I placed just one more novel on the top of the mound of clothes in my case. I pack lightly, but work trips mean jackets and shoes that I wouldn’t normally need. I groaned inwardly about the thought of getting on a plane, being on the road, psyching myself up for speaking engagements, and turning on the red light to perform in meetings. All while trying to stay on top of – well, catch up on – the day job. 

I turned to look at my husband, sat on the bed watching me perform my small rituals. ‘What?’ I asked him. ‘Oh nothing’, he brushed off my question. I paused; I could tell it wasn’t nothing. I push aside tomorrow’s travel clothes and snuggle up next to him, competing with our border collie for space and attention. ‘I know it’s silly, but it’s the fact you’re flying on 9/11. Flying to the US on 9/11.’ 

I’d had the same thought when I rustled together my travel documents from the depths of an email folder earlier in the week. I guess it must have occurred to me when I booked the flight, but it came back into focus as I gathered the itinerary. It hadn’t been lost on my American husband, either. 

I was 24 when the Twin Towers fell. I’d just finished chairing a seminar on what we all thought was the big new threat facing governments and companies – the anti-capitalism protests that were getting more organised and heated. Smashed windows, major disruptions to business operations, clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers, and flash points of violence on the margins. 

As I said goodbye to the last seminar guest and gathered up the discarded agendas, I left the conference room in our shared office and walked down the corridor past neighbouring organisations. When I got to our space, I could see people gathered around a television. A plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. I stood and watched with a handful of people who had stopped work. 

In my memory, I’d barely been there a couple of minutes before the second plane struck, but I know enough not to trust my sense of time. What I do clearly remember is saying aloud, but to myself: ‘That looks like the work of Osama Bin Laden.’ 

It would make sense for me to have heard of him. I’d been in think tank land for two years, working on foreign and security policy. I was writing my first pamphlet on international kidnapping, inspired by my own family’s experience of having a family member kidnapped by terrorists in Colombia. But we all thought terrorism was yesterday’s news, hence the seminar on anti-capitalism protests. 

9/11 marked a turning point in my life. It didn’t tear my family apart, leave me homeless, or compel me to sign up to serve in distant wars like some of the Americans I have come to know and admire. It was only when I lived in the US fifteen years later that I truly understood how profoundly the attack had impacted the country, especially New Yorkers. 

My path had already been set when my uncle was kidnapped during my first year at university, opening my naïve eyes to how bad things happening on the other side of the world can so intimately impact ordinary families like mine. But 9/11 cleared the path ahead to enable me to double down on this mission. Not only did it fire up my curious mind, but it also created a funding environment that supported what has become my life’s work. 

Times change, of course, and so do our adversaries. Terrorism hasn’t gone away, and depending on what you’re doing and where you’re operating, it is very much still a concern. In my time working with hostages, I supported scores whose lives had also been changed forever by terrorists taking their freedom – and sometimes their lives – in the name of their own declared mission. But in the surveys I run with Chief Security Officers today, they no longer rank terrorism as a top security risk as they did in the decade that followed 9/11.

I haven’t thought much about 9/11 in the last few years. I’ve noticed in my peripheral vision as anniversaries were marked, but I haven’t stopped to take stock of the enormity of what happened. Like many of the people I call colleagues and friends in the security industry, I keep moving forward, driven by a silent mission so profound it remains unspoken most of the time. 

Last night as I battled jet lag, I made the conscious decision to remember. I opened YouTube and clicked on one of the many videos promoted on my feed over the last few days. 

A woman who walked down 78 floors spoke quietly and carefully about the man who encouraged her to keep going, the badly injured woman in front of her on the staircase whose blood she walked through all the way down, the cold terror of dying alone in the apparent safety of her apartment a few blocks away when the first Tower fell and its debris enveloped her building, sending her into dark silence. 

A cameraman who arrived just as that Tower fell, filming a single 29-minute beta film cassette of the chaos. He asked the people he came across the same simple question, ‘What just happened?’ Many couldn’t speak, didn’t want to describe, or couldn’t process what they had witnessed. The words that others used, ‘chaos’, ‘Armageddon’. 

I don’t remember seeing this kind of footage in the days and weeks that followed 9/11. We didn’t have streaming access in those days, and rolling news was much less common in the UK than the US. I’m glad I couldn’t scroll myself down a rabbit hole, devouring every shaky video, first-hand account, or disturbing image. When we are absorbed by horror, we become numb to it. 

My memories are fewer but clearer; standing at the television screen, the image of the second plane seconds before it hit the South Tower on the front pages of every newspaper the next day, a crater in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the voices of its passengers spending their final moments alive telling family members how much they love them. I feel a lump in my throat as I type those words, so deeply engrained are those memories. 

After two or three videos, I close my laptop. There are hundreds or thousands of stories yet to hear, videos to watch, and they must be preserved. I am reminded of the importance of journalists who film, record, and ask the questions. To forget is to deny, fail to learn, and let bad people win.

The act of remembering is deeply personal. I choose to remember slowly, carefully, and with intention. When I remember, I wish to act as a curator, not a viewer. I want to hear one story at a time, understand how ordinary lives like mine can be so profoundly impacted when they are drawn into someone else’s conflict.  And somehow, the less I know, the more I understand. The smaller the story, the bigger the impact.