9/11

9/11.
It is a date very well known to westerners. A day of grief, of anger, of feeling vulnerable. It is a day many people still recall clearly, with all TV news broadcast streaming the event on that day. It is a day on which lives were lost, families broken, tears shed. But what effect would such a day have on a little boy, living hundreds of kilometers away, soon 10,  have in his budding life?

It is said that all human beings are connected. We are subjected to a universal sense of brotherhood. Our lives all affect one another. We share happiness and sadness daily, be it with friends or family. The act of sharing emotions echos through society from one person to another, such that a warm smile in the morning can brighten your day, so can a cold shoulder make you feel neglected, thus affecting your attitude towards others you will thereafter meet. This interconnectivity of human emotion extends farther than anyone, even me, could have fathomed. I now truly believe, that due to our technological advancement, and globalization, human emotions are shared on a global scale, such that the Earth's population is one big family. 

When man landed on the moon in 1969, a global sense of unity was felt. Man had ventured out into space, and it didn't matter what race or what country did it first, the point was 'Man' did, and their was an uproar of joy and content in our achievement. Similarly, when we are part of a global catastrophe, like a tsunami or an earthquake, we feel sad for each other, help each other, do whatever it takes to preserve human life. The act of terrorism on 9/11 was perceived by humans as a threat to their safety and existence. And even though it did not directly affect every person on the planet, anyone who came to know of the event felt pain for all the lost souls resulting from an evil act of few people. However, it affected me, a ten year old boy, very differently, from most of the people I talk to.

I am writing this account to preserve the memory of 9/11 in the cloud - for maybe a day may come when I'm right about certain things or else I could explain what happened.

It is very easy to assign what I felt to a random chance or coincidence, but this is the truth:

On the morning of 9/11, my family was preparing to leave a hotel in which we were spending that particular weekend. I do not recall the exact time of the event, but as we were moving things out into the car, my father and sisters already in the car ready to leave, and my mother four steps infront of me, walking towards our vehicle, I felt a sharp sting in my heart. It was as if my heart caved in on itself. I felt a sense of emptiness, as if a vacuum was created inside my chest. This only lasted very briefly, maybe less then a second, but it had never happened to me, and I called out to my mother. Then, for no apparent logical reason (I have been pondering this ever since), I told my mum; "I think something has happened. Something bad. And it could be outside of Malta". Obviously, when mentioning something bad, I wasn't referring to the pain I felt in my heart, she didn't even know about that. I was referring to an event, bad in nature, such as an earthquake or a tsunami. This, however, turned out to be the terrorist attacks of 9/11 2001.

I only got to know of the attacks later that day when we went to our grandma's after our weekend break. We were all very sad and left in shock and the live footage of the rescuers and the dust clouds, and at the footage of the planes heading straight into the buildings. Myself, on the other hand, did not take note of the strange thing I had told my mum earlier. I only got to really ponder what happened years later, and each time a documentary crops up or an anniversary of the tragedy, I feel very emotional, sad, and depressed. For I KNEW something happened on that day, but I still could have done nothing. So the questions remained: 'Why did I feel the way I did?', 'Could I have felt a churning emotion on the global scale?' 'If we still cannot do anything in regards to something like this, why are we possibly subjected to a global awareness?'

And so my quest to find out the truth continues...