Ground Zero

by Alan Gratz

  A third plane had crashed into the Pentagon, just like the security guard with the bullhorn had told them. The Pentagon was the headquarters of the US Department of Defense, right outside Washington, DC. The TV showed a picture of the smoking hole in the building. One hundred and twenty-five people were dead.

  They still had no idea who, or how many, had died when the Twin Towers came down.

  A fourth plane had also been hijacked. When the passengers on that flight used phones on the plane to call their families and tell them terrorists had taken over, they learned about the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and they knew they were next. They told their loved ones they were going to try to take the plane back from the hijackers. A few minutes later—right around the time the South Tower had collapsed, while Brandon and Richard had been in the underground mall—that last plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.

  The people on the news guessed that the terrorists had chosen those four planes specifically because they were all headed for California from the East Coast, and carried as much explosive jet fuel on board as possible.

  It was too much to take in at one time. Too much horror, too much death. And none of it made any sense.

  “Who would do this to us?” Brandon asked Richard. On the news, they were guessing it was a group of Islamic extremists called al Qaeda, but no one knew for sure yet. “Why do they hate us?” Brandon asked.

  Richard shook his head. “I don’t know, kid. I don’t know.”

  Kiara and Anthony had long since grown bored with their toys, and they ran through the room laughing and squealing and chasing each other. Brandon scowled at them. How could they be playing around at a time like this? Why weren’t Richard and Talisha telling them to be quiet? To have some respect?

  Richard read the anger in Brandon’s face and put a hand on Brandon’s knee. “They don’t understand,” he said quietly. “They can’t yet. They’re too young. They know something bad happened, but they don’t get how big this is. You wouldn’t either. Not really. Except you were there. Your friends and classmates, they’re not going to understand either. Not until they’re older. When you go back to school, they’re going to be laughing and playing and living their lives like this never happened because they’re not old enough to get it. But you do, because you were there. That makes you different. You’re going to have to remember that.”

  Brandon nodded and tried to let go of some of his irritation, but it was hard.

  President Bush came on the television later, talking about how America had been attacked because they were a beacon of freedom and opportunity. About how they were going to hunt down the people who did this and bring them to justice.

  “This is going to be bad,” Richard said. “People are hurt. Angry. And they should be. They want revenge, and so do I. But revenge against who?”

  Brandon didn’t know, but he hated whoever had done this. He wanted them to pay for everything he’d just been through. He wanted them to pay for what they had done to his dad.

  On TV, the president was saying that the country was strong. That anybody who wasn’t with the United States was against them. He sounded like Brandon’s dad.

  We’re a team, Brandon. Just you and me. It’s us against the world.

  Brandon’s father was gone now, and so was their team. Brandon was all alone against the world.

  But was he? Brandon thought back to everyone who’d been trapped in the elevator with him. The people from Richard’s floor. Gayle and Pratik in the mall. All the firefighters, the police, the security guard with the bullhorn, all those paramedics and EMTs—Brandon didn’t know if any of them had survived, but they had helped others survive.

  And Richard, of course. He and Brandon had helped each other survive, time and again. And now Richard and his wife had taken Brandon in when he had nowhere else to go.

  It isn’t me against the world, Brandon realized. It’s everyone, working together. And not against the world either, but for each other.

  That was how they survived.

  Reshmina picked up another rock and tossed it off the pile that used to be her home. The sun had almost set on September 11, 2019, and she and Baba were still digging through the rubble, trying to find anything of value. Anything that could help them survive.

  The digging was slow and hard, and all Reshmina had to show for her labor so far was one torn sleeping mat and one crushed metal pot. The work was even harder for her father, but he rolled rocks off the pile with determined patience.

  The rest of her family was down in the valley, Mor and Marzia making camp while Anaa watched Zahir. They were going to have to spend at least one night without a roof over their heads. Probably many more.

  The American soldiers had stayed, calling in Afghan National Army forces to help them secure the area. Now a team of Americans was meeting with each of the families who had lost their homes and their possessions, arranging for financial compensation for their losses.

  Taz had left to receive proper medical treatment for his wounds, but he was back now. Reshmina could see him climbing the hill toward where she and her father worked. Taz was clean and bandaged and had put on a new uniform, and he carried something over his shoulder.

  Reshmina kept her head down and kept moving rocks until Taz was standing right next to her.

  “Can I help?” Taz asked.

  Reshmina didn’t look at him.

  “I brought blankets,” Taz added. He held out a large duffel bag. “Food. A portable stove.”

  “Thank you,” Reshmina said at last.

  Baba nodded to him, and Taz set the bag down and started to help them clear the debris. He had a new rifle on a strap across his back, and when he bent over to move a rock, the rifle slid down in his way.

  “I hear some of the villagers are packing up and leaving for Pakistan,” Taz said.

  It was true. Half the village had already collected their payments from the US Army and set off before dark.

  Taz pushed his rifle out of the way again and hefted a rock. “Are you and your family going to go with them?”

  “No,” Reshmina told him. “My family has decided to stay here. To rebuild.”

  “You sound like you don’t want to do that.”

  “Why should we?” Reshmina asked. “Our home will just be destroyed again. If not by you, then by the next country that invades. But there is no future for me in Pakistan either.” Reshmina sat back to take a break and catch her breath. “Did you rebuild your fallen towers?”

  “The World Trade Center?” Taz asked. “Yes and no. They built one new giant skyscraper at Ground Zero instead.”

  “Ground Zero?” Reshmina asked. She knew what those words meant, but not together.

  Taz stood and pushed his rifle around to his back again. “Ground Zero is like … the place where a big bomb goes off, or a big disaster happens. It’s what they called the place the World Trade Center used to be, until they built the new tower on top of it.”

  Ground Zero, Reshmina thought. That was as good a name as any for the pile of rocks she was sitting on. It certainly wasn’t a village anymore.

  “We can help you,” Taz said. “Rebuild your village, I mean. We have machines and stuff for this. I don’t know how we’d get them in here …”

  “Bombed them back up to the Stone Age,” Reshmina said. She went back to work, moving rocks. “That’s what one of your people said. Right after your Apache destroyed my village.”

  “He shouldn’t have said that,” Taz said quietly. “And it was an accident. We’re paying for everything that was lost.”

  “Yes, I know,” Reshmina said. She gestured at the rock pile. “Lost your house and everything in it? Here’s 4,724 American dollars. Lose a goat? Our sincere apologies, and here is 106 dollars. Lose a daughter? Here’s 1,143 dollars. Not as much as for a son, of course, because girls are not worth as much in Afghanistan.”

  Taz grimaced at how callous it all sounded, but Reshmina
wasn’t wrong, and they both knew it. “They’ll reward you for saving my life,” Taz said. “You and your family. You’ll get more money than anyone else.”

  Reshmina sighed. “What will we do with money?” she asked. “We cannot eat it. We cannot milk it. We cannot ride upon it, or sleep inside it. There is no place to spend it, and nothing to spend it on.” Taz opened his mouth as if to say something, but Reshmina went on. “Use the money to bribe our way across the border into Pakistan? For what? To live the rest of our lives in a refugee camp? That’s if we’re lucky and the Taliban doesn’t steal the money from us first.”

  Reshmina picked up a rock and threw it away. “You Americans think you can fix everything by throwing money at it,” she added. “But your friend was right. This is like the Stone Age. Because no one will let us get past the Stone Age. Not when there is nothing but war. Do you understand? The best thing you can do to help us is leave us alone.”

  “But the Taliban—” Taz said.

  “Will take over when you go. I know,” Reshmina said. “But your country helped create the Taliban. You gave them weapons and trained them to drive out the Soviets. We have the old textbooks to prove it. Even when you try to help us, you hurt us. And yourselves. Maybe what we need is for you to stop ‘helping’ us.”

  Taz shook his head. “I learned a long time ago that it’s not ‘us against the world,’ Reshmina. It’s all of us, together. For each other.”

  Reshmina smiled at Taz. How could he not see it? “You can’t help us by rebuilding villages and destroying them at the same time. Look at you,” she said. “You can’t even help me with both hands right now because your gun keeps getting in the way.”

  She’d caught Taz pushing his rifle up onto his back again with one hand while he tried to pick up a rock with the other. He froze, realizing what he was doing, and his face went red. Carefully, deliberately, he took off his rifle and set it to one side, then picked up the rock with both hands and chucked it away. He held out his arms, palms up, as if to say, Look, see? I can help with both hands.

  Reshmina smiled ruefully. “You may be able to do that,” she told him, “but your country never will. They help with one hand and hold a gun in the other.”

  It was Taz’s turn to sit down and rest. He studied his dirty hands as he rubbed the rock dust from them.

  “When the towers came down, everybody pulled together,” he said, as if deep in memory. “Not just Americans, but people all over the world. There was this feeling of unity. America invaded Afghanistan with a coalition of countries. But then we turned around and invaded Iraq when we still hadn’t captured bin Laden or stopped al Qaeda. By 2010, we still hadn’t caught the people who planned the World Trade Center attacks. That’s when I joined the army. I was eighteen, and I wanted revenge.”

  Reshmina nodded. She understood revenge.

  “We got bin Laden a year after that, but the mission wasn’t over,” Taz went on. “Now it was just this ‘War on Terror.’ I thought I was fighting the good fight. Making sure what happened to me and my dad all those years ago never happened to anybody else. But now I’m not so sure what I’m doing. Who are we fighting? How do we know we’ve won?”

  Taz picked up a small rock and threw it.

  “You know,” he said, “on 9/11, after everything happened, I remember wondering, Why does somebody hate us that bad? We’re the good guys, you know?”

  Reshmina put down the rock she was picking up and looked at him through narrowed eyes. The good guys?

  Taz put his hands up in surrender. “I know, I know. But that’s what I mean. After 9/11, everybody said al Qaeda attacked us because they hated our way of life, our freedom. But I’ve been over here ten years, and I’ve never heard one single person, Taliban or otherwise, talking about how much they hate America’s freedom, or Starbucks coffee, or free elections. You and your family didn’t even recognize a picture of New York.” Taz shook his head. “In America, we think everybody in the world cares about everything we say and do. But the only thing people here care about is what we say and do over here.” He looked out at what was left of her village. “My dad once told me a bully is somebody who does whatever they want and never gets in trouble for it. Maybe that’s what we are. Maybe we’re the bullies.”

  Reshmina watched Taz for a long moment. “Your country may be,” she said at last. “But you are not.”

  “Thanks,” said Taz. “Maybe it’s time for me to think about leaving the army.” He smiled. “I want to be able to help with both hands.”

  Another soldier called up the hill. It was almost dark, and the Americans were heading back to their base.

  Taz stood. “Listen, the army’s got this interpreter program. If you work for the US Army here in Afghanistan as a translator, you get special permission to come to America when you’re done. Go to an American university. Maybe become a US citizen. I don’t know all the details, but I could find out. Recommend you for the program when you’re old enough. Your English is great. You’d be a natural at it, like the lady you met this morning.”

  “The lady who is dead,” said Reshmina.

  “Yeah,” said Taz. He lowered his head, no doubt thinking about Mariam and everyone else who had died that morning.

  “It’s not easy,” Taz told her. “But then, nothing really worth it ever is.”

  Reshmina nodded. Just the thought of going to the United States to study at one of their schools gave her goose bumps. But to do it, Reshmina would have to ally herself with the people who had killed her sister. Destroyed her village.

  “Thank you, but no,” Reshmina said. She would keep going to school, keep learning English. Perhaps move to Kabul when she was old enough. Maybe even find a way to go to the US or Canada or Australia to study. But it would be on her own terms.

  “Well, if you change your mind, let me know,” Taz said. “No matter what, I’ll come back and help. I promise.”

  “Thank you for the warning,” Reshmina told him.

  Taz smiled at her joke. “I deserve that,” he admitted.

  He unhooked the strange stuffed devil from his vest and gave it to Reshmina.

  “Here,” Taz said. “This brought me luck once. Of a kind. Maybe it’ll bring luck to you too.”

  Reshmina took the dusty, ratty thing. It wasn’t much to look at, and it wouldn’t serve her any real purpose, but she knew how important it was to Taz.

  “Thank you,” Reshmina said. She bowed her head to Taz, then remembered how she’d been taught to say goodbye from her English lessons.

  “I will friend you on Facebook,” she told him.

  Taz laughed and said his thanks and goodbyes to Reshmina’s father.

  When Taz was gone, Reshmina helped her father stand up. They’d done enough work for now, and it was time to join the rest of their family in the valley.

  They started walking, but Baba was slow. The steps had always been hard for him, and now even those were gone—buried under a village’s worth of wood and stone.

  “Is there any other way down?” Baba asked.

  Reshmina scanned the hillside. The sun had almost set. On a ridge across the valley, silhouetted against the orange-yellow sky, Reshmina spotted the lone figure of a boy. He was so far away she could never see his face, but Reshmina knew instantly who it was: Pasoon. She would know her brother anywhere.

  So he wasn’t dead! And he had come back to check on them. Why? To make sure they were all right? Or to gloat over firing another shot at the American hornet’s nest?

  Despite everything that had happened, everything Pasoon had done, Reshmina’s heart still ached at the sight of him. He was her twin, after all. A piece of her would always be missing when they were apart. But apart they would always be, as long as Pasoon chose revenge.

  Pasoon raised a hand to wave to her, but Reshmina turned away.

  “Come, Baba,” Reshmina told her father. “I’ve found another path.”

  On September 11, 2001, I was an eighth-grade English teacher in Tenn
essee. When news of the attacks in New York City hit our school community, we collected the students in the gym, wheeling in blurry TVs with bad reception as all of us—teachers and students—struggled to understand what was happening. No one had a smartphone. There was no Facebook, no Twitter. Instead we turned to one another with the questions we were asking: What was going on? Why would someone do this? Would there be more attacks? Were we now at war? And with whom? What would happen next?

  There was only one thing we knew for certain: Nothing would ever be the same.

  I tried to write about 9/11 in the years right after 2001, but it always felt too soon. Nearly twenty years later, when my editor and I were discussing what my next novel would be, I finally felt like I was emotionally ready to tell the story of that day—and how the world is different now because of it.

  Brandon and Reshmina, along with all the people in their respective stories, are fictional characters. But everything they see and do is based on actual events. Reshmina’s village is fictional but is located in the real Kunar Province, a mountainous part of Afghanistan where the US and its allies have fought a bitter war with the Taliban since 2001. For the sake of story, I have combined a few events from different years in the War in Afghanistan into a single day. The US forward operating base that Pasoon targets with his rifle, for example, would have already been abandoned a few years before he was hired to shoot at it.

  Similarly, in Brandon’s story, I took the liberty of incorporating a few incidents that took place in the South Tower into the North Tower.

  A note on language: Pashto, the language of more than forty million people throughout the world, uses an alphabet based on Arabic script, and there are many different spelling options when transliterating Pashto words into written English. When choosing how to spell a Pashto word in the text, I used the spelling I found most commonly online and in my research.