It was so coinidental, I was fifteen years old, and was about to go home with friends after what had been an ordinary school day.

We were in the Design Technology building when I wanted to go enquire about a new folder from one of my teachers, only to hear the radio saying “and here’s an update on the recent plane crash in Manhattan New York City” and I just let out a gasp followed by a typical teenage “whoa!”. The teacher replied “yeh can you believe it? Unbelievable eh…”.

I kinda walked out quickly to get to my friend I was walking with that day, and told him “there was a plane crash in new york city, like in the middle of the city” and our view of what ‘the city’ was in those days was essentially what we would describe as ‘the parts with the most hustle and bustle, with yellow taxis behind one another in traffic and people walking or rushing with mobile phones or fast food in their hands’.

Its only when I got home that I realised what had actually happened. I got straight in and my Dad called me to the front room, incidentally I was rushing there to ask him and my mum if they knew what happened.

He just said “look look” as highlights of the second plane were shown. Initially I thought perhaps this was happening all day, that planes were just crashing everywhere in the USA because ‘demands werent being met’ or something like that.

Nonetheless, my dad told me about every attack to my shock and horror.

I immediately grabbed the house phone and called the fried I’d walked home with, we were talking about it and exachanging what we reckon may have happened, who might have done, why on earth woul they do it, etc etc.

Then all of a sudden my friend goes “apparently its the Muslims”, and his mum in the background was going “look what they’ve gone and done, tell Mustafa good job” in a sarcastic voice…

I didn’t know what to say.

I watched the news pretty much the whole night, and switched to it in the morning.

Went to school, we had an assembly with the headmaster (principal) and all around school people were already discussing their theories as to what happened, who did it and why they may have done it.

What surprises me to this day is how quickly the headline “Muslim groups assumed responsibility” suddenly flooded onto the screen that day, at like 4/5pm which would’ve been roughly midday in NYC, and thinking “what? Where did that come from?”

The rest is history really, I couldn’t really eat the rest of the day, just tried to sleep, although that night I just felt anxious and worried thinking “this is America that’s just been attacked, they’re not going to walk away, they’re going to do something about it”.