11th September 2001

Where were you the 11th September 2001? What did you do? What did you wear? I bet you remember...!

I lived in Bali. I rented a nice house in the ricefields in Ubud, the cultural center of Bali. I was living there together with my Balinese boyfriend, Komang. It wasn't a big house, just a bedroom, a bathroom a kitchen and an outside area where we had a sofa and a couple of chairs. My boyfriend had a television, and a DVD-player. He used to watch all kinds of lousy standard movies at any time of the day. We could rent like 5 films in the afternoon, and he'd watch them all before going to bed. I usually fell asleep after the second film...! I remember being fed up with the TV being on at every time of the day, and asked him to turn off this lousy movie when he turns toward me saying that it's not a movie. 'It is happening right now' he said. 'It's on the news right now!' The TV screen showed thick smoke flowing out of the first tower... then a plane came into the picture, and I could see it hitting the second tower. It was about ten o'clock local time, we had just gotten out of bed, only made a cup of strong morning coffee...

I was wearing a sarong like I always did in the morning. It was a morning ritual, slipping into my sarong, making coffee and sitting looking over the ricefields listening to the songs of the world around us. The quacking from frogs, ducks and chicken, the wrooms of motorbikes, cars and scooters, the howling of the dogs, the thump of coconuts hitting the ground, the shouting from people, the crying of babies, the laughter of girls and boys, the whistling from the wind playing in the palmtrees... etc...

This morning, all sounds were gone. Only the horrible pictures and the silent screams from all the people inside the twin towers were echoing in my brain. A high pitch note ringing without end... a silent cry from the angel of mercy...