In fact, several novels were published, but none of them described how the 9/11 tragedy happened, how the terrorists who I had seen with my own eyes pass through one of the checkpoints of Terminal B at Logan International Airport in Boston penetrated.
Skifter Kellici
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at home in North Quincy, Boston. I suddenly learned from the news broadcast by CNN that a domestic airliner had hit one of the Twin Towers in New York. Was it an incident? No, because a little later another plane hit the second tower. Then I realized that in this case it was not about an incident, but about a deliberate and heinous act of terrorism. I later learned that both planes had been hijacked by fundamentalist terrorists. And these terrorists were Arabs.
I do not want to dwell on other details of the events that followed, because I have described them in the pages of the novel, which thanks to the care of Mr. Nasir Aijaz in 26 episodes were published in the pages of the Sindh Courier magazine that he directs. But since that day, the idea to write a long story suddenly came to me. All the more so that from noon of that day, we learned from radio and television news shows that these terrorist acts were carried out with the knowledge and approval of the head of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, Bin Laden, who was hiding at that time somewhere in the highlands of Afghanistan. However, this idea remained clouded in my mind. However, during the other days I read with great attention the daily American newspapers that came to us at the airport and were devoted to this unimaginable tragedy, which was simply called 9/11.
This is how I became familiar with the history of the Taliban, with Bin Laden’s criminal activity, the doctrine of fundamentalists preached by him, with the history of the Twin Towers, with such an approximate assassination that had happened a few years ago in one of the towers. However, I was unable to find the threads that would help me build the structure of the composition and the characters that would move along the lines of this prose. Then, unable to find the money to carry out this difficult creative work, I gave up. For weeks and months, even years, I waited to read some literary work about 9/11.
In fact, several novels were published, but none of them described how this tragedy happened, how the terrorists who I had seen with my own eyes pass through one of the checkpoints of Terminal B at Logan International Airport in Boston penetrated.
In 2005, the famous American director Oliver Stone made the successful film World Trade Center, but even this film was dedicated only to the heroism of the firefighters, many of whom saved hundreds and hundreds of people under the ruins of the Twin Towers and surrounding buildings, gave their lives. Thus came the year 2008. Again, books were published in America and around the world on 9/11, but none that showed what happened to the two planes that hit the Twin Towers and to the Twin Towers themselves during this tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
But one day I browsed the book ‘Albanians of America’, a major work of Vehbi Bajrami, a well-known journalist and publicist from Kosovo and director of the Albanian newspaper Illyria, published in New York. Skimming through it, I suddenly stopped at the chapter ‘Albanians who remained in the ruins of September 11…’ I had heard about these Albanians, but it had never occurred to me that they, all three among the nearly 3,000 victims in the Twin Towers, were characters in a literary work. They were Frrok Camaj, Mon Gjonbalaj and Simon Dedvulaj from the Albanian provinces of Montenegro.
Through them, the lines of events that happened in the Twin Towers would be unraveled, to which other characters would be added… But to create diversity, one of those three would be from Kosovo, a second from the Albanians of Montenegro and the third from the Arbers, that is, Armenians who settled in Southern Italy in the 15th century, to escape the Turkish occupation, who, like the first two, worked as window cleaners on the high floors of the Towers Gemini.
Another scene was one of the planes that is hijacked by terrorists, where the main characters are five of them, two pilots, two pilots and some passengers. As far as we know, none of them are alive, because this plane and the other one that hit the Twin Towers were reduced to dust and ashes, but it is understood that after kidnapping one or two of the flight attendants, the terrorists had killed the pilots, hijacked the plane and they had hit a tower. The same thing happened in the second tower.
The next setting of the book would be at a checkpoint in Terminal B, from where among the employees almost all immigrants, as they had actually been, was Sokol Kama or, more precisely, I was a former journalist of the Albanian Radio and Television. Arab terrorists were added to them, including five of them with real names of those who hijacked one of the planes, and finally Bin Laden and the architect of these assassinations, Mulla Omar, who lived somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan.
After studying materials for an even deeper knowledge of the history of the Taliban and Islamic terrorism in general from sources on Google, in the spring of 2008 I began to write a novel entitled ‘September of the great disaster’.
But there was one detail that I did not know. Were there checkpoints at the Twin Towers? But they did not exist now. Then I went to one of the tallest skyscrapers in Boston, I met one of the security workers there and asked if there were other security workers on the first floor of this skyscraper, were there other security workers on the floors above? He answered me that he was new to this task, so I had to ask his boss, and he handed me a business card, where the data of the Security office that covered that skyscraper was marked. It seemed too much for me to have this meeting, so I started writing the first chapters of the novel.
One morning I heard a knock on the apartment door. I opened it and saw in front of me a middle-aged man, dressed in half-military and half-civilian clothes, with a pale face and a penetrating gaze, who after greeting me said: “You’re from the FBI. Can we have a little chat together?” Naturally, I invited him into the living room. Without further ado, he asked me: “Did you go to the skyscraper on Washington Street on such and such a day, did you ask the Security employee to know…” I nodded. “Why?” He asked me.
Then I remembered why this FBI officer had come to see me. I was under her supervision. I explained the reason… I told him that I was a writer, that I was writing a novel dedicated to 9/11. I also took the liberty of explaining to him that in the event that the FBI and FAA officials, under the new regulations, would not allow passengers to carry on the plane even small razors, bottles of perfumed liquid, bottles of alcoholic beverages, guns, etc., the tragedy would not have happened, because with such means the terrorists had killed the flight attendants, the pilots and thus had become masters of the planes.
He affirmed with just a slight movement of his head and showed me a photo the when I was talking with the security employee in that skyscraper, a photo which he did not give me despite my request, and left. A few months later, I finished writing the novel that was published in May 2011 in Albania. Fortunately, it was warmly received by the readers.
Here in America, my American colleague Carrie Hooper, who, in addition to several other languages, also knows the Albanian language, reworked the translation of the Albanian translator, Anita Muharremi from Kosovo, and thus the novel was published by Lulu Press, and thanks to Mr. Nasir Aijaz, it was published in its entirety in episodes in the magazine as well Sindh Courier.
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About the Author
Skifter Këllici was born in Tirana, Albania and received a diploma in history and literature from the University of Tirana. He worked as a journalist, scholar, and sportscaster on radio and television. He is the author of several novels and nonfiction books, including the children’s books, “Memories of the Old Neighborhood” and “In the Footsteps” as well as the historical novels, “Assassination in Paris”, “The Murderer with the White Hands”, and “September Disaster.” He wrote the screenplay for “In the Footsteps” which won a special prize at the International Children’s Film Festival in Giffoni, Italy in 1979. He has lived in Boston, Massachusetts since 1999.
