story1924.xml

story1924.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-08

My name is Ian Panchevre at the time I was 12 I had just moved to France from San Antonio Texas. It was September 11 2001 and about 4:30 French time I just came out of school and I was completely clueless about what just started to unfold. My dad drove up with the car he looked at me and said "get in quick!". I just stared at him and thought I had done something bad. The radio was on and both my parents were just staring into space. From what I could understand on the radio there was something involved with airplanes and the world trade center. I was confused and didn't know what to think. Then my dad spoke and adressed me and my siblings. "Two planes just hit the world trade center one hit the pentagon and another just crashed somewhere in Pitsburg, but they don't know if it's related or not." The picture of a plane hitting a tall building and the building crashing over like a bowling pin in the middle of New York kept playing over and over again in my mind. When I got to my house cnn was already on T.V. and what I saw was just hororfing. I saw the World Trade Center smoking with fire, I saw my fellow Americans in horror staring at the trade center, I saw people so desperate that they actualy were jumping out of windows. And I saw Palestinian children my age dancing in the street as if they were celebrating some miracle. I almost threw up when I saw that it was disgusting If it had been the other way around if the Palestinians were being attacked I wouldn't have celebrated. Hatred engulfed my body, I couldn't inderstand why a human being would do something so perverted to another human. Then The first tower crashed down and I truly think that millions of people world wide gasped in horror when they saw that then the second tower. What was strange was how perfect the towers looked like when they fell almost as if it was a controlled demolishon but it wasn't controlled what it was was an act of pure hatred. And after that everything became blured to my vision. That night I went to bed at about 9:30 but I stayed awake maybe up until three. Everything I saw was so unbelievable. I lived in a town called Golfe Juan but I went to school in a town called Vallauris. Now I'm not exagerating but the population in Vallauris was anywhere from 30 to 40 percent arab. That hadn't bothered before me actualy I didn't even notice it until the next day. My first class was history and that day the teachers mouth was flaring at 100 hundred miles an hour. He kept pointing at the world map to places like Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Afganistan. My friends were sympathetic of course but the arab kids wouldn't leave me alone. They teased me and said mean things to me, they chanted Bin Laden to me and asked me stupid questions like "Did you move from the U.S. because you were afraid of Bin Laden?" and so on. Then about two weeks later I walked into the bathroom and on the wall there was graffiti. There were pictures of planes being stucked in buildings and words like "Bin Laden Fucked the Americans!" it was the entire wall and I couldn't believe that somebody actualy ment those words. The Truth is up until the tenth of September 2001 I had no idea who Bin Laden was. His name sounded familiare I think because of the U.S.S. Coal bombing but for the most part I was clueless about Terorism. The badgering countinued but that wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me was that being an American being all the good that Americans are to the world something so disgusting would happen by someone so heartless. The future rolled on and I saw many articles in magazines like Time and Newsweek and only then did the extent of what happened became realistic to me. The entire world was affected I don't think one person didn't have any encounter with 9/11. America the dream of the free world was attacked by a bunch of heartless scums. They say that time heals all wounds and in a couple of months I was back to myself again. But the media was still litered by everything that happened. They also say that you will never forget where you were the time of a major event. The older generation never forgot where they were when Kennedy got shot. And I will never forget 9/11. I think that in the end the terrorist failed. Their goal was not to run commercial airplanes into the the world trade center. But to bring fear to the American people they wanted to bring us down to our knees. But we didn't instead we became stronger and more united. And for that reason the terrorist failed. I also think that the definition of an "American" has to be rewritten. An American is not a citizen of The United States. An American is a person that believes in the freedom of speach, religion, the press, and the right to persue happines. An American ofers the best, the best food, the best entertainment, the best people and so on. An american also offers the least the weakest, the slowest and we use our power as a super nation to help other countries like Afganistan. An American can be English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Australian, Indian, Pakistanian, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Mexican, Brazilian, Canadian and of course a citizen of the United states. Anyone with the same american beliefs anyone that thinks that all men are created equally and anyone that beliefs in basic human rights is an American anyone that beliefs in Freedom is an American. Thats why I think that september eleventh wasn't an attack on the United States but an attack on humanity. So many people from so many countries and from so many cultures died that day. There crime being an American and living the dream there ancestors had for them. I also think that what september eleventh really did was clarify who was an American and who wasn't. Be strong America. Evil cannot prevail. I didn't lose a friend or a loved one that day. What I lost and what everyone else lost that day was a piece of humanism. The history of the world has changed dramaticaly and I lived to see it happen.



From,
Ian Panchevre,
(An American!)