saw skyscrapers everywhere and millions of windows behind which the pulse of so many people was felt while they were working without fear like floating in the air a thousand feet from land. The heights have always given me a sense of danger, so I considered all living beings inside those tall buildings very brave.
Our group of friends was made up of women from Chile, Ecuador, and Colombia. We were all single and wanted to meet a New Yorker, with money and beauty who also could dance well the salsa and the merengue and was a gentleman. We were demanding girls not willing to give our love to anyone. Windows on the World was the perfect place to meet a guy who worked for one of the many financial firms that had their offices in the Twin Towers, the nickname with which the two buildings were known. The bar on the 107th floor was an Olympus of possibilities. We made an appointment at the entrance of the towers and as parking on a Friday in downtown Manhattan was and remains an impossible mission, three of us resolved to take a taxi to transport us. We endorsed our best dresses and high heels as well. As I descended from the yellow taxi I looked up and my eyes saw two endless towers rising to infinity and ending almost touching the starry sky of a beautiful night. It made me dizzy to look at them, but I felt like an ultra-modern, famous millionaire girl who was going to have a dream time; I imagined the paparazzi waiting at the entrance to photograph all the personalities attending the party that was held in the most prestigious financial center of New York.
We gave the tickets to the doorman and headed to the elevators that had capacity to carry many passengers and ascend the tower at high speed. In a matter of seconds, we were gently catapulted towards the 106th floor without feeling a tickle in the stomach. I was shocked and amazed to enter an immense place with very sophisticated decoration that looked like a glass house of fantasy illuminated by the lights coming from outside rather than from inside and from where it seemed that you could touch the other skyscrapers with the hands. Not for nothing the restaurant was called «Windows over the world». We headed to the bar and secured the seats for everyone by putting our handbags over the chairs. The orchestra started its show almost immediately, and the party crowd began to dance enthusiastically to the rhythm of the familiar music and to sing the lyrics of the most popular songs. Despite the happiness in the place, I suddenly felt sadness and I decided to stop dancing and go to sit at the bar where I ordered a brandy Alexander a cocktail that I loved at that time. Although the drink was delicious an agitation took hold of me. I felt the towers move as the dancers whipped the floor and made it tremble. I panicked inside and thought, «I don’t want to be here if there’s an earthquake or a fire». As I had the feeling that the tower was dancing, I heard a voice saying to me: Why don’t you dance? I looked around and found a good-looking young man with huge black eyes and thick eyebrows dressed in a shirt and tie without a jacket who explained to me that he had just finished work and that he had come straight from his office to have a drink and see how the Latin party was going. We began talking and I asked him if he felt the movement of the tower. He smiled as he saw my frightened face and told me not to worry as the towers were built to move with the earth and to avoid resistance to wind and earthquakes. I calmed down and although something strange troubled my soul I talked with Paul until the party was over. Paul was a fascinating man, but I could never speak to him again because he would die in the World Trade Center bombing a few days after we met. He worked for an investment bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices burst into flames when the first plane struck the North Tower, killing 658 of its employees. Windows on the World restaurant lost 79 workers.
On September 11, 2001, I woke up like on any other day, I took a shower and got dressed, left ten minutes earlier to buy a coffee on the way and went to the bus stop to take the bus that drove me every morning to the campus of Queen’s University where I studied and worked thanks to a work permit for students. When I got on the bus, I sat next to an old lady who talked about thousands of people killed in the plane crash. «The lady confused the numbers, I said to myself. There aren’t that many passengers in an airplane». «It looks like a terrorist attack,» the driver added. At this point I asked about what had happened and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Suddenly a student who had been listening to her radio shouted and began to cry murmuring: «They just attacked the Pentagon». The day was delightful and sunny, but the tragedy covered the sun and the history of an entire country changed that September 11.
As I got off the bus, I found men and women who had left their homes looking up at the sky and full of fear. I reacted to the calamity when I met a man in his 50s, still in his pajamas, crying and cursing at the terrorists as he waved the United States flag. Tears poured down my cheeks as I advanced amid the maddening sound of ambulances and fire trucks. All units had been called in to reinforce and assist in the rescue efforts initiated by the heroic police and fire brigade assigned to Ground Zero.
From the windows of the university rector’s office, we saw the burning Twin Towers, the strangely shaped black stain of smoke that surely mixed with the souls of the dead, and the collapse of the two skyscrapers. The space that once housed the two giant constructions was freed suddenly. One could feel the physical and spiritual emptiness, the immeasurable pain and the pervasive smell of smoke that lasted for many days. New York died on September 11, but solidarity and love resurrected everywhere. The tragedy erased hatred and selfishness, and for many weeks New Yorkers and most Americans behaved as kind and compassionate blood siblings, children of only one God. I think even death wanted to die that day.