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A woman sits at her desk, writing. People are running in the corridor. She overhears someone passing her door saying, 'the World Trade Centre is on fire'! She gets up, goes into the corridor. She finds most of her colleagues in the boardroom in front of the TV. She sees the building burning. She just can't believe it. It's not real. A film. Then, as they're watching, she see the second plane hit. Someone says 'this is no accident', someone sobbing. Then complete silence. Then a wave of frantic talking, then silence again.

She knows he's in there, but she can't say it. Saying it would make it real. She walks back to her office, sits at her desk, takes a deep breath and calls his cell phone. She gets his voicemail. She goes back to the boardroom TV, watches, then back to her office to call his cell phone again. All she gets is his reassuring professional voice-mail voice. She goes back to the TV set.

Someone touches her on the shoulder, but she just keeps looking at the screen. She sees the towers collapse one after the other. Her disbelief collapses within her. She wants to go into Manhattan, closer. She wants to be in the streets but she gets talked out of it. Someone takes her home. She knows, she's sure, and at the same time she's not. No tears, very little talking either. A friend comes in and sits with her in front of the TV. She calls the cell phone numbers of some of his colleagues. Nothing.

He doesn't come home, he doesn't call and his cell phone can't be reached. She's sure now. She watches TV without seeing. In her mind is the image of bodies falling. She knows it can't be him, but she knows.
She sees his face. The face that could make her heart jump just by smiling at her. She remembers moments. Moments when he had brought out such a tenderness in her. She's afraid to say his name.

Weeks later he's confirmed dead. But his body has not been found. She goes from desperation to hope, to desperation again. She wants to dig. Sift through the rubble. She wants to find him, make him real, make it real. She drifts, silent, detached, even at the memorial service. In her mind she’s with him. She's never without him. He isn't dead, she hasn't buried him.

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A man walks across a field. He is just about a mile away from the village. It's cold. Looking up, he sees the vapour trails, white lines in the blue sky. No sound. He sees no threat in them so he just watches.

And then the village in the distance leaps up. The old stone walls fan out, the ground under him shrugs him off. He finds himself sitting and looking at the village that is slowly falling back to earth.
Then the sounds come. The explosions, the chunks of concrte and masonry falling in the fields. When that dies down, some tiny voice screaming in the distance. And then at last the sound of jet engines high up, faint and slowly fading.

He starts running. He sees the lighter things first. Pieces of wood. A piece of corrugated roof. A head, half face, half skull, skilfully carved by the blast. Then heavier things, concrete mainly, the wreck of a car, lying on it's side and burning. He walks through a fog of smoke and dust.
He can't find his way through the village, searching for his house. There is no house. He calls out the names of his son and his wife. He doesn't call out his daughter’s name.
After a while he sits. People are moving around, aimlessly. His staring eyes see the faces of his wife, his son, his daughter. His wife, who was first a stranger, then a friend and then his beloved. He saw her for the first time on the day they were married. His son who made him so proud just by being his son. His daughter, so small, so beautiful. She had brought out such a tenderness in him. He still can't call out her name.

He gets up again and searches. Digging in the debris for hours. Sits down again with a piece of cloth in his hands. He doesn't recognize it, but it's stained and torn softness somehow comforts him for a while. It seems so vulnerable. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t scream. His heart keeps beating, his breathing continues.

He can't find his wife, his son, his daughter, although he searches for days. Someone takes charge and together the survivors dig graves. There are few whole corpses to bury. The unidentified human remains are put together in one big grave. A few days later an official-looking team arrives to investigate the ‘incident’. They stay for a two hours and then leave. The area is not safe says their interpreter, a small Kabuli man in military uniform. Somehow that remark fill him with unspeakable rage.

He doesn’t say much anymore. He spends his days sitting in front of the tent that he now shares with his brother’s family. He is detached, distant, silent. In his mind he is with his wife and children. He is never without them. They are not dead, he hasn't buried them.