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911 Osama​​​​

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It was another beautiful September morning. The sounds of chirping birds mixed

with the chirping crosswalk signal, blending into the traffic noise and the push of

air through pneumatic brakes and doors. The sounds of a bustling city machine

seemed normal to the thousands of pedestrians on their way and in process.

The stress of life was easily tolerated.

The shadow of a jet slithered across the ground and up and down buildings as it

flew over the city, a common scene. Some looked up, but most just kept their eyes

on business. Then the noise of this plane drowned and rumbled over the din of the

city and ended in a shrill thud and an explosion. The tallest structure around was

hurt. Its skin was pierced, and its innards were on fire, 110 floors of individuals with

significant lives, now all in peril of suddenly perishing. Screams replaced the

chirping. Birds flew and swooped around as scared as those on the ground. No

place to go. No safe place to land.

The view from Yasan's office on the 86th floor of the World Trade Center was

spectacular. He had a bird's-eye view of the Jersey oil storage facilities and all that

Newark had to offer. The building jolted then snapped back to attention, as the

inertia of the plane's forward motion met the blast of the jet fuel exploding and

exploding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Molten fuel and melting plastics poured down into an opening that

allowed gravity to suck the volatile fluids toward the center of the Earth. Yasam's

eye seemed to pop as he looked up from his desk and glanced out the window. He

could see a blast of fire shooting from the building as thought it were a fire-breathing

dragon roaring with a cry for help. He could hear blast after blast and began to feel the

heat from the fires. He pushed away from his desk and slipped as he scrambled to

the window. He got up and over to the window. He could not believe what he was

seeing; this tall, stable building was in flames. He ran to the outer office toward the

elevators, but realized the elevators would be no place to be. He ran to the stairwell

and opened the door. The heat rushed out of the shaft, pushing him back as

though to say, "Go away, you cannot come in here. Run for your life. His head

looked left, right, left, right over his shoulder; his head was spinning, filled with

confused thoughts of where to go, what to do. He ran back to his office and

slammed the door behind him as if to protect himself from the disaster. However,

he knew this room and this view could not protect him.

There was a constant rumble now. The metal floor and glass wall were shaking and

making noises of structural pain. The heat was everywhere. He pushed away from

the door and lunged toward the window again. The smell of smoke was now entering the air around him. He needed more air. He looked for something to break the window. As he grabbed an aluminum baseball bat from his shelf, he knocked down one of the Little League champion trophies he won and the plaque he got as a coach of the year for his son's Little League team. That was his first thought of his family. Where were they? Will he see them again? All the flashes of his life came to him just like they say. So many thoughts jammed into a short, panicked moment. It made him grip the bat even tighter, like he was hugging all his memories for the last time and knew he still must have the courage to act. The thoughts of them would never leave him. He stood by the window and swung the bat into the glass, which shattered but held in place. He hit it again and again until there was a gaping hole and the air rushed in and cleared the room of smoke for just a moment, then almost as fast the hot air pushed back in and out the shard tear in the skin of the once solid building. It seemed he had opened yet another wound for the fire blood to pour from the spired dragon. He stood at the opening, looking down and out. Sweat poured from his body, some from the heat, some from the fear. He flung the bat back toward the door, angry that his choices were so bleak and frustrated that he could not think his way out of this crisis. After all, he was an executive used to taking the heat, accustomed to getting out of tough jams. He stood there feeling the hot air mixing with a rush of burning jet fumes and cool high altitude fresh air. He was perched like a bird on a ledge only without wings. He said a prayer to his god Allah and bowed his head. He was proud that he had the peace of mind to know that he must accept his mortality and greet his maker. Now he must hope that his life meant something and that he would be accepted into the future. He wished he could live longer and wondered if he could have done better. The heat was now so great that he could sense that he was about to be burned alive. He looked out and said to himself, "I will land in another place. And he jumped from his perch just as a woman looked up from the ground and saw him leap into his choice of a lesser of two evils.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She screamed at the horror of this single human falling from a burning building. All her emotions focused on this one shock to her heart and psyche. Yasam could feel the air rushing past him, and his lungs seemed to be exploding from the volume of air pushing into them. He felt every part of his body as he passed floor after floor. He had a faint wish that maybe he would survive, but he knew this was one more wishful thought that this tragic day would not deliver. He saw the ground rushing toward him. It seemed to move faster than slower. Faster because of the velocity he was approaching, yet slower as his mind stretched out the remaining time he could think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was in hyper slow motion as he moved into a shocked consciousness and saw the blue horizon of sky replaced with green-gray ground. His body hit the surface of the earth, and he felt every body part explode. He was beyond any pain, yet he sensed each molecule in his now vaporizing body scream for help, scream for forgiveness, scream for revenge, scream for justice, scream for understanding, scream for nothing. His life was gone, his body was an ooze of flesh, cartilage, and calcium shards. The woman was weeping; she could not look away as she saw his body hit the ground and heard the splattering of his fragile body on the concrete and metal. She saw a plume of pink mist like a raindrop hitting a powdery field of dust. She heard a rumble and knew she had to run away from this scene. She knew he was not the only one who would die; she just knew she had seen enough.                   

 

Osama, are you happy?