New Mexicans who remember the events of the attacks in 2001 tell their stories.
Nearly everyone who was alive on Sept. 11, 2001, remembers where they were when they learned of the 9/11 attacks. Here are a few of their personal accounts, some submitted by the authors, others pulled from interviews with The
New Mexican. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Jessie McKeon, Albuquerque
My little sister went into labor that weekend.
To pass the time during early labor, we all went to the State Fair, trying to keep her walking around and [keep] labor progressing.
Eventually we ended up at University of New Mexico Hospital, where she gave birth to her first born, a son.
Born Sept. 10, 2001, they named him Justice.
I planned to be at the hospital the next morning when my sister and Justice were discharged, to bring them home. I was hosting an exchange student from Italy and we had decided she didn’t have to go to school that day so she could go with me to bring Justice home. The
Today show was on in the background as we got ready.
Then the plane hit the first tower. I didn’t understand what was happening. Then the second one.
We got to the hospital, everything was in lockdown. Would there be an attack closer to home? The Air Force base? Los Alamos? We waited hours to get discharged, watching the news in disbelief.
My exchange student was getting worried messages from her parents in Italy. They saw “America under attack,” not realizing the distance between New York City and Albuquerque. She had toured the twin towers just weeks before coming to live with us.
Finally, we were discharged and reality set in.
President George W. Bush gave a speech calling for justice days after our Justice was born. We were asked if that was why he was named Justice. It was not. He will be 20 this year. Feels like yesterday.
Peter Locascio, Torrance County
“My practice was in a loft building on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, with huge windows overlooking downtown. I usually put my kid on the bus and took the subway to work. I was right by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, so loud thuds were not unusual.
I got my usual cup of coffee and I had my feet up on my desk reading the [New
York] Times.
An employee walked in and her face was pale and she just pointed to the windows. We stood there and watched firefighters streaming across the Brooklyn Bridge, realizing several hours later they were all going to their deaths.
We had the radio on, and there were reports that a commuter plane may have lost its bearings.
We were watching when the second plane hit. It was just like a fireball erupted from the building.
It was almost if you stood and threw confetti. It burst out horizontally and feathered down, if you will. I just thought it was debris.
(Later, Locascio said a neighbor who had been closer to the building told him some of what he’d seen dropping out of the buildings were the bodies of people who jumped to their deaths in hopes of escaping the raging inferno.)
She was like, “They were people, and I saw them falling all around me.”
After the second one, it was clear it was intentional. We had no idea what was going on. As it continued to rage, being an architect I was thinking, ‘These buildings are going to have to come down. The steel is melting.’
Anytime I have a fire in my kiva and it’s roaring and I’m stirring the fire and the intense searing heat just hits me, I think, ‘How could that be the best option?’ And I get these glimpses of the confetti that was actually people.
Noranik Zadeyan, Santa Fe
It was Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, my mom’s birthday and she was traveling with my dad in China. I had a dental appointment at 9:30 a.m at New York University where I was studying for my master’s in public health. That day, I decided to wear my Cameroonian dress and walk my usual route from my graduate housing apartment downtown about five blocks away from the twin towers.
As soon as I stepped out, I felt panic all around me — people running, screaming, frantic. I looked around and thought there was a shooter or something, but then I saw people’s gazes were lifted to the sky. I followed the direction and saw the first tower was on fire. Then I heard a plane and saw it go straight into the second tower, and I felt in my being that what just happened was not an accident. I stood there in shock for few moments, thinking about all the people in the towers, in the planes and down below. I saw all the papers flying from the office windows and I saw the poor, desperate man who jumped out of the building.
I knew I had to get out of there because I felt like things were going to get worse.
Like in a trance, I had to get to my dental appointment. As I came upon one of the busiest streets of New York City, I saw herds of people walking north on Broadway, devoid of running cars. It was as if time stood still, apocalyptical, surreal. I had so many thoughts going through my mind; what is happening, were we attacked, is there more to come, is this happening somewhere else, how and where are all my people? A man stopped me and complimented me on my African dress and said “Would you like to get some café?”
“Now? What? The twin towers just went down and we don’t know what’s happening and you are asking me out?” I finally made it to my appointment; they checked me in, sat me in the chair and put on a bib and I finally snapped out of my trance and realized, what am I thinking, I can’t get my teeth cleaned right now. I picked up my phone and called Lara [Rabkin], one of my closest friends from Santa Fe … who was living in Brooklyn. Hearing her familiar and scared voice tell me, “Come to my house,” made the fear, the feeling of being alone and all the uncertainty very real, and the protectiveness and solace of those words and her friendship meant everything to me.
I finally found a working subway after hours of walking south, trying to avoid downtown as the towers had collapsed and there was soot and sirens and chaos filling all of my senses. I will forever remember the smell of burning steel and thinking it was probably mixed with human flesh and so much fear and agony.
I am so grateful for Lara, for the sanctuary of her home and the safe retreat away from all the devastation. We spent the rest of the week glued to the TV of the traumatic looping images of how it all went down, trying to understand, process and gain crucial information while also trying to contact everyone we cared about to reassure them we were alive.
We survived but so many did not. And as I reflect 20 years later on these ingrained memories and watch images of Afghanistan today, my heart is tormented by all the lives lost and lives damaged since then, and I fear for those who could not reach refuge outside of their home country and for the uncertainty of future attacks around the world.
Shams Mheri, Albuquerque
I was 12 years old. We were in Pakistan attending high school. I remember, as soon as we came home we saw on TV the towers were falling down and we [had to] isolate from the outside world for a month or a month and a half [because] everyone was pointing fingers at us — “These are the people that take down the World Trade towers.”
We were on our way home from school. People were talking about the twin towers falling down because of the Afghan people. We had to run and get inside the house. We were not allowed to go outside. As soon as we would step outside the house, people would start trying to start fights with us, throw stuff on us and just scream at us to get our of their country.
[The] Hazara minority [Mheri’s ethnic group] is always against violence. We promote education, life, unity among family members as well as among other people. But certain people living in Afghanistan, especially in the villages, who were into Wahhabism [an Islamic reform movement] wanted to put Sharia law [an Islamic legal system based on the Quran, Islam’s holy book] in Afghanistan during that time.
We were supposed to leave that same week [Mheri’s family eventually emigrated to Canada and then the United States] but it was delayed for 4½ months, and we left at the end of 2001. We couldn’t even say good by to family members because we wanted to keep a low profile and leave that country.
You do feel nervous even in the United States during this time [the anniversary of 9/11] if a person knows you are from Afghanistan. They racially profile you, not knowing it was a small group of people that did this.
It’s very emotional knowing what our people and our country went through, first with the Taliban and then the United States. Our people are suffering and we are here in America and we still have to through this. It brings emotion and sad feelings during [this] time.
Sharmin Dharas, Albuquerque
I was 13. I had just turned. It was my freshman year of high school. … I went to school in the morning. I was in sec