These 13 photos are all I have left from 9/11, out of maybe 200+ I took that day. These photos remain because I posted them and some thoughts to my Xanga site. The other 200+ photos lived on a hard drive that crashed a few years later. A useful reminder to always have backups.

We think less about that kind of stuff these days. Our cameras are with us all the time, seamlessly backing up to the cloud. Every major event is documented from different angles in real time the moment it happens.

I wanted to share these pictures and memories, 24 years later, precisely because things were so different back then. There is relatively less documentation than we have today, which is why its all the more important to share what we have. Those who know me well know this story, but I also want it out there for everyone, to contribute in some small way to our collective understanding.

The Morning

I moved to New York City in October of 2000. My plane landed around 2am after many delays, and even at that hour, the city was alive. I immediately fell in love with NYC.

But I was recently out of college without much money. Which is how I ended up living in a luxury high-rise at 88 Greenwich Street. These new luxury high rises were unaffordable for a kid like me, but they were also enticing new tenants with deeply discounted rents. I rented a tiny third floor studio apartment facing the interior of the building, with very little light and a wall for a view. But it was only $1500, and it was home in NYC.

The Twin Towers were a constant, looming presence from the day I moved in. My apartment was only 4 blocks south of the World Trade Center. I saw them every morning on the way to work, and I’d often catch the 1 train from the basement. The last time I walked through there was Sunday, Sept 9th.

The night of Monday, Sept 10th was already pretty hectic. I pulled an all-nighter for some project I was excited about (I was working at a startup at the time), and I finally went to bed around 6am the morning of Sept 11. I just rolled from my computer into bed (it was a tiny studio), without even plugging in my phone.

I awoke four hours later, around 10am. I remember being annoyed that I only got 4 hours of sleep. In hindsight I realize it was the sound of the South Tower collapsing that woke me. But the sound was faint, a distant rumble that was muffled as it reached through the interior shaft to my apartment. It didn’t register as a crash, only as something that woke me up.

I stumbled out of bed and went to my computer. Surprisingly the internet still worked (my phone was out of batteries and cable tv was down). I was immediately flooded with chats on AOL Instant Messenger: “are you ok?” “where are you?” One friend distilled it down for me:

MG: “A plane hit the world trade center”

Me: “What?” In my mind I imagined a small Cessna or something.

MG: “They fell down”

With those three words it finally dawned on me that something was wrong. I peeked my head out the door, and caught a building employee: “Hey what are you still doing here? Everyone is downstairs!” He continued on his route, but I was still confused. I got dressed and went downstairs, where the rest of the tenants were huddled in the basement.

Dust was everywhere. The streets were blanketed in it, the inside lobby too. Every corner, every crevice, every inch that had some exposure to the outside world was covered in a fine layer of dust. Even down the stairs, around the corner, into to where we gathered in the basement.

Many of my neighbors witnessed the event first hand. One tenant described waking to a loud boom and watching a tidal wave of debris heading her way. Startled, she shut the window and ran into the hall. Another took pictures of the 2nd plane hitting the tower. He said the plane came in low over our apartment then turned sideways as it hit the building. “It was nothing like Hollywood,” he said. The plane just seemed to implode into the building, but anyone watching on TV could see that the big explosion was on the other side. Yet another tenant described watching in horror as people jumped out of the building. Everyone was shaken, but supportive.

No one knew what to do next. We were in the lobby for about 3 hours when we were informed the building would be evacuated. There was concern that other buildings in the area might collapse, so they shut off water and gas service. We couldn’t go home, and we couldn’t stay there. I went back to my apartment, grabbed a bag full of stuff (including my camera), and headed outside.

The Walk

As I walked through the doors into the world outside, I was taken aback by the stark silence. The dust dampened all sound around us. There was activity in the streets, officers and people milling about, surveying the damage. But it was a distant din that paradoxically amplified the gravity of the moment.

Looking up at the WTC, I saw nothing but a brown grey cloud.

There were papers interleaved everywhere among the dust. Standard, mundane work papers someone probably had on their desk, or tucked away in a filing cabinet.

And there was confusion. No one had answers about where to go, what to do next. Authority and individuals alike, we were collectively at a loss.

So I started walking. I was already as far south as I could go, the subways weren’t running, so I figured my best bet was to move north and east. I wrapped a towel around my face (this was before we knew anything about N90) and walked north along Rector. Even with the towel, it was hard to breath and my eyes were stinging.

The landscape was frozen in time. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road. Food carts were left standing on the sidewalk.

And the smell. The worst memory of the day. Acrid. I can’t describe it, I don’t want to describe it, I don’t want to think about what made it. I hope I never smell it again.

I turned right down Wall Street, and then started north again. I zig-zagged my way through Lower Manhattan, between Broadway and side streets, partly because of closures and partly out of curiosity.

The line of fire at the base of the WTC is etched into my memory. It was right above what used to be Krispy Kreme. The stark orange line sliced through the cloud of dust, made brighter by the browns and greys surrounding it.

As I continued on, more dust. An odd juxtaposition of fresh flowers and fruit covered in dust.

The silence started to break as I reached City Hall. Here was a hub of officers, hospital workers, volunteers, and TV crews. There was a confluence of evacuees like myself slowly funneling their way north.

A few people held crudely drawn signs labeled “O+”, “O-“, “B+”, with lines forming behind them for blood donations.

Construction workers were hustling plywood and wood studs to the park, where others were nailing studs to either side of a piece of plywood, then loading them onto dump trucks for transport to the WTC. Makeshift stretchers.

Finally one of the more surreal images of the day:

A worker outside The Trump Building at 40 Wall Street, hosing off the dust from the sidewalk and facade, rendering it pristine. I’ve thought about this moment a lot over the years. Why was this person hosing down this building? There are many different ways to spin this, positive or negative. But ultimately I’ve come to believe he was trying to restore a small piece of order to the chaos, just as we all were.

The Aftermath

I continued walking north to Prince Street, where the trains were running. I caught the N/R to Herald Square where my friends lived. The same friends who welcomed me a year ago when I first landed in NYC at 2am. I stayed with them for about 2 weeks (and then a few more with my uncle) until it was safe to return to my apartment.

We spent those two weeks in a stupor, glued to the TV, interspersed with moments of chaos. About two days later there was a potential threat to the Empire State Building, and everyone in the area had to evacuate. Not an orderly evacuation, more of a “get the fuck out of here” sprint. We quickly left and ran, south this time, back in the direction of the WTC. Officers along the way told us to keep running. Later we heard that a dog sniffed something suspicious in the Empire State building, but it turned out to be a false alarm. We ate dinner in Union Square and took the subway back.

A few days after that, a military plane flew over the city, loudly. My friends and I froze and locked eyes for a few seconds that felt like hours, and then it was gone.

Those weeks were moments of fear coupled with moving forward.

And then there was the fear of what was coming next. Given my last name, Hossain, I knew what was coming first hand. I had been in middle school during the Gulf War and had experienced a similar wave of hate directed at Muslims, so I was braced for the worst.

But the kindness I witnessed in the days that followed strengthened my love for the city. Strangers hugging each other, people offering help without being asked, a simple smile as a gesture of connection. I saw a man on the subway berating two women wearing hijab, and almost immediately the other riders came to their defense. I choose to remember the moments where New Yorkers rose to the challenge and came together for each other. For a young person still finding his place in the city, it was a profound and unexpected lesson. Experiencing that shared humanity among the tragedy cemented NYC as my home, and shaped the person I am today.