Satan in the Smoke, 20 Years After
We never say the date. We don’t have to. It has joined the ranks of “Dates which will live in Infamy.”
I always loved the Twin Towers. Their box shapes dominated the skylinewherever you were. If you were lost in the West Village, you would just look for them and know that was south. They were comforting. They weren’t the prettiest buildings architecturally, but they were grand. And when the sun hit them just right, they were twin pillars of gold.
The only reason I was home on September 11, 2001, was for a happy occasion. Andrea, Eliza and I were all going together as a family to Eliza’s first day of preschool. We were up early, we were excited, and we had no idea what was really in store for us on that day.
It began with a shout from the living room. “Mark, come see this now!” my wife Andrea shouted. We thought a small plane had crashed, accidentally, into the World Trade Center. Everyone did – at first. I picked up my camera and climbed to the roof of my Brooklyn apartment house in time to see this was a much bigger story than I’d ever imagined. Then my camera captured an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
It is the face of Satan.