Dear America.
I was 8 years old when a teacher burst into my classroom, turned on our TV, and we watched the Twin Towers crumble into a pile of ashes.
We were in a classroom in a country primary school in Northern Ireland. It was the start of the work day where you were, and we were just about to go home from school. A 5-hour time difference, 3,000 miles, but we stood and watched with you.
In Northern Ireland, we knew what it felt like to live in fear. We knew what it felt like to feel so threatened. We were used, even at age 8, to scenes of death, destruction, devastation on our television screens. Terrorism tainted all our childhoods. But more people were killed on September 11th in New York than were killed in all the years of terrorism in our country. I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope to never see anything like it again.
That day I cried along with millions of children across the world, for people I’d never met, in a place I’d never been. My parents had to answer the same difficult questions as parents all over the world. But this morning it seems as though a battle has been won in your war against terror. And I will rejoice, and hope and pray, with the millions of people across the world who cried for people they’ve never met, in a place they’d never been on that cold September morning.
America, know you will never stand alone.
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