Newsroom
Do you remember where you were when the world changed?
For anyone old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, the answer often comes immediately. The room. The people beside them. The television screen. The first images of smoke pouring from one of New York’s Twin Towers, and the moment a second aircraft appeared, removing any hope that this had simply been a terrible accident.
In Cyprus, it was late afternoon. People were finishing work, preparing dinner or settling in front of the evening news when the first plane struck the World Trade Center at 3:46 p.m. Cyprus time.
Seventeen minutes later, a second plane hit the South Tower. Another crashed into the Pentagon, while a fourth came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
Twenty-five years later, the United States is marking the anniversary with ceremonies in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville. At Ground Zero, relatives are once again reading the names of those who died, with moments of silence marking when the planes struck and the towers fell.
This year, for the first time, the ceremony includes an additional moment of silence for those who later died from illnesses linked to the toxic dust and debris left behind.
The attacks lasted less than two hours. Their consequences have lasted a quarter of a century.
For the average Cypriot, that legacy can be seen most clearly at the airport. Before 9/11, passengers could walk to departure gates with relatives, carry liquids freely and pass through security without removing belts, jackets or shoes. Today’s queues, scanners, restrictions and sealed-off departure areas grew from the security system built after the attacks.
But the changes went far beyond air travel.
The United States created the Department of Homeland Security by bringing together all or part of 22 government agencies. Surveillance powers expanded, borders tightened and governments around the world began collecting and sharing far more information about travellers.
The attacks also set in motion the US-led war in Afghanistan and helped pave the way for the invasion of Iraq. Those conflicts killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and destabilised a region whose crises continue to reach Cyprus through migration, disrupted flights, security alerts and emergency evacuations.
For an island sitting at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East, and hosting two British military bases, the world created after 9/11 has never been particularly far away.
There was another, darker consequence. Muslim communities in the United States, Europe and elsewhere faced growing suspicion, discrimination and, at times, outright hostility. The fight against terrorism brought new protections, but also difficult questions about how much privacy and freedom societies were prepared to surrender in the name of safety.
The human toll also continues to grow.
More than 150,000 survivors and emergency workers are enrolled in the US World Trade Center Health Program. Tens of thousands have been diagnosed with illnesses associated with exposure to the toxic cloud that hung over Lower Manhattan, including respiratory diseases and cancers. More than 9,000 people tracked by the program have since died, although officials say it is not always possible to determine the precise role played by their exposure.
A generation has now grown up with no personal memory of that Tuesday morning. To them, 9/11 belongs to history books, documentaries and stories told by parents.
For everyone who watched it happen, however, it remains something different, a rare moment when ordinary life appeared to stop and the future suddenly looked unfamiliar.
Twenty-five years have passed, but we still remove our shoes at airports, watch conflicts born from that era unfold and live with the difficult balance between freedom and security.
And many of us still remember exactly where we were when the world changed.
*With information from 911memorial.org, dhs.gov, and Reuters
