A Scotsman on loan to the bureau burst through the door. He was laughing. "All yur woork’s gawn fer naught," he said in thickest Glaswegian. "Soom booger’s just flown his wee plane intae the World Trade Center." I wandered—none too urgently at first—out to the newsroom to watch the horror unfold; the impact of the second plane, live on television, the news of other hijacks, other crashes, the riveting and heart-stopping implosion of the gleaming towers, the little-boy-lost-look on the face of George Bush Jr as he was told the news. From Delhi to Dubai, Washington to Beijing, the world switched on its TVs and surfed the dreadful images of "Nine Eleven". We heard the endless speculation of clueless commentators (myself soon to join their ranks) and were shown disgusting canards like the infamous video of one or two Palestinians celebrating America’s pain, presented by inference—at the time—as the Muslim world’s reaction to events. In fact, people from every one of Samuel Huntington’s ‘civilisations’—Hindus, Christians, Chinese—felt very mixed emotions at seeing the Superpower humbled so.
The phrases "serves them right" or "now they know what we go through" crept into discussions, along with expressions of shock and grief. The justifiably angry rhetoric from Washington went on, unaware of the world’s conflicting yet equally sincerely held views. Musharraf, Chirac, Vajpayee and Blair, all—properly—extended the hand of friendship to America.
We were all Americans for a while. No longer, I am afraid. Iraq is not Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein is no bin Laden. The world may have changed forever on September 11, 2001, but the ability of imperial powers to be dreadfully, awfully wrong has not.
