Oriana Fallaci’s politically-incorrect posthumous memoirs, part 1
by Oriana Fallaci
English translation by Letizia Grasso
You ask me to speak, this time. You ask me to break, at least on this occasion, my self imposed silence. Which I have imposed on myself for years in order not to be sucked into the fray. And I am doing it. Because I have heard that even in Italy some are rejoicing, like I saw the Palestinians rejoice on TV the other night. “Victory, Victory!”. Men, women, children. Admitting that one who is capable of such an act can be defined a Man, Woman or Child. I have heard that some fat cats, politicians or so-called politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, and other individuals that do not deserve the classification of being a citizen, have been acting substantially in the same manner as those in Gaza. They say: “Good, the Americans deserve it!”. And I am very, very, very angry. With a cold furious anger, lucid and rational. An anger that eliminates every obstacle, every indulgence. That compels me to respond to them and above all to spit on them. I spit on them. As angry as I, the American poet Maya Angelou yesterday roared: “Be angry. It’s good to be angry, it’s healthy.” I don’t know if it is healthy for me to be angry, but I know it is not going to be healthy for them, the admirers of Osama Bin Laden, and for those who express understanding or sympathy or solidarity for him. You have lit a fuse which for too long has been harboring the desire to explode. You will see. You also ask me to tell how I have lived this Apocalypse. To give my story. I will therefore start with that.
I was at home, my home in the center of Manhattan, and at nine o’clock on the dot, I had a sensation of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but certainly concerned me. The sensation that one feels in war, as a matter of fact in combat, when with every pores of your skin you feel the incoming bullet or rocket, and your ears perk up and you scream to those next to you: “Down! Get down!”. I pushed the sensation aside. I was not in Vietnam, I was not in one of the innumerable fucking wars that since WWII have violated my life! I was in New York, by gosh, on a marvelous September morning, in the year 2001. However, the sensation continued to assail me, inexplicably, and I did something I never do in the morning, I turned on my TV. The audio was not working. The video yes. On every channel, and I have almost 100 channels, it was the same scene, you saw a tower in the World Trade Center that was burning like a gigantic match. A short circuit? A lost small plane? Or else a premeditated act of terrorism? Almost paralyzed, I stared and while I stared, I posed those questions, while on the screen appeared a plane. White and big, an airliner. It was flying very low. Flying low it was going towards the second tower like a bomber aiming at it’s objective, and throwing himself on it. I understood. I understood also because in that instant, the audio returned and transmitted a chorus of savage screams. Repeated, savage, “God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God, GOD!” And the plane buried itself in the second tower like a knife entering a butter cake.It was 9:15 now. Don’t ask what I felt during those 15 minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember if certain things I saw on the first tower or the second. People, who in order to escape the flames, threw themselves from the windows of the 80th and 90th floors, for example. They broke the window panes, climbed out and jumped, like parachuters out of planes. And they came down so slowly. Moving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they looked like they were swimming. And they seemed to hang there forever. Around the thirtieth floor, they accelerated. They started gesticulating desperately, I suppose, regretting their action, almost as if they were screaming help, help. And perhaps, they really were screaming it. Finally they hit with blunt force and paf! You know, I thought I had seen it all in the wars. I considered myself vaccinated from wars and war atrocities, and in substance I am. Nothing surprises me any more. Not even when I get angry, not even when I become disdainful. But in wars I have always seen people that get killed. I have never seen people who die by killing themselves, that is by throwing themselves without a parachute from the 80th, 90th or 100th floor. In wars, furthermore, I have always seen things that explode. That explode like a fan.
And I have always heard a great deal of noise. Those two towers, instead, did non explode. The first one imploded, it swallowed itself. The second one fused, it dissolved. Because of the heat, it dissolved just like a pat of butter placed on a flame. It all happened, it seemed to me, in deadly silence. Is it possible? Was the silenze really there, or was it inside of me? I must also tell you that in wars, I have always seen a limited number of casualties. Every battle, 200 or 300 dead. At most 400. Like in Dak To, in Vietnam. And when the battle is over, the Americans began gathering them and counting them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, where I was wounded, they gathered at least 800 bodies. Thinking I was also dead they threw me in the morgue, the cadavers that soon piled up around and on top of me, soon seemed like a deluge. Well, in those two towers worked almost 50,000 people. And very few had the time to evacuate. The elevators didn’t work, and to descend from the top floors one needed an eternity, flames permitting. We will never know the number of dead. (forty thousand? Fifty thousand?) The Americans will never say, in order not to underline the intensity of this apocalysm. To deny Osama Bin Laden satisfaction and encouragement for other apocalypses. Further, the two abysses that have absorbed the tens of thousands of creatures are too deep. At best, workers will dig out pieces assorted pieces, a nose here, a finger there. Or else a piece of slime that seems like ground coffee and instead is organic matter. The residue of bodies which where pulverized in an instant. Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani sent another ten thousand body bags, but they’re unused.