When the Towers fell: where were you when 9/11 happened?

On the evening of September 11, 2001, which was soon to be known as 9/11, Karachi felt like any other day, though only the night before my family and I had tasted our first teargas during a sectarian clash in our neighbourhood.

I don’t recall whether it was a phone call or something else that made my father rush into the drawing room also used as the TV lounge, but he told us to switch on the television immediately. On our bulky black Sony CRT, PTV News was relaying CNN footage: a passenger plane crashing into a gleaming tower in New York City. That image of the World Trade Center burning etched itself into our minds forever. 

Panic rose quickly in the house. My father told us to get ready for we were going to my Khala’s place, where she had Dish TV, or “cable” as everyone called it. PTV couldn’t keep up with the volume, and I guess it has been consistent in that regard at least.

At her home, the sense of dread deepened. Relatives in the U.S. were being checked on and the weigh of history seemed to press in. Nearly 3,000 people were killed after hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, and the responsibility of the attack was taken by Al-Qaeda. 

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Soon after, Pakistan learned how high the cost would be. U.S. President George W. Bush declared his “War on Terror,” calling it a “crusade.” Afghanistan next door would host American forces for two decades as the forces ravaged the land, unsure of what was to be done. Pakistan itself would lose at least 80,000 lives to terrorism. Children like me grew up with new words: suicide bombing, terrorist, Islamophobia, Al-Qaeda. Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad braced for panic attacks, while NWFP and FATA prepared for devastation they never signed up for.

That day often makes me wonder what others felt when they first saw those towers fall. Did it change them as it changed the world around us? Since 9/11, resilient was a term often thrown around for Pakistan, as the residents were repeatedly targetted in places of worship, hotels, public spaces, schools, processions and the list was endless. Private channels were yet to make their way through and social media was unheard off, rather cellular phones were an anomaly as well. Twenty-four years later what are the thoughts about a development which shaped us?

To find out, I spoke to three Pakistani journalists, then scattered across Karachi, Islamabad, and Charsadda. Except for one, they too were still in school when the world shifted. 

From indifference to reckoning

Now an environment journalist from KP, Muhammad Daud recalls that he was in ninth grade when 9/11 happened. “I was just returning from Isha prayers when I saw a small 14-inch TV in a nearby shop blaring PTV, which was showing CNN visuals,” he said. Elders around him were saying that America had been attacked. Although he could tell that something significant had happened, he admitted, “I couldn’t decipher anything because I didn’t know what or where the US was, just that it was a huge country.” 

Not knowing English at that time, he mainly absorbed what others were saying, particularly the ominous prediction that there would be consequences for Muslims. At the time, he wasn’t very interested in current affairs, so he eventually went home, largely indifferent. That indifference, however, began to fade when the US attacked Afghanistan. He recalled how many people from his village left to join the war. “I was visibly glad,” he confessed, because student activists from Jamaat-e-Islami soon arrived with a rally, shutting down schools, effectively giving them holidays. 

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But years later, after entering journalism, he began to understand the true scale of 9/11’s aftermath. He witnessed the fallout unfold before his eyes, from the Lal Masjid operation to the first drone strike in Damadola, Bajaur events that would soon become routine as militancy took hold of the province. He reflected that Pakistan never truly learned from 9/11; instead, the country became one of its biggest victims.

Long before the attacks, Pakistan’s involvement in the Soviet invasion had already laid the groundwork. The same militant networks eventually entrenched themselves across the tribal districts, and the border with Afghanistan remains volatile to this day. “The US left,” he said, “but left us to clean up the mess.” In his view, the state refused to reflect or adapt; instead, many continued to endorse militancy, ignoring the heavy cost it brought upon the nation.

Witnessing a world shift

Growing up in Karachi and now a journalist, Hala* remembers being woken up from slumber by her father to witness it especially because he knew she had a keen interest in current affairs: “I remember the day 9/11 happened. I was in seventh grade, and it had happened the night before. My father said, ‘This is a big thing, you have to see this.”

My aunt, who was in Los Angeles, also called, as did a family friend in New York. Everyone sounded shaken. My father turned on the television, and we watched the news together. He used to drop me and my brother to school, but before that we sat glued to the screen. “I remember the Dawn headline was massive,” I recalled, “though I don’t remember the exact words. It was everywhere.”

At school, the attacks were all anyone could talk about. “It felt strange,” she admitted. “We had never discussed politics like this before.” That was also the first time I heard names like Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and Mullah Omar. It was unsettling. I wasn’t terrified, but I was nervous because no one knew what would happen next. “The biggest thought in my head was: America is going to attack us now, because there are connections to Pakistan,” she explained.

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“As a family, we hadn’t regularly watched the khabarnama for years, but after 9/11 it became a daily ritual. We would sit together, watch, and discuss. Looking back, I think that was a turning point. Subconsciously, I had decided then that I wanted to go into journalism, because there was so much happening, and I wanted to make sense of it,” she added.

Over the years, she kept returning to the coverage of 9/11, reading different perspectives, digging into stories like the Daniel Pearl case: “It was probably the biggest thing that happened in my lifetime.” reflected. The geopolitical fallout also hit close to home: a family friend in New York was picked up, and rumors spread that he later became a stringer for the FBI, also the Anthrax scare added to the intensity.

And then there were smaller but scarring details like her father had to travel a few months after, and she later learnt that he was subjected to a cavity search at the airport. That was, perhaps, when she fully understood how profoundly the world, and lives, had changed.

A correspondent for foreign press

Working as Pakistan correspondent for the Financial Times back then, Farhan Bokhari narrated that barely minutes had passed after the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center began, when a desperate journalist friend called to bounce off an idea. “Maybe it’s the beginning of the third world war” he said, citing the popular belief in the end of time. “I think the world will now come to an end,” he said.

He felt that never before a singular event had shaken the world similarly. 

“For some, 9/11 and beyond triggered the sharpest division the world had ever witnessed. As a correspondent in Pakistan, I was faced repeatedly with questions such as “Is it true that all the Jewish people left the Twin towers [New York] before the attacks?” or “Is this an America led conspiracy to attack an Islamic country [Afghanistan]?”

Within days of the New York attacks, Islamabad became the most sought after destination for foreign journalists, eager to report right from the front lines of where the news was happening. As the US military raced to conquer Afghanistan to install a replacement of the first Taliban regime, next door Pakistan became their vital ‘observation post’. Islamabad literally became abuzz with activity never witnessed before or after the New York terrorist attacks.