ABOUT 20 years and a week ago, in a land far, far away, I was awoken by an unreasonably early phone call.
“Turn on the TV, a plane has just crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings.”
Wondering what sort of idiot pilot could make such a mistake, I arose and turned on the box which shows big heads and tiny people just in time to see plane No.2 slam into Tower No.2 while smoke billowed from the first structure.
I couldn’t take in what I had just seen but, as fate would have it, I was the night editor that fateful, horrific Tuesday and just had to get to the office to make sense of it all.
Newsrooms are often bustling hives of activity where cynicism meets optimism and the truth often emerges.
Many of my colleagues just stared numbly at the TVs as the towers collapsed and update poured down upon update. Others were crying while trying to unsuccessfully contact loved ones in New York as the lines were either busy or down. We didn’t know.
If I remember correctly, a few went home overwhelmed, but most stayed to ply the trade. It was the easiest news day of my life – and the worst.
That evening I returned home numb, my partner had been crying, I remained newsroom detached and that’s how I felt any time the figures 9-11 were mentioned over two decades.
Until Sunday.
For some odd reason, I awoke just in time to turn on my now flat screen TV with big heads and tiny people inside to catch the start of the US Open women’s tennis final on 9-11 at Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York.
Cameras panned over the great city’s skyline from time to time and I swear I could see shadows of those two towers.
But I was utterly captivated by what I witnessed on court and not felt in my mind.
The two most unlikeliest of finalists battling it out for one of the game’s greatest crowns. Two teenagers from different parts of the globe, but so similar.
Power-hitting British qualifier Emma Raducanu, 18, born in Canada with a Romanian father and Chinese mother facing feisty just-turned 19-year-old impish lefty Leylah Fernandez, representing Canada and born in the US with an Ecuadorian father and Filipino-Canadian mother.
Raducanu had to navigate her way through nine matches to reach the final while Fernandez had to get past three of the tournament’s top five seeds, including No.2 Aryna Sabalenka and No.3 Naomi Osaka.
Playing with freeness and fearlessness only the young can muster, Raducanu’s power game just managed to overwhelm the counter-punching Fernandez, 6-4, 6-3 in almost two hours of pulsating action.
I was delighted to see two young women, born after that horrid 9-11, usher in a new wave of tennis and with such class and poise.
They both won that day.
During her runner-up speech, Fernandez thanked everybody in the world but, just when the microphone was about to be returned to the host, she made a heart-felt statement about 9-11 and the resilience of New Yorkers.
It reminded me of the words of a wise man who once said, “never under-estimate the adaptabiltiy of humankind” – or something like that, and don’t we need that now?
I saw the shadows of those towers come over the stadium then. Then the numbness was gone, and I finally cried.
