Twenty-five Years and One Day
The roof of the World Trade Center, 15 August 2001. Photo by Dheera Venkatraman, public domain (CC0), cropped and retouched by me. It isn’t mine: my own, taken up there on 10 September, I can no longer find.
Twenty-five years and one day ago I was on the roof of the Twin Towers, taking photographs with a disposable panoramic camera I had bought for an astronomical sum in a souvenir shop nearby.
I had spent the whole summer here in New York helping Lorenzo open the American studio of Pixelway, the retouching studio where I worked as technical director. A lifetime ago. I lived on Franklin Street, and every morning, taking the 1 train up to midtown where the studio had opened, I would turn around and see them there, giants, towering over me. And I would think: I have to go up before I head back to Italy, imagine the view from up there.
I went at six in the evening on 10 September, after all those weeks of work, with my flight to Milan leaving at ten. My eyes back then, not yet used to the immensity of this country, were dazzled by everything they saw. By the sheer scale of it, by the vigour of this corner of the world and how it was growing, by the fervour of its streets. And I promised myself I would come back: sooner or later I would make it.
That night I boarded the red-eye to Milan. When I got to the Pixelway office in Milan, on via Forcella, my phone started exploding with calls and messages from every friend and relative who thought I was still there.
I will never forget the feeling that came over me: it’s a film, it has to be a film. We had seen «Independence Day», where the aliens destroy the Empire State Building, and I thought: these Americans have shot another one, look how real it seems.
Sadly it was real. And I will never stop thanking my lucky star (I’m convinced it was my father) for getting me home the day before.
I will never forget it, just as none of the people who lost friends and family in that disaster will ever forget it.
PS. This post was written by a human.
