Then you are quiet for a moment

Of all the ‘I-know-where-I-was stories’ of 9/11, there is one that affected me the most. A man lived on Staten Island and took the ferry to Manhattan every day. His son did the same and commuted to his office in one of the Twin Towers. Sometimes they traveled together, but today the father left half an hour later. From the ferry, he saw the towers being hit. He hoped that his son had been delayed somewhere, maybe stuck at Starbucks. But the larger the smoke cloud became, the more he realized that his hope was in vain.

Where were you? My girlfriend Daniëlle saw the news when she walked into MediaMarkt. All the screens showed the same image. I was working behind the scenes at RTL Boulevard. I could tell something terrible had happened by how the production manager came running into the newsroom, half stumbling. So hard that it seemed his breath was trailing a meter behind him. I dove with Beau into the room of our executive producer. TV on, follow the news. Did we see a replay of what had just happened? We were briefly confused until we looked at each other and knew what we were seeing. This was not a replay of the footage. This was a second plane crashing into the tower.

After that, it seemed everyone's task was to inform the world, and you stumbled over the text messages. Turn on the TV. Now. The world is on fire. My screen lit up again. It was friend T. “My daughter has been born.”

Knowing that there was a place somewhere in the world where the TV had not been on and a small, soft girl was cooing in her mother's arms, feeling welcomed, unexpectedly gave me the comfort I desperately needed.