I have retold this story so many times that I struggle to recall all the details as opposed to the most salacious highlights I can rattle off in a room full of friends or coworkers struggling to tell their story. When I remember that day, the feelings remain prominent giving me only about 10 minutes worth of events in a day that seemed to last forever.
I was in Prague when everything occurred. Dawn and I just arrived in the country so she could work on her schooling. While she was in class, I would do contract work from my Compaq laptop that was the most expensive thing we owned at the time. It was the second day of her program and I had just spent most of the day in a cafe. I would drink cheap scotch while I built websites for customers on the other side of the world. There was no Wi-Fi in those days and most of the Internet cafes charged enough that it was not economical to remain connected the whole time. As I walked toward Dawn’s school, which was located in an apartment-like building, everything had already happened. All the planes hit and the towers were about to collapse.
I walked slightly buzzed from my last round of scotch and I was in complete innocent ignorance. I checked the date-time stamps on my photos from that day. I took this photo of the John Hess memorial on my way to meet Dawn. It was right outside one of the cafes I frequented. I think I liked this angle because of the church in the background, but more importantly, there was a bird on his head. Like I said, innocent ignorance.
I stood outside the building, waiting for Dawn to emerge. Two of her fellow students were already outside. They were chatting to each other passionately, but I minded my own business, not knowing their names or wanting to know them. One of them approached me, “Are you Dawn Manning’s husband?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea what is going on?” she said with wide eyes and flared nostrils.
My countenance back then was always quick to smile and joke. I grinned and shook my head, “What’s going on?”
“There are major attacks on America right now and New York, Washington, and Pittsburgh have all been bombed.”
This is where I lost my grin. “What? By who?”
“Iraq, North Korea, and China have all teamed up to attack America!”
This is where my grin came back. “Come on. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious.”
Just then, another student popped out the front door and yelled, “They’ve got a TV upstairs!”
The two girls ran inside and I followed them. We busted into someone’s apartment that was too small for the nearly dozen people cramming in there. On a small TV that could not have been more than 19 inches, there were the twin towers burning. Everything was in Czech. Shock. Fear. Chills. Everything overcame me. Dawn was there too. I cannot even remember what we said to each other. We could not remove our eyes from the TV.
Someone who spoke Czech and English tried to translate for us. I kept asking questions that resulted in awkward looks. “What did they say about the Chinese?” “What about Pittsburgh?” At some point, the towers collapsed. I remember girls letting out panicky cries.
I cannot recall how long we stood there. At some point, we must have realized how intrusive we were in the stranger’s apartment. Dawn and I headed to an Internet cafe. Nothing worked. Drudge was down along with virtually every other news site. E-mail was impossible. After hitting every site we could think of, CNN finally worked and displayed a white page with roughly a half dozen bullet points on the known facts.
The rest of the day is a complete blur. We tried calling home, but the phones did not work either. We made it to a few bars and watched news in Czech and sometimes in English depending on the other customers.
We talk about never forgetting, but I cannot recall all the events from that day. Instead, I remember the feelings mixed with highlights. It is tough to write only about that day without getting into the aftermath and mixing it with hindsight. I cannot remember how the day ended, only that we wandered through the medieval streets of Prague with anxiety, realizing that the world would never be the same again.
