By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United States on Sunday marked the 21st anniversary since the deadliest terror attack in the US soil with moments of sober silence, readings of victims’ names, volunteer work and other tributes.
Relatives of the victims and dignitaries convened at the places where hijacked jets crashed on Sept. 11, 2001 — the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Candlelight vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations were also observed around the American communities to remember the sorrowful day. Some Americans are joining in volunteer projects on a day that is federally recognized as both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
This comes barely a year since the end of the Afghanistan war which the U.S. launched in response to the attacks, an experience seen as a milestone in the fight against global terror.
The September 11 attack that killed nearly 3,000 people, spurred a U.S. “war on terror” worldwide and reconfigured national security policy.
And the attacks have cast a long shadow into the personal lives of thousands of people who survived, responded or lost loved ones, friends and colleagues.
A cook at the World Trade Centre, Sekou Siby said he lost over 70 of his co-workers at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the trade center’s north tower.
Siby said he had been scheduled to work that morning until another cook asked him to switch shifts.
Since then, he never took a restaurant job again; it would have brought back too many memories. The Ivorian immigrant wrestled with how to comprehend such horror in a country where he’d come looking for a better life.
He found it difficult to form the type of close, family-like friendships he and his Windows on the World co-workers had shared. It was too painful, he had learned, to become attached to people when “you have no control over what’s going to happen to them next.”
“Every 9/11 is a reminder of what I lost that I can never recover,” says Siby, who is now president and CEO of ROC United. The restaurant workers’ advocacy group evolved from a relief center for Windows on the World workers who lost their jobs when the twin towers fell.
President Joe Biden is expected to speak and lay a wreath at the Pentagon, while first lady Jill Biden is scheduled to speak in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked planes went down after passengers and crew members tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers headed for Washington.
Al-Qaida conspirators had seized control of the jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles.
