My 9/11 Story and Testimony on French TV 20 years ago now (re-edited version) #911Memorial #NeverForget #UnitedWeStand

As this week marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I would like to re-edit and share a story depicting my experience as a close witness and former New York resident Wall Street professional working in the area.

World Financial Center, NYC. Tuesday September 11, 2001 around 8:45 am

It was a perfectly sunny and warm Indian summer day, that Tuesday morning. The Sunday before was a nice day too, clear blue sky and bright sun shining through the roof deck of my townhouse in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. From there I could see, in the distance, some of the taller buildings of downtown Manhattan including the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (WTC). My American uncle Robert, my Chinese girlfriend, a Jewish gay couple?and I were drinking rosé wine, toasting to the prolonged summer while enjoying the view. The sight of the Twin Towers was a fixed reminder of my financial work area and the investment bank that brought me over to New York from my native Paris, three years before already. I remember we toasted to that too.

Back to work at Lehman Brothers headquarter on Tuesday morning, me and other young operations risk analysts were having an early team breakfast meeting on the 48th floor of the American Express Tower just south of and very close to the World Trade Center (WTC), literally 500 feet (150 meters) away. Suddenly we heard an extremely loud and pounding noise that sounded like an explosion and saw heavy smoke coming from the first Twin Tower. I thought it was either major bombing or maybe even an earthquake. When the second tower got hit, we were evacuated in a complete state of panic. While standing outside, waiting for further safety instructions, we witnessed the horror: debris falling, the ground shaking and, most traumatizing, people jumping off the windows from the highest floors of the building. "Windows on the World", a world going mad, gone in smoke, innocent lives cut short, and me and my colleagues just watching, feeling depressed and powerless. There was hardly any cellular phone connection so I could not even reach my mother in Paris to tell her I was safe and sound. I was hoping she had not turned on the TV yet. We were still both shaken by the tragic accidental death of my father just two years before, so things started heavily resonating within me except that this time I was exposed to a collective tragedy. When suddenly the base of the first hit Twin Tower started shaking and it looked like it was most likely going to crumble, both the security and police officers exhorted civilians to just: "Run out!".

It took me hours to get home that day. At some point, I was able to use the landline in a restaurant to make phone calls but I could not dial international to reach my mother in Paris so I called uncle Robert in Queens. He was so relieved to hear from me. He had been frantic all morning, crying out loud that he would soon have to call my mom and deliver tragic news. After frantically wandering through downtown Manhattan and running into other lost and traumatized colleagues, I walked over the Manhattan bridge along with thousands of Brooklyn residents crammed like sardines trying to keep the pace and their composure while watching the city skyline all shattered with giant flames and heavy smoke. It looked like a scene from the Exodus. When I finally made it back to my small townhouse building on Bergen Street close to Atlantic Avenue, in the middle of the afternoon, Mussah the Jordanian-born owner of the limo car service next to it walked out to greet and hug me: "we were thinking about you and praying for you, thank god you’re back in one piece. See your mum was protecting you and your dad too from above". Mussah was pointing at the Hamsa hand pendant around my neck my Algerian-born mother had given me when I moved overseas to protect me "against the evil eye" as she dramatically put it. Mussah had met both my parents when they first came to visit me in New York and drove them from Kennedy International Airport. As I was exhausted and had not had anything to eat since the interrupted early morning breakfast meeting, he treated me to a snack of hummus and pita bread with iced mint tea from Sahadi's Deli. After that nice chilling break, I walked up the four stairs of the townhouse to my large floor one-bed room apartment, turned on the AC and crashed on the sofa until the early evening.????

When I woke up, I still had no idea then that later in the evening a small crew of French journalists from a major national TV channel (France 2) would cross my path in the most serendipitous manner. Like other foreign media under stricter security measures, these guys had been earlier kicked out from the ground zero site, got lost, took the wrong bridge, and they were just wandering in downtown Brooklyn in their jeep holding their professional camera. They stopped by a picturesque laundromat / café joint (only in Brooklyn!) on Smith Street where a whole crowd of local residents (including me) gathered to watch TV and chat. I did not have cable back then and since lower Manhattan central hertzian wave transmission antenna was on top of the WTC and now destroyed, there was no more regular TV reception in my area. On top of that, my girlfriend was stuck in New Jersey so I was home alone without any land phone connection either. I had to get out of the house. The owner of the Laundromat café had placed his cable TV outside right on the street block so that as many cable-less people from the neighborhood like me could watch it. It created a nice communal atmosphere, very heartwarming at such a critical time. When the owner spotted the foreign journalists and their camera, he pointed them in my direction and said in that unique Mediterranean-tinged local accent: "Talk to my man Pasquale Lorenzo, that nice French kid was there this morning, ya know, when the shit hit the fan..." American idioms always amazed me. That was a pretty big "fan" that got hit for sure and some serious "shit" this time. Right before my countrymen walked over to greet me, I was just helping a fire engine truck driver, coming from deep Brooklyn, find his directions to the Manhattan bridge. When they introduced themselves as NYC-based correspondents of France 2 channel, I first could not believe them. What were the odds of an encounter like this on that day, especially in my Brooklyn residential neighborhood? So they conducted that quick interview on the spot that was aired nationwide the next day (see archived video link below the article).

I hung out with the team the whole night. One of them was an intern starting his first week in New York. That was a "trial of fire" ("baptême du feu") as he put it in his native French. I thought to myself that applied to the poor victims and brave rescuers of the tragedy, this idiomatic expression could not sound closer to its literal meaning, unfortunately. We first came back to my air-conditioned apartment to chill a bit but this time I did not have the heart to go on my roof deck to check what the view was like. Instead, I walked them to the Brooklyn Bridge promenade that "had" the best perspective of the Manhattan skyline and the Twin Towers but suddenly turned into the apocalyptic scenery of a war zone. I explained to them the Towers were like a magnet, a point of reference and a symbol here, suddenly vanished, that it would be like Paris losing the Eiffel Tower in the blink of an eye. The older man who owned the Laundromat café came with us. When he observed the chaos with his own eyes, he started mumbling a prayer in some kind of Italian dialect and then said: "I'm sick to my stomach, this is a big scar on the face of our city, but let's not lose face." Then he hugged me in a rather fatherly manner and reminded me I still had to talk to my mother.

The crew let me use their satellite line so I could finally reach her in France.?They informed me that I should also tell her to watch their channel the next day at 1 pm local time as the interview would be aired nationwide during a special news edition. As a result, the next day, all my relatives and friends in France who had not heard from me and were concerned, could then see me "a-live" on TV. My devout aunt who was having lunch at her favorite Moroccan joint in Paris, when she saw me featured in the news, just walked over from her table to the TV set and kissed the screen like she would do with the Torah. All this was so unexpected and uncanny, but yet I could not help thinking of the victims who, across the river, were not as fortunate and privileged as I was. Broken wings, broken dreams, lives and hopes falling apart, families torn apart...

A few weeks after the tragedy came the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Ashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). I had always been a rather non-observant secular Jew, more so a "memorial Jew" so to speak, being the grandson of Holocaust victims or in a lighter manner whenever I was asked about my background at a date, I would just say "Jew-ish."As I remembered reading a Talmud interpretation explaining that the full meaning of atonement implied "repairing the damage well enough that it won’t happen again" and as I was still seeking some peace of mind after witnessing such a traumatizing?chain of events, I decided, that year, to observe the ritual of fasting and reflecting. My friend and former business school classmate David, a Tunisian-born French Sephardic Jew and social charismatic gay man who worked for Mastercard in New York, invited me to join him at a service held in a Midtown West reform LGBT-oriented synagogue he was a member of. A large part of the service was dedicated to honoring the memory of the innocent victims and brave rescuers who lost their lives on 9/11. David came to the bimah (the altar) and read the name of a dear friend of his family, Thierry Saada a 26 year-old trader who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the very top floors of the WTC and whose pregnant wife gave birth just a few days after the tragedy. That heartbreaking story made me think of James Patrick aka "Big Jim" or "Jimbo" a good-hearted 6’5 tall 30-year old Irish-American bond broker who worked at the same firm. Cantor Fitzgerald New York employees who were at work that day were the most exposed casualties when the first plane hit the South Tower. The whole on-site staff was decimated. Jim and I used to talk on the phone almost every day and had weekly happy-hour drinks when I supported the Emerging Markets Fixed Income desk at Lehman Brothers. He, too, was about to become a father as his wife was due to give birth to their first child 7 weeks after the tragedy . I still vividly remember the tone of his deep soothing voice when, just two years before, he learned I had lost my father in a tragic accident and called me to offer his sincere condolences: ?I’m so sorry for your loss, my friend, what can I say, what a tragedy??. What could I ever say in return now? That thought truly saddened me.

As she proceeded with the service, the woman rabbi of this progressive congregation included in her testimony a thought-provoking analogy drawing a parallel between Israel and the US. As she explained at the time, Israel had relatively low domestic crime but was always exposed to serious external military and terrorist attacks and geared and trained an army of?defense accordingly, while the US had a bit of a reverse situation, fighting significant domestic crime with police and law enforcement but was relatively spared of external attacks until that day. No wonder most of the news headlines at the time stated: "War on America!". That history-changing event made us rethink the world we live in and our day-to-day life, and treasure even more what we have, while we can still have it, what if there was no tomorrow, now???????????????

Surviving and witnessing that tragedy made me love and appreciate my adoptive city and fellow New Yorkers even more, admiring their strength, resilience and dignity, reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's quote: " Courage is Grace under Pressure." Most of my colleagues and managers, when we were back at work on a new site, wore "United We Stand" lapel pins and were all civil, considerate and supportive with one another. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani encouraged New Yorkers to keep shopping, dining out and being socially active to keep the city alive and proud, while managing the crisis and being there for the victims and their families. He was really in charge. Police officers and firefighters who had also suffered severe casualities worked tremendously hard together nights and days along with military soldiers and civilian volunteers to help cleaning up the debris and control all the disruptions impacting traffic, transportation and the economic life of the city. To this day, they still have all my respect, admiration and gratitude.

In retrospect, I just regret making a slightly awkward and inappropriate comment, misusing a word, during that French TV interview. Referring to prior terrorist attacks (of much smaller scale) I had witnessed in France and Israel, I claimed that I was a bit "éduqué" (educated) meaning "seasoned" I guess. I don’t know if you ever get truly "educated" on terrorism or if education can fight it. Little did I know barbaric acts would keep coming years later, especially in my homeland, like the Charlie, Hyper Casher, Bataclan and Nice killings, each time in a different shape and with a meaner and more brutal attack scheme. As my very good French American friend and waterski coach of 11 years,?Carlos Gendron, beautifully stated in his comment to my initial post on Facebook, offering some healing yet realistic perspective: "No one is really “seasoned” or prepared for such tragic events. To be sure, an annual reminder to appreciate life every day, the friendships we have, the love that is around us, if we let it in and pass it around. But our lifestyles and thinking is now altered forever, and a lot of our innocence is gone." For sure, I have never been quite the same "French kid" since, even though the Laundromat café owner kept calling me that for months after the tragedy, at times even with a slightly paternal variation: "Hey my French kid." I often think of what he said near the Brooklyn Bridge that night: "let's not lose face." Let's not lose face or faith. Let’s remember and honor the victims, the ones who fought to save them and made New York City stand tall and united again, inspiring the rest of the world. Let's reflect and come together, hopefully stronger.?I don't know whether it is appropriate to "toast" to that, perhaps in "spirit."

Jacob K. Javits Federal Plaza Building, NYC US Immigration - Tuesday July 3, 2012

More than 10 years after the tragedy, my life and surroundings had changed quite a bit. I was no longer living in Brooklyn and had moved to the Upper West Side, my Asian girlfriend and I had split up and the investment bank that initially imported me from France and later sponsored my green card had gone bankrupt. My loving American uncle Robert aka professor Robert Frank Cohen was still around, more present than ever in my life, and on that special pre-Independence Day of presidential reelection year 2012, he was walking with me to the Federal Plaza Building not far from the World Trade Center, cheering for an exciting event. Indeed, I was there to be granted my long-awaited US citizenship during a special naturalization ceremony officiated by Hilda Solis, the Secretary of Labor under President Obama’s first administration. This beautiful and smart successful woman was the “fruit” of a love story between two hard-working Latin immigrant parents who had met at a naturalization ceremony just like this one. The field of her state department combined with her beautiful family story was another symbolic reminder of what initially brought me over to this country: labor, work, opportunities, experience, growth, freedom, diversity, pursuit of happiness, reinventing myself I guess …?The speech she delivered to me and 19 other selected foreign professionals was inspiring and thought-provoking. The highlight came when she encouraged us to start looking at our city with different eyes and a new mindset, explaining that when we spot monuments, museums and landmark buildings, we should think to ourselves that these are not only American history but also OUR history now. That completely resonated with me. I could not help connecting this with 9/11. This tragic event was not just a sum of individual stories like the one I have been writing about, but OUR shared history.?Later that day as I walked through downtown Manhattan towards the water and the building I used to work in back then, feeling grateful and empowered by my new transatlantic citizen identity, I stopped by the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Even though the Towers were no longer around and being replaced by a new landmark building, they and the souls of the innocent people who perished in them, my people, would be forever marked in the stone of my memory and the fabric of our history.

Paris, France - Saturday September 11, 2021- France 24 TV set

This weekend it has been exactly 20 years now, and everything is still vivid in my mind as if it had just happened yesterday. Presently living and working in Paris and after nearly 2 years of a pandemic crisis and travel restrictions, I cannot physically visit my adopted New York City and the 9/11 Memorial that easily, but I am there in spirit for this sad anniversary. Tonight I was on French TV again as another news network France 24 channel contacted me last week and invited me on their special tribute segment to give a testimony 20 years after the tragedy. The classy host Claire Bonnichon Hilderbrandt was very kind an considerate and let me talk openly for nearly 10 minutes as she could tell it was quite emotional for me and touched on many aspects of my dual French American experience and identity. What I stressed about the resilience demonstrated by my fellow New Yorkers seemed to have heavily resonated with her editorial direction as it became the headline of the interview once posted online. ?As I was later watching the 9/11 memorial service being live streamed out of Manhattan, a musical interlude performed by young virtuoso violonist Randall Goosby entitled ??Adoration?? particularly caught the attention of my beautiful 5 year-old daughter Liora (??My Light?? in Hebrew). She then said ??mais c’est triste cette musique, papa?? (but this music sounds sad, daddy) and proceeded asking if I had a lost a friend. Well, I surely lost many friends and a part of me with them, I thought, not quite sure how to approach the subject with such a young child. ?But as I feel blessed to have become a parent many years after the tragedy, my heart goes not only to the victims but also to their children as some of them were too little to even remember one of their deceased parents or were not even born yet when their expectant mothers lost their husbands in the tragedy. How challenging it must have been growing up missing a loving parent and role model gone way too soon, and now entering young adulthood. I salute their strength and courage, and as we just marked the beginning of Rosh Ashanah, Jewish New Year 5782, I wish them not just a good year but also happiness, success, tranquility, love and all the best for at least the next two decades and even longer, hoping they and their future children will stay and grow safe in a more peaceful world.

Never Forget.

#911Memorial

Special thanks to: My American uncle, writing mentor and editor, professor Robert Frank Cohen, former France 2 reporter and US correspondent?Tristan Le Braz?for conducting the original September 11, 2001 TV interview, providing moral support and becoming a solid New York friend for many years and France 24 journalist Claire Bonnichon Hilderbrandt for having me on their special tribute segment on September 11, 2021. ?

Pascal Lorenzo Sabattier?is a Franco-American consultant, contributing writer and translator who divides his time between New York and Paris. He has worked for several major investment banks including Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas and presently holds a finance change leader position at Onepoint, a French consulting firm. Performing and recording under the moniker Pascalito, he is also a pop-jazz vocalist, songwriter and bandleader who has released four albums, produced by his independent label?Neostalgia Music. Some of his original works have been licensed and featured in the cable network TV shows?Burn Notice?(USA),?Damages?(FX) and?NCIS Los Angeles?(CBS).