The
terrorists entered America from behind the backdrop of that virtual city
movie set of Peter Weir's film "The Truman Show" where the hero
made his bid to escape once he realized that his entire life was a simulation
for a television series. The terrorists entered through the dome that
protected the city from the rest of the world that took so much interest
in what was going on there, just as many foreigners, especially in the
third world countries, are fascinated with American society and wish to
live there. The terrorists walked unharmed under the hoses that created
the false strong showers of rain on the film set; they mingled among the
crowd of extras under the arc lights, unafraid either of being detected
by the hidden small surveillance cameras in the airports and hotels or
of leaving their credit card paper trail, because they knew they were
flying on a one way ticket to heaven. Having learned to fly on flight
simulators, with no need to know how to take off or land, they caused
a terrific impact by crashing into the symbolic center of capitalism,
which promised many Americans a life in paradise on earth. The impact
caused the towers to implode upon themselves—a fitting narcissistic
image for the collapse of a capitalist icon. The terrifying shower of
debris rained down upon the pedestrians and rolled through the narrow
streets of the business district like lava, enveloping the running crowds
as they looked up at the wrath of their own Babylonian creation. The spectacle
effect of the disaster did not go unnoticed as many commentators immediately
referred to the latest Hollywood action thrillers and wondered where was
Batman and Bruce Willis on this day? For some strange reasons the disaster
had the effect of throwing me further back into the early history of American
cinema. I thought of King Kong on the Empire State building while the
sight of the Afro-American workers emerging out of the white dust made
them resemble reverse pale stereotypes of the "Jazz Singer."
Here was the ultimate irony: the city that considered itself the center of the world was used to celebrating its self-satisfaction with the largest of extravagant parades. The only nation to have invented the ticker-tape parades to commemorate war heroes and such great national achievements as moon landings, showered its heroes with shredded paper confetti, a testimony to a society that can afford to waste. But now, for one morning, and totally unexpectedly, the paper had turned into stones, glass and steel in a disaster that did not come from below (a bomb in the subway) or in the street (as it does in human-scale cities), but from above, from the very symbols that the capitalist society had set as its goals to reach when it decided that there is a strong bond between the American definition of pride and happiness and the upward graph of the Dow Jones Index.