America, if not the world, remembers that twenty years ago something happened that changed lives. What do an Agenaise from New York and a New Yorker from Agen think?
America today commemorates the jihadist attacks of 9/11. President Joe Biden and his wife Jill are expected this Saturday morning in New York, at the very impressive memorial built where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood, which fell just twenty years ago, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. As usual. Year, for three hours, will be read there some 3,000 names of people killed.
This event had considerable international repercussions, including the war in Afghanistan. Europe and France have stood in solidarity with the United States in their fight against terrorism. Recall that Agen sent soldiers there.
On the occasion of the commemorations, we interviewed an Agenaise living in New York, in the Brooklyn district. Former pupil of the Lycée Palissy, now a school teacher, Manu Garcia-Guillén explains what trace left this historic event in the minds of the inhabitants.
The ceremonies of the 20th anniversary of “9-11” are obviously in the headlines. However, does this event mobilize New Yorkers? Will they commemorate this tragedy? Do they all feel concerned?
Manu Garcia-Guillén. “Honestly, I don’t have the impression that this mobilizes New Yorkers very much. We feel that the time has passed and some are still totally occupied with other concerns, such as the pandemic or the damage caused recently by the hurricane Ida.
However, New Yorkers have a very strong sense of coming together and uniting in painful situations. In this sense, some friends have told me that these ceremonies “Where we are One All Together” will certainly do good, after years when American society has become so deeply divided under the presidency of Trump.
And then there is respect for the relatives of victims: everyone is aware that for them in any case, these ceremonies are important. “
You have lived in New York for ten years. Was the city still traumatized at this time, or had time already taken its toll?
“I arrived in New York in 2010 and the 10th anniversary ceremonies in 2011 had marked me very much. The scar was still very fresh at the time. Ground Zero was still under construction, and neither the Memorial nor the new one. The tour of the new World Trade Center had not yet been completed. In the metro, there were still at that time posters that addressed directly to survivors of September 11 (telling them for example which service to contact if they had respiratory problems or other after-effects since 2001). is very different today. We feel that September 11 has gone down in history and has left everyday life somewhat. “
What is the permanence of the memory? Already, is there Ground Zero tourism? Do we come as if on a pilgrimage? Then, do New Yorkers often think of drama, or at least do they refer to it in conversations as a pivotal date, around which there was the life before and the life after?
“New Yorkers don’t talk much about the event itself. Being New Yorkers means sharing, in the unspoken, a certain relationship to this historic event.
When I voluntarily questioned friends about their experiences, what emerges most often is not so much their story of that day, but rather what followed it: an immense solidarity in the city, a very strong feeling of unity in the pain which persisted for a long time after the events. A friend told me that a few days after the attacks, in the metro, she had found by chance one of those free newspapers which dated before the 11th. Seeing the carelessness of this newspaper, like a vestige of the ” life before, ”she couldn’t hold back tears. A woman in the oar then got up and came in silence to take her in her arms. The memories brought back by New Yorkers are full of such anecdotes.
As the event is present in New York’s identity, there is no real need for a pilgrimage. It is mainly tourists who go to Ground Zero or visit the Memorial. And it is not worse that they do it elsewhere. Because when you are not an American, there may be a dimension that escapes us in this event: the dimension of the intimate. Personally, if I remember perfectly the day of September 11, 2001 and what I was doing at the time of the attacks, I only truly grasped the intimate dimension of the event when I arrived in New York, when more precisely one of my New York’s best friends told me that her father worked at the World Trade Center and that on September 11, before he finally came home safe that evening, she didn’t know if he was still alive or not.
In addition, a seemingly innocuous thing that I learned while visiting the Memorial, is that on September 11, 2001, in the morning, promised to be a very beautiful day: the sky was a cloudless blue. This uniform blue sky is quite characteristic of New York, and I admit that when this completely clear sky appears, even today, I often have a thought for this New York world of before, which ended on a beautiful blue sky so pleasant before everything changed … “
The Covid has probably killed more New Yorkers than the terrorists. However, did the attacks of September 11 give an “unsurpassable” dimension to the horror? Was there mythification of the event, in the sense that its symbolic representation will influence social life in the long term?
“It’s a bit difficult to compare 9/11 to other more recent events on a horror scale, because today there is a whole generation – the under 30s – who didn’t real memories of the September 11 attack, while on the other hand they did experience the Covid pandemic or Hurricane Sandy, two tragedies that hit New York very hard.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that September 11, 2001 is undoubtedly one of the most important dates in the history of New York City. In this sense, we can indeed say that there is mythification.
The case of Pete Davidson is a good example. This very popular television comedian is known to have lost his father, a firefighter who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center, when he was only 7 years old. Of course, Pete Davidson owes his fame to his talent, but the fact remains that his special relationship with 9/11 feeds a certain mythology around him. He represents in a way a figure of the “orphans” of September 11 … and also embodies, despite himself, the time that has elapsed since he is now an adult. “
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