My View of September 11, 2001 in Kathmandu, Nepal

September 11,2001 means different things to different people. The event which changes the shape of foreign policy worldwide, the way of air travel and foreign relations, is also known as a “Kennedy assassination” moment of the new generation. A defining moment which brought a lot of change.

People remember where they were and what they were doing when the towers were hit. They remember the feeling when they saw people jumping out of the burning building to save themselves, the firemen running towards the building.

September 11, 2001 was just another regular for me, a computer science student inKathmandu. I got up at 6 AM, had breakfast and left for school. After classes were over for the day at 2:30 PM, me and my boyfriend went out for a little window shopping at the market district. Then around 4PM I went home.

As I entered my home, things were weirdly quite. Usually my brother comes home before me and almost shakes the house with his heavy metal music. I thought he must be late. I went to the TV room to check on the news. I saw that my brother and my father were there staring at the TV, they didn’t even notice me as I entered the room.

There on CNN, I could see a plane going on and hitting the first tower and then after sometime the second tower was hit.

I stood there is horror. My first thought was, this is a horrible accident. How can anyone make the mistake of hitting a building with a plane?? My father who had served in Israel-Lebanon border as a UN Peace Keeper seemed to know that what he is seeing is something more then an accident. His experienced could see the long hands of terrorism which I could not.

It took me an hour to realize that terrorists have attacked . I was scared and angry. Then all of a sudden I started crying. My dad tried to console me, but I would not listen. I kept on saying “we are all going to die. Now third world war has begun”.

I did not sleep that night. The pictures of the towers falling down kept on playing on my head. I was angry that people could kill so many innocents in a moment.

Next day our national newspaper had the incident on its front page, with big headlines. September 11, 2001 firmly placed on minds of Nepalese as a terrible tragedy which happened thousands of miles away.

All of friends in college were talking about the incident and no one was interested in what the professor had to say during the lecture. After the classes were over I met my boyfriend I went on and on about how I was angry and how I feel that the world has changed for worse. He listened to me calmly and suggested I should take time to reflect.

I did. I thought about why this happened and what would happen next. Page of my diary were filled with my fears and concerns. Every year on Sept 11, I remember that day five years back. I don’t have answers on why it happened but I can see that the world has changed, for better or worse.