Photo: Robin Lubbock/WBUR Fall and Rise: the story of 9/11
by Mitchell Zuckoff (HarperCollins, £25.00)
Felix M. Larkin
Not very often do I read a book that I know will live forever in my memory. This is one such book.
It tells the stories of a few of the victims of the terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001 – some who survived and some who did not, some who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and some who as ‘first responders’ knowingly sped into danger because it was their duty to do so (as firemen, paramedicals, etc.) and they did not flinch from doing their duty.
One of those ‘first responders’ who died was the Franciscan priest, Fr Mychal Judge, a chaplain in the New York Fire Department. The photograph of his slumped body being carried from the World Trade Centre in New York is one of the iconic images of 9/11.
Hijackers
The terrorists hijacked four planes, two of which they flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade centre and the third attacked the Pentagon in Washington – home of the US Department of Defence.
The fourth, apparently also destined for Washington, never reached its intended target since the passengers tried to overpower the hijackers and in the melee it crashed in open countryside near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all on board. Those passengers sacrificed themselves to avert a greater catastrophe.
Not including the terrorists, 2,977 men, women and children are known to have died either in the planes or on the ground.
The fourth, apparently also destined for Washington, never reached its intended target since the passengers tried to overpower the hijackers”
Zuckoff, however, captures the appalling tragedy of 9/11 not merely by reciting the grim statistics but by relating the personal – indeed, intimate – experience of the individuals whom he has chosen to write about. Their stories are of indescribable suffering, but also of extreme bravery and many acts of kindness. Events like 9/11 show us the best of humankind as well as the worst.
Of particular interest to us in Ireland are the stories of Ron Clifford and his sister Ruth, natives of Co. Cork, who by 2001 had been living in America for 20 and 30 years respectively.
Ron was in the World Trade Centre and survived, and distinguished himself by selflessly assisting a very severely burnt woman who weeks later sadly died of her injuries. Ruth and her four-year-old daughter were, by coincidence, aboard one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre and both perished. What was recovered of their remains – and it was not a lot – are buried in Co. Cork.
Zuckoff, in the introduction to this book, states that his aim is “to delay the descent of 9/11 into the well of history” – by which he means the detachment, even indifference, of history. He has succeeded admirably in that.
At times, I was moved to tears by his book – but also angered that there are people, including in our own country, who think that a political objective justifies killing and maiming their fellow human beings.
This book is a testament to the obscenity of such thinking.