Four Septembers go by

Some time after 8:30 the phone rings. It's a friend. "There's a plane stuck in the World Trade Center." I look outside and see smoke rising in the general area of the buildings. "How could the pilot have not missed it?" he continued. "There isn't a cloud in the sky." Of the stories I've heard, this is the one I remember best because it is my own.

Here's one account, by Sukhdev Sandhu, in the London Review of Books:

"A woman trips in the middle of the street and a dozen people all rush to help her. Strangers grasp each other by the wrist or the shoulders as they speak; they suddenly need to feel warmth, a human pulse ... And at every intersection clumps of people stand mesmerised as they gaze at the smoke fluming up in the distance. 'Where exactly was the building?' one asks. His friends aren't sure. Like many of the city's residents they've long taken the skyline for granted. Only tourists and newcomers ever look at it that closely."