The reality of our past

This summer, I decided that I would like this Sept. 11 to be meaningless. I came to this conclusion after a dinner I had with two complete strangers in a restaurant called "Meat Me" in Ashkelon, Israel. I was working in Israel as a volunteer firefighter and had met the couple at the beach on a day off. Curious as to how an American ended up at a beach near one of the cocaine capitals of southern Israel, they invited me to dinner.

They spoke no English and my Hebrew is limited to rudimentary present tense, so we had to speak to each other as simply as possible. I asked them all sorts of questions about what they thought of the Gaza disengagement, which would soon begin about five miles from where we were sitting.

Having never been to the U.S. before, they peppered me with all sorts of questions when I told them that I was from New York City. They wondered if New York was really like Die Hard 3 and Sex and the City made it out to be. America -- and New York -- existed as a symbol in their imaginations. They envisioned a place filled with beautiful people, pleasant weather and non-stop action. They thought that I was a total idiot for coming to Israel looking for the exact same things.

One of them asked me if people threw rocks at Jews in the United States. The other asked what the logo on her used T-shirt meant (I explained that Cornell was a university in a place with lots of snow).

In rudimentary present tense (of course), one of the Israelis asked me, "What do you think when there are no two towers?" It was a question that I should have expected, but it nonetheless caught me off guard.

Because of the language barrier, I couldn't say anything profound to them at the time. When I later thought about how I would answer the question if I had been able to, I realized that it wasn't really my Hebrew that was stopping me. The reality was that it had been four whole years since the Sept. 11 attacks and I still could not decide what exactly to say or even think. I had not drawn any consistent ideological lessons from the attacks. Instead of the unambiguous symbol they were looking for, the absence of the "two towers" was only a source of never-ending mental doldrums.

In one way or another, Sept. 11 has affected -- if not dominated -- how many people have lived and perceived the past four years. That violent Tuesday has influenced more lives across the world than there were victims in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington.

On Sept. 7, 2001, I sat in the plaza of the World Trade Center and remarked to a friend that the Twin Towers were so ugly that they should be taken down, even if it required explosives. Of course, I used more colorful language. Four years later, I wish I could go back to that moment. Not to take it back. Not because I think it would help me forget the sound of a jet flying over my first-period high school math class and hitting a building. Nor would it help me forget the sight of the burning buildings.

I want to go back and marvel at the time passed. I want to remember a time when people's identification of me as a New Yorker was not influenced by the fate of two ugly 1970s buildings. I want to be able to look at the Twin Towers in a non-symbolic way.

I believe that on this Sept. 11, we should stop thinking in terms of reactions and life lessons. We should stop thinking about what we are fighting for and arguing about. We should stop thinking about when "there are no two towers" because we can do that every day of the year.

As an honest tribute, this Sept. 11 should be meaningless. I believe that we should filter out all the accumulated symbolism and emotional baggage of the past four years and think about what matters most on an anniversary of death: the loss of treasured lives and the passage of time since that loss.

Trying to overanalyze our past will only draw us further from the reality of what was lost that day.

Eric Obenzinger is a junior history major from New York. His e-mail address is erico2@sas.upenn.edu. Quaker Shaker appears on Wednesdays.

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