9/11 attacks: The day America lost its soul

WASHINGTON: Twenty-five years ago, on a bright September morning, America woke up to a different world. I was in Washington. I was asleep when John Hendel, our news editor at the American news agency where I worked, called. “There have been attacks of Biblical proportions in New York and Washington,” he said. “Go out and see what is happening. But come back and sleep. We have transferred you to the news desk. You’ll be doing night shifts. ” The remaining tower of the World Trade Centre, Tower 2, collapses in a cloud of dust and debris about a half hour after the first tower fell, in New York City, the US on September 11, 2001. — Reuters/File My wife, Bushra, and I went out. We lived in downtown Washington, and the city suddenly looked unfamiliar. Armoured personnel carriers stood at crossroads and strategic points. Men in uniform were everywhere.

The capital of the world’s most powerful country looked like a city preparing for war. We reached the White House. Bushra was wearing a shalwar-kameez. Near the White House, a man stopped his bicycle, pointed at her and shouted: “There goes a terrorist. Catch her, catch her. ” A few people stopped, looked and walked on. I remember that moment vividly, perhaps because it contained, in miniature, something that would become much larger in the years that followed. The woman walking beside me had not changed. Her clothes had not changed. I had not changed. But suddenly those clothes could be interpreted differently. Something that had always meant home, culture and identity could, in somebody else’s eyes, become evidence of something sinister. Later, we drove as close to the Pentagon as we could. Smoke was still rising. There was a large hole in the building. We interviewed people who had seen the plane hit. The damaged area of the…