As the hour of the anniversary approached, Chris Aldama walked south on Varick Street carrying a single red rose in his hand and an army-issue backpack on his shoulders.
He came to remember his cousin, Juan, a 48-year-old firefighter from New Jersey, who died in the north tower during the Sept. 11 attacks, but also to honour the soldiers that were killed in the faraway wars launched in their wake, and in which he served.
As the world marked the 10-year anniversary of the attacks, the grief was as interconnected as it was intense, with Barack Obama visiting all three sites still scarred by the deadliest act of terrorism in the country’s history: Washington, Pennsylvania, New York.
“These past 10 years tell a story of resilience,” the President declared at the end of the day. “… It will be said of us that we kept that faith; that we took a painful blow, and emerged stronger.”
Yet here, in New York, where families of victims gathered once again in an effort to come to grips with their collective trauma, something had changed. Some had begun to question the point of continuing to commemorate something that can never be forgotten.
The tattoos and memorial T-shirts paying tribute to their loved ones have begun to fade. Some relatives spoke of their exhaustion with the September ritual of turning private grief into public remembrance, and of simply wanting to get on with their lives.
“I did what I could do,” Mr. Aldama said of his decision in 2001 to enlist in the military and later fight in Iraq, attempting to avenge his cousin’s death in a place that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. “It’s still not enough,” he whispered.
Talat Hamdani’s son Mohammad was killed when he rushed toward the trade centre to help. The 23-year-old paramedic was subsequently accused of helping orchestrate the attacks, but ultimately cleared by Congress and lauded as a hero after a long and public battle by Ms. Hamdani, who read his name as part of a traditional roll call of the dead: 2,977 victims killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11th, as well as six killed in the first terror attack on the trade centre in 1993.
“Dwelling on the past does not serve any purpose,” Ms. Hamdani said after she had returned home. “We have grieved enough these last 10 years. Let us live now.”
New York City itself seemed a haunted place, its streets strangely empty around the World Trade Center site and studded with police checkpoints, spurred by reports of a renewed terror threat.
“We were just walking around like zombies in a catatonic state today,” Vito Garfi recounted after leaving the site, where two man-made waterfalls now stand at a remembrance in the footprint of the fallen towers, nestled in white oak trees. At the memorial site, which opens to the public for the first time Monday, the reflecting pools are framed by bronze panels etched with the 2,983 names of all the dead, including Mr. Garfi’s brother, Frank. Many used paper and pencil to make imprints of their loved ones’ names.
Mr. Obama and former president George W. Bush stood side-by-side at ground zero for the first time, as a silver bell rang twice to commemorate the exact moment when each of the two jetliners struck the towers.
Mr. Obama read Psalm 46, which refers to God as “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Mr. Bush invoked Abraham Lincoln, quoting his letter to a widow whose five sons died during the American civil war.
