“Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them.”

-- Paul Auster

I cannot stress how important Paul Auster was to me during my formative years at the University of Pittsburgh as a young writer soaking up any and all kinds of literature. I first read him in a detective fiction class. The class began with Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and ended with Auster. He was filed under post-modern detective fiction. I read New York Trilogy and then read everything else I could get my hands on by him that summer. I also watched Smoke a dozen times and managed to get through Blue in the Face once.

This quote above, from The Locked Room which is the third in the New York trilogy, has stayed with me since the first time I read it. Have my experiences been so unique that they were presented to me only because I was able to have them? Certainly not every day. But I think my own 9/11 story qualifies, and it's what I always come back to around this time of year.

Anyone who is old enough to remember knows where they were. It was my generation's "Where were you when Kennedy was shot," moment. I was driving to the mall to get a haircut. Howard Stern was on the radio. The mood was decidedly different from the usual louche antics. At first, I thought the story was some weird prank. I suspect they did, too.

Word had spread by the time I got to the salon because they were playing live radio instead of their piped in music. We didn't really talk about it, just listened with the scissor snips punctuating the commentary. I drove home, went upstairs to my bedroom, and stared at CNN for a while, watching it unfold in real time. It makes me long for the days before social media without the running commentary from citizen pundits. For an hour I ran up a long distance bill, talking to my pen pal, a British Indian named Bani. I was planning to see her a few days later, which is where my 9/11 story really starts.

We’d been pen pals for a couple of years and would make each other mix tapes, as one did back in the days before mp3s were rampant. Bani introduced me to some really great music. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. Divine Comedy. Cornershop. In one of her letters, I remember her raving about a new band she’d just seen that was going to blow up called Coldplay. Three out of four ain’t bad I guess. A few months before I went to London, she put "Everything's not lost," a track off of Parachutes on a mix tape. I still love the track even though  I’ve never been a Coldplay fan. It just managed to find a home in my brain because of the time I heard it.

If you ever feel neglected
If you think all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons yeah
Hoping everything's not lost

I took my mom to church that afternoon to pray. My dad, who was still a news reporter at the time, had the unfortunate task of covering the aftermath of Flight 93. Heads up, conspiracy theorists: It actually happened. He was there at the site.  I saw him reporting it live.

The next day he was officially on vacation. We (me, my brother and dad and mom) were all going to London on 9/13. We weren't flying direct. We had a connecting flight in Philly on U.S. Air. Our flight to Philly was on the now defunct AirTran, and it was clear they wouldn’t be flying that week. I badgered my dad into renting a car, telling the family I’d drive to Philly like a bat out of hell so we wouldn’t miss our flight.

I don’t know if we were one of the first international flights out of Philadelphia airport or not but when we arrived, the place looked like it hadn’t seen a maintenance crew in six months. Stranded passengers had moved beyond sorrow and horror and were just plain angry. The crew and airline workers were harried and scared, clearly unprepared for a situation of that magnitude. It was like combining the busy time of Christmas with the last flights out of Saigon kind of feeling. Everyone was on edge except for a group of drunken Irish tourists who were glad to be alive and sang at me as they staggered back to the bar in the connecting hotel. Some stereotypes ring true.  

Once we landed in London, I learned what it means to be allies. My mom would ask someone for directions and hearing American english, that person would express their condolences unprompted. Soho Square was an impromptu memorial, filled with candles, flowers and cards. One card I still remember had a Union Jack and American flag on it, expressing love from Mr. England and Mrs. America.

It was as moving as it was absurd. Especially since we were on vacation and doing the normal touristy things. We dined on very good Persian food in West London while newspaper headlines spoke of war, and proclaiming Prime Minister Tony Blair considered closing the border.

At EasyEverything, we checked emails to hear from friends back home while Blur’s “Tender,” played.

Come on, come on, come on
Get through it
Come on, come on, come on
Love's the greatest thing

Two days later, I met Bani on Oxford Street outside TopShop. We were supposed to meet inside, but because security was so high and someone had left a backpack unattended, they’d evacuated the place. It was pandemonium on a street that was chaos on a good day. At first, I couldn’t understand why someone would want to bomb TopShop. Then the silliness of that thought made me laugh uncontrollably. How could any one know that in 2013, a mall in Kenya had a terrorist ttack that killed more than 70 and wounding around 200.

At the time it seemed a surreal inconvenience. I managed to find her in the tumult. Nervous at first, I soon relaxed, realizing we got on well in person as much as in letters and on the phone. We talked about everything except what was going on. I was a bit tired from jet lag but it was getting better all the time. I’d been to London just a few years before, so it wasn't completely unfamiliar to me. We ended up spending the entire day just wandering around. Camden. Soho. Trafalgar. Bloomsbury. Waterloo Station. Southwark. Places I didn't know, too. We walked so much I thought I was going to drop. All the while we talked and talked.

She was easy to talk to, easy to sit and say nothing to as well. Her presence was a welcome comfort I hadn’t asked for but was grateful to receive. Somehow just getting a water at Sainsbury’s and going about our day of doing nothing was better than addressing the atrocity through some serious display of emotion. And anyway, what was there to say, really?

We’d been walking around the London Eye when a man with a camera and a woman with a microphone came up to us.

“Excuse me, I’m with the BBC. I was wondering if I could interview you?”

Shit. How did they know? What could I say? I’m still processing it. Terrorists did it, sure,  but who? And how could I express the sorrow I felt? And anger? I mean they killed foreigners, too, not just Americans. My New York friends were frantically trying to find their loved ones or even get back home. How on Earth could I, an American in London possibly process—

“We’re doing a documentary on Britain’s best loved children’s poems. Would you two care to read “On the Ning Nang Nong?”

Britain’s best loved children’s poems? I looked at Bani, looked back at the crew.

Uh, sure. I said. There’s just one problem. I'm not English.

The BBC people looked as if they’d been wandering around the whole day trying to find people who would participate in this documentary. No words were spoken. They just exchanged glances and made a pact to carry on.

“Right,” the woman said. “Here’s what we’ll do, yeah?” She points to Bani. “You read each line.” And then she points to me. “And you just read the last word of each line. All we need is an intro. The first stanza'll do.”

She handed us a print out of the poem. I scanned it. Hoping I wouldn’t fuck up.

Nong. Bong. Boo. Ning.

I think I attempted to somewhat sound as if I might perhaps have not in fact been American by birth but maybe, if you had a cold and couldn't hear very well, perhaps, might resemble someone who might have been from some unidentifiable part of the U.K. I doubt it worked.

We did two takes, and they said they had what they needed, thanks. After that, we walked a bit more, ending up at Pizza Express for dinner. I walked her to the tube and after an awkward embrace, we went our separate ways.

I don’t know if it was the generally weird feeling in the air, or whether one or both of us might have harbored a secret crush on each other that dissipated upon meeting in person. Whatever it was, I never saw her again, even though I had another ten days in London.

When I got back, the letters tapered off. I moved down south a few weeks later. She was at school, I was going back to school. Both of us had lives to attend to. If 9/11 didn’t bring us together it didn’t tear us apart either. It was just a small moment, in a larger, horrible moment.

Does this story have a happy ending? I like to think so. A few months after I started school, Bani emailed me, letting me know that Britain’s Best Loved Children’s Poems did indeed air, and we were indeed in it.  At least I can say I was on the BBC.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

-Spike Milligan