I would like to thank Professor Volk and the other faculty members and departments for sponsoring and organizing this event… in light of the current state of the world and the crucial election we have coming up in just a few short weeks, I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to share some personal reflections about these two interrelated dates, September 11, 2001 and September 11, 1973.

    On the evening of September 11, 2007 I went to a candlelight vigil at the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile. The vigil—which occurs annually—was to honor and commemorate the victims who had been brutally tortured and killed in the stadium when it served as a detention center under Pinochet's violent regime. Being an eager study abroad student, who had based my decision to go to Santiago on the opportunity to study more closely and from a different perspective the significance of this day in Chile's history, I found it my moral and academic obligation to partake in as many events as possible.

I arrived to the National Stadium that evening exhausted from a long day of observing a variety of commemorations in several key historical sights throughout the city. At that point, I was so wrapped up in the meanings and memories of September 11, 1973 that the 6th anniversary of September 11, 2001 had honestly not crossed my mind. But how was that possible?  How could I have gone the entire day without even once taking a second to remember the dark cloud of ash and smoke that followed me home?..... The day that changed my hometown, my country's credibility and the course of history forever?  I was aware of the historical parallels between the two September 11's… I had engaged in many discussions with professors, family members and friends about the implications and consequences of both these dates—hell I had even done a project on it—but being in Chile and listening to the memories of others seemed to overshadow all of my memories of Sept 11, 2001, a day, which I had personally experienced.

Who knows why I hadn't thought about it until that moment, but as soon as I arrived at the gates that surround the National Stadium and saw the photos of the faces of those who were disappeared, the black and white images with the words "Donde estan?"…. and as soon as I saw the tiny white candles and how they illuminated the faces with a yellow hue, I couldn't help but conjure up a very personal memory of September 14, 2001….

On September 14, 2001 I found myself at another candlelight vigil.  This one, however, was on 50th street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan and I was fourteen, not twenty. I was with my mom, my twin sister and several very close family friends.  It was a warm New York evening…those typical New York Indian summer evenings when everyone still lingers on his or her stoops relishing in the last weeks of summer. On this evening, those same New Yorkers were sitting on their stoops, lining their fire escapes, and standing still on the sidewalks, but this time they were holding small white candles and color-print portraits of missing loved ones from three days before.

My family and our friends were in the neighborhood to do exactly what our—Beloved (say with irony) mayor Rudy Giuliani had told us all to do—NEW YORK DIVERSIONS… so we were on our way to see a Broadway play, Staying true to her character and politics—and I only later realized the irony of her choice—my mother felt that the play she must take her two daughters to see just days after September 11 was none other than "Judgment at Nuremburg."  The words truth, reconciliation and social justice had always dominated the air waves of my apartment since I was a baby, and my mother, having been incredibly socially and politically active her whole life, and having been, in my memory, especially active in the Anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa, wanted us to make the connections between the search for justice and reconciliation after massive crimes against humanity and questions of criminal responsibility.

According to my mom's plan, before the play we were to all participate in a candlelight vigil to express our support for and solidarity with both the victims of the acts of terror from just days before and the friends and family members who still sought answers to the whereabouts of their loved ones. But we were also there, I vividly remember my mother telling me in the car ride down, to express our grief and regret for the victims of the violence that was to come. There was an underlying movement of protest against the "inevitable" acts of war and terror that our government was soon to commit in order to ensure that "this atrocity never happen again…not on our soil/not on our watch".  My mother—a historian to the core—was well aware and versed in these "cycles of terror" and wanted us to understand that all too often violence begets violence.

    Fast forward six years and I am now standing outside the National Stadium—the largest sports stadium in Chile—overcome with nostalgia and sadness…..and most of all, silence. I have no words. I have no voice. I listen closely to the words of those speaking at the podium at the center of the crowd and of the words of my friend's home-stay mother. But the memories of September 11, 1973 are not my personal memories but rather the memories passed-down by another generation.

My silence as I stood in front of the National Stadium that night was all too familiar…. September 11, 2001 was my second day of high school at Friends Seminary, a Quaker school on East 16th street in Manhattan. I found out about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in our Meetinghouse at 9.20 AM that Tuesday morning.  The whole school community had gathered in the meetinghouse and we sat in silence until the Principal of my High school broke the silence to inform the students of the tragic news and the safety protocol that we would have to follow. Panicked tears ensued as my classmates, many of whom lived below 14th street, realized that police blockades would keep them from returning to their homes. After speaking to all my family members—and reassuring my sister, who went to school in Riverdale and had heard that all of Lower Manhattan had been destroyed, that I was still alive—I began the three hour walk home, accompanied by friends who also lived on the Upper West Side.

After the initial words of shock and outrage, the three of us continued uptown in silence because, really, there was just nothing to say.

That silence has, for the last seven years, defined the way I have processed and expressed my memories of September 11th. For myself and many others who experienced 9/11 and its immediate aftermath in conjunction with an incredibly awkward and confusing freshmen year of high school, September 11, 2001, as an historic event, belonged to our parents' generation, who understood, as my mother did, what the day meant and what it's consequences would be. I, alongside many of my peers, had not found my/our voice to speak about September 11th. Yes, we engaged in those ubiquitous, "Where-were-you" conversations with an air of authority because we "were there…," but we were fourteen years old and at the intersection of understanding the gravity of 9/11 and being utterly clueless. We had our personal memories but we didn't have the tools to situate them and their meanings in any larger historical narrative—that was, naturally, the task of our parents' generation………. And so, the six years after September 11th, 2001, were characterized by the same silence that marked my walk home.

On December 9, 2007, two weeks before I left Chile, I went to see Holly Near in concert at Parque Por La Paz , better known as Villa Grimaldi—another detention center under Pinochet's dictatorship where some four thousand, five hundred people were imprisoned between 1973 and 1978. Ms. Near, who was joined by other human rights activists and relatives of detenidos-desaparecidos was there for the closing ceremony of a year-long initiative to honor and remember the women "disappeared" by the dictatorship. The crowd of about three hundred, sat in chairs under a large white tent as Ms. Near sang a variety of her timeless songs.  I stood there, reflective and overwhelmed by the experiences I had had since my last encounter with memory some four months earlier, but still expecting to remain silent, listening intently to the memories, warnings, and hopes of others…

But suddenly, I heard the opening chords of a familiar tune. It was Nears' song entitled "It Could've Been Me"—a song whose lyrics I was familiar with since my early childhood. Standing there in the back of the tent listening to Ms. Near and watching the other audience members nod their heads, I felt an urge to sing along. Despite being incredibly sensitive to North American stereotypes and thus constantly aware, when traveling abroad, of the volume at which I speak English, I was moved by a need to sing openly and aloud so that everyone standing around me could know that I was from the United States. I wanted them to know that I was there and singing not just in solidarity with the friends and family members of those who had been victims of brutal repression at Villa Grimaldi but also for those who have been victims of terror and torture both in my country—on September 11, 2001—and because of my country. But most of all, I wanted them to know that I was singing because Ms. Near's words did not only belong to my parents' generation…that they, in turn, spoke to my experience, my story. And so, I started singing and perhaps to the surprise of my neighbors, I knew every word.