September 11th. (Year 2001.)

I was living in Tenerife on Sept 11th 2001. I shared an apartment with a guy studying sciences.
We shared some books.
I was reading a lot by nights, so I could attend a pair of exams that month, though I didn't finish my career and was forced to come back to Gran Canaria later on.

I remember I had my mobile off. It was one of those tiny colored Alcatel. Easy to handle, with a little antenna and a good SMS service one could use from time to time. 

I had susbscribed to an Spanish News Channel, 'Antena 3 TV,' (from Telefonica, S.A.) and received some news everyday. I was going to give up the channel for there was nothing interesting on it. 

I remember that day, at about 5 or 7 p.m., I turned the mobile on and then I read something like 'The US is attacked by a force of planes by whatever forces.' I inmediately thought it was impossible. It was like a game on the mobile. It was a joke made by the journalists there -I thought-. SMS world was starting to work in Spain. What a joke! Airplanes crashing in New York. An attack?! 

An hour later, I was watching the news very confused. It was breaking news from a few channels on TV. My colleague had cable TV and Internet, though the information wasn't very clear. I had to go to my sister's appartment. There, I watched to the same news, this time from an antenna TV, a Mexican channel I cannot remember. It was the most clear image of the Twin Towers and the planes I had seen. The journalists were impartial, so they didn't say anything about what it was, just some comments on the video. 

Then, I could read some news at my friends' computer. It was unbelievable. The radio on the walkman was talking about the same seriously. The news became different, like most people now know , but terrible uncertain information. It was then when I saw the 'zero zone' and people walking faster and faster. No fire, but a white-grey powder all over them and an earthquake-like movement.

Next day, I bought the newspaper and could read the detailed news. It was true. I remember some people watching a football match that day in a bar nearby. I was sitting around reading quickly and thinking about the future. A man, a Catholic priest, stared at me because I was astonished. I could hear the footbal match aloud. It lasted all day until night. The day after and all the rest of the days it was trending topic.
Nowadays, everything, even our time is sudden and moves faster; too fast, I'd say. Then, news were revised, told with calm and with an independent taste and feeling that today we would love , for we were able to realize about every detail that was told. It was harder, quite hypnoptic, I consider, but when five years had gone, one could realize about events and say: Yes, I remember what I was doing that day, what I thought, how I felt.