Sometimes, we lawyers find our arguments or our closings in the most mundane of happenings or settings and sometimes we find them in the most complex and disturbing of historic event. I had just closed a case and mentioned the World Trade Center and 9/11 in it. After leaving the office, I got into a cab and asked the driver to take me directly to the World Trade Center site. As I stood near the site, everything came back to me as if it were just yesterday.
Daniel and I had been selected for admission to New York University’s JD program and were going to begin in Fall of 2001. It was on the fateful day of September 11 that we entered New York and fate would have it, just out of geek curiosity, the first thing we wanted to do was see the Courthouse where we would be practicing in the future. So we asked my dad not to go to the college dorms but to take us first to the Federal Plaza. It was just pas t 8 am when we had reached the Federal Plaza and were standing outside the courthouse. We were showing my parent how we would argue and how we will win and were doing all the childish stuff the over excited duo of us would do. We were busy enacting our future scenes when we first hear it; a loud noise, which I till date cannot remember. We all turned in that direction but the buildings were blocking our view. All of us immediately got into the car and dad pushed it in that direction. As soon as we got onto Broadway, we saw it, heavy black smoke erupting out of the North tower of the World Trade Center.
We got close as sirens began ringing up all around us and we stopped quite a few blocks away from the towers. Our first thought was that there was some kind of internal explosion in the tower but as we looked on, the second airplane hit tower two and then we knew that something serious was going on. But that time, they had begun sealing off the areas and we were asked to move back. As soon as my mom understood that it was a terrorist attack, she got us all in the car and asked dad to drive us straight to the university campus. All the way, the tears in her eyes wouldn’t stop. When we got to the campus the news was already spreading and we saw everything on the television. We asked my parents to head off fast as there was a possibility of a blockade or something.
Daniel and I had lost our speech that day as it seemed and none of us would talk. Just before the attack we were talking of defending the innocent and playing with big words and right before our eyes, the biggest crime against humanity was committed and we couldn’t do anything. To this day the criminal who planned and executed this crime is at large and in the name of war against terrorism our country is doing something different, something else.
I had called Daniel from the cab and he arrived after some time. We went for some drinks; again none of us talking as if we were holding our silence for the victims of that day.
