9.11.2001, from Miami, bound for Haiti

     By Leita Kaldi, Senegal, 1993-1996

     That fateful morning I was at the Miami airport waiting to go to Haiti.  American Airlines had a near monopoly on flights to Port-au-Prince, and the check-in desk was thronged with people, mostly Haitians with enormous suitcases.  I had long ago noticed that the gate for flights to Port-au-Prince was closest to the airport security office because, someone told me, passengers there were most suspect. 

      I was perhaps the fiftieth person in line waiting to check in, but after ten minutes or so I noticed the line was not moving at all, long row of agents behind counters were not beckoning passengers forward, they were all on telephones.  Finally, I broke ranks and approached an agent. 

     “Why aren’t you checking people in?” I asked, interrupting her telephone call. 
     She put a hand over the receiver and, with wide eyes,  replied, “All flights are canceled.  The World Trade Center has been bombed … and the Pentagon.  Go home.”  

     I stared at her in disbelief, then heard the message over the loudspeaker.  

     “All flights are canceled.  The airport is closing.  Everyone must leave the airport.”  

     All heads turned toward television screens suspended overhead and the same picture burst onto every screen – planes plummeting into the twin towers, the top of the buildings disappearing in smoke.  Stunned, we all watched and listened to the incredible report.  Haitians who did not understand English whispered to each other, and I translated what I was hearing, but not believing, to a group around me.  People looked at each other questioning, still not understanding.  Police surged through the airport, ordering people to pick up their bags and leave, and finally we were herded outside where I was lucky enough to find a taxi and zip away.  The driver listened to his radio in a state of shock as he drove me back into town where I picked up my car.  I started the long drive back across the state listening to National Public Radio, trying to fathom the shocking news.  New York City had been attacked by unknown enemies, then the Pentagon, then an airplane had gone down near Philadelphia.  The truth did not hit me until I reached the toll gate to Alligator Alley.  An American flag flew from the booth where a dark-skinned older woman with sorrow in her eyes waved me through.  

“No tolls today.”  

     I burst into tears.  As I drove across the flat expanse of Florida from coast to coast, the Everglades blurred on either side and I didn’t look for any of the tropical birds I usually loved to sight.  Our country had been attacked, people were dying, killed by an unspeakably ruthless enemy.  NPR stayed on the story all day long, covering every detail.  When I arrived home four hours later I went to the TV and saw the destruction that followed the morning’s horrors.  I called a few friends and family, and ate everything in the refrigerator, seeking strength and comfort.  Then I checked the duffel bags full of medications in my car that had been destined for the hospital, looking for anything perishable to refrigerate.  I went to bed thinking that the American dream had turned into a rude awakening to the fact that we had real enemies on the planet, people who were sick of speculating, as Eliel had, why “we were there, and they were not.”  

     I made my trip to Haiti a few weeks later, after air travel resumed with the first  new security measures – careful inspection of bags and people, dogs and armed police in the airports.  People throughout Haiti expressed real sympathy for Americans, suspending their normal suspicions and resentments, understanding from their own experience the suffering of violence.

-- From "In the Valley of Atibon," by Leita Kaldi