S - 11

Horrified, I spun my body around and tried to flee towards Greenwich Street, when a collective howl stopped me and mademe turn my eyes back to the sky; then I saw clearly, as if in slowmotion,a second plane fly directly into the other tower withdiabolical marksmanship, cutting the air with an apocalyptic explosion,and hurling out a ball of flame in the impact. It was pan-demonium. What followed was an unceasing nightmare in whichpain, desperation, fear, agony and death all joined forces. As indreams, I lost all sense of space and time. The street began to fillwith burned and bloody bodies while people fell from the sky;people who had hurled themselves from the building to avoiddying in the flames. You only needed to look up to see bodiesleaping into nothingness and crashing inert onto the roofs of theneighboring buildings, or onto the asphalt that singed from thecloseness of the fire. It was a spectacle of Dantesque and at thesame time heroic proportions, because there were also firefighters, police officers and ordinary citizens who were rushing to theaid of the wounded, and struggling with all their might to save thelives of anyone they could. Many tore off their clothing to offer abandage to one of the injured. This exemplary response kept mefrom joining the stampede of those who fled. In the chaos I found a school full of children, where women were crowding aroundtrying to get their sons and daughters out, and without thinking I pushed my way in to help with the evacuation of the smallest.They were children of three, four, five years of age, who came out crying in anguish and panic, and I carried them through thesmoke and out to the street and passed them to any person who offered a hand. In their desperation, many mothers were squashing the little kids in the way, while others fell victim to attacks of hysteria or fainting…I don’t know how much time I spent in the inferno.