Five years ago last night, I was on an American Airlines plane between San Francisco and Boston. I think I was on the penultimate journey of AA Flight 11, the plane that was hijacked the next morning and was the first to hit the WTC, although I was too shocked to check my ticket stub to make sure. [AA 11 was an LA bound flight, my flight was LA to SF to Boston].

I remember waiting for the flight at SFO very vividly. It was delayed, so I sat patiently, nursing a novel. There were three wisacres in the padded reception seats facing mine, and they decided to pass the time by making remarks about how I was a terrorist, as if I was somehow deaf or couldn’t comprehend what they were saying. I lowered my book long enough to glare at them, and then went back to my reading.

That was in the good old days, back before such behavior was criminalized, back before I learned to shuffle, shuck and jive, to grin broadly like an idiot and look at my feet, back before passengers counted the number of times you went to the bathroom to pee. It was a long time ago.

I took a cab back to my place and fell into a deep dreamless sleep. Because we had arrived late, I decided to sleep in the next morning and was awoken not by my alarm clock but by my father, calling on the land line (back when I had roomates and no cell phone).

“Beta, turn on the TV,” he said.
I did. And I saw. But I did not yet comprehend.

I stayed in the living room all morning, watching events unfold on television, and talking to my father in NYC. I was lucky, I never had any trouble getting through. I didn’t realize then how much everything would change. How much, even five years later, things would not be the same as they were just 24 hours before.

I’ve been meaning to post something personal on this topic for years, but never got around to it. You know that I rarely talk about myself in my posts, both to preserve my anonymity but also because I’d rather you paid attention to my words than my person when I’m talking. This is hard for me to talk about. Last night, I was clenched down to my stomach in anticipation. Ironically, it was the sight of all the blather in the newspapers this morning that made me feel distant from the event, and which gave me enough perspective to start to write.

In typical desi fashion, I’m going to have to wing this. I’m going to write this in segments throughout the week, week permitting. I don’t know how well they’ll fit together or how much of what’s on my mind I’ll be able to share. Just bear with me as I post parts 2-?, and we’ll all get to see how it turns out together. Just don’t expect a happy ending to this one.