Today, September 11, marks 25 years.
A quarter of a century has passed since the morning when the world witnessed something that previously resembled a script for a disaster movie.
Planes.
Fire.
People in the windows.
Firefighters running up while everyone else is running down.
And two enormous towers simply disappearing from the New York skyline.
2,977 dead.
That is how many people were killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001, in New York, at the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93.
And 25 years later, New York responded very symbolically.
2,977 drones were launched into the sky.
One drone for every human life.
Not a missile.
Not explosives.
Not a weapon.
Light.
And these 2,977 lights raised the Twin Towers over New York again—in full scale.
For a few minutes, what the terrorists destroyed in a few hours returned to the sky.
Eleven years of texts—and one phrase
I looked at how September 11 has been written about over the past eleven years.
Presidents changed.
Wars changed.
America withdrew from Afghanistan.
The world survived a pandemic.
Children who were born after the fall of the Twin Towers have grown up.
Even the tone of the publications has changed.
At first, there was much written about the pain.
About families coming to Ground Zero. About firefighters. About police officers. About photographs of those who simply went to work on the morning of September 11 and never returned.
Then, more and more was written about the consequences.
About Afghanistan and Iraq. About new airport security rules. About intelligence agencies. About surveillance. About the vast counter-terrorism system that was essentially born after that morning.
Then people began to talk about another army of victims—the rescuers, firefighters, police officers, and ordinary residents who spent years suffering from illnesses after breathing the toxic dust of Ground Zero.
And today, the theme has changed again.
Because a generation has emerged that does not remember September 11.
For us, these are television images etched into our memory.
For twenty-year-old Americans, it is already a textbook history lesson.
And this is where the most important part begins.
A terrorist can destroy concrete. But there is a problem
Terrorists are very fond of symbols.
They think that if you blow up a building, you can blow up a state.
If you destroy a bridge, you can break a nation.
If you strike an apartment building, you can force people to live in fear.
If you kill thousands, you can force millions to surrender to fear.
It does not work.
In 2001, they destroyed two towers.
In 2026, 2,977 tiny lights put them back over New York.
That is the entire mathematics of terrorism for you.
A building can be destroyed.
Memory is much harder to break.
We, Ukrainians, see these images a little differently today
For many people in the world, September 11 is history.
For us, the word “terror” today is not from a textbook.
We know the sound of a siren.
We know what it means to wake up from an explosion.
We know what a building looks like where families lived just yesterday.
We know the rescuers who go inside when structures might still collapse.
We know the photographs of children among the rubble.
And we know the most terrifying thing—an ordinary morning can turn into a date in just seconds that an entire country will remember.
That is why, looking at these 2,977 lights over New York today, I see more than just a beautiful technological installation.
I see a very simple message.
You wanted to leave an empty sky behind.
But the people brought the light back there.
25 years have passed.
The towers are gone.
But their silhouette stands over New York once again.
Not made of steel.
Not made of glass.
And not even made of concrete.
It is made of memory.
And perhaps that is exactly what terrorists can never understand.
They count missiles, planes, explosives, and the number of dead.
But humanity ultimately counts names.
Today, there are 2,977.
2,977 people.
2,977 stories.
2,977 lives that should have continued.
And 2,977 lights over New York as a reminder:
terror can leave a scar.
But it must not have the last word.
We remember.
September 11, 2001.
Author: Ivan Arefiev
Photo from the web
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