11S | September 11 | 11 set | 20 years | The Peruvian who last closed the door of the tallest and most luxurious restaurant in the World Trade Center EC Stories | Nathalie Tolentino | United States New York | World Trade Center | Ossama bin Laden | In Qaeda | ARE WE

20 years ago, on September 10, 2001, I was on my way home after finishing my shift at Windows on the World Restaurant, the restaurant on the 107th floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. I remember this Monday afternoon it was rainy and cloudy, but later the view cleared up and the view of Manhattan from that floor was amazing. From the east window I could see the South Street Seaport, the bright lights of the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg bridges and in the distance the tiny planes lined up over John F. Kennedy International Airport ready to land.

Tonight, Tony Milne and I close the restaurant doors and take the elevator from Tower 1 to the lobby of the World Trade Center. We didn’t imagine that the next day would change our lives forever.

My dad woke me up telling me that something was going on in my work building and that a plane – American Airlines Flight 11 – had crashed into Tower 1. It was like I was telling a fictional movie or worse, as if he hadn’t yet woken up from a nightmare. As we watched the smoke and thought about how the fire would go out, an image caught our attention on TV: United Airlines Flight 175 hit Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. It was unreal. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

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I ran up to the roof of my building from where part of Manhattan could be seen and saw the smoke in the distance: a fungus rising into the sky like in an end-of-the-world movie. At that moment I realized that it could only be a terrorist attack. I called my job at Tower 1 and the lines sounded busy. I called my co-worker who lived in downtown Manhattan and she was watching it all live. My grandmother, who had visited my job a month earlier, called me worried from Florida:

“Are you all right, Nathalie?”

-Yes, Grandma, I’m home.

I called my brother in Peru who didn’t know what was going on. I also told him I was safe. Two more calls came in and then the mobiles stopped working. Only e-mails could be sent, the news transmitted and the images of the attack on the Pentagon.

At about 10 in the morning I was watching on TV in my Tower 1 North catching fire. Tower 2 South was no longer standing and I thought inside me that my tower could not collapse, my morning shift co-workers were there. And it happened …. the tower where he had been a few hours ago nothing else at night fell. I felt something indescribable all over my body, an electric current, I ran to the room where I told my dad that the Tower of my work was no longer there, that none of them existed anymore, I hugged him and we cried together. Between watching the news and answering emails in my bedroom they gave me 2pm when I would have to get ready to go to work: my shifts were in the afternoon / evening from 4pm until dinner service in the restaurant was over Windows on the World, where I was one of the Hostesses.

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***

The next day we met at Beacon Restaurant, another property owned by Windows owners. It was very sad to see so many people crying together. The meeting was to find out who we had survived as all employee records disappeared. I volunteered to answer phone calls, mostly in Spanish, to help staff like me Latinos and create our company’s missing persons database. Now that I remember it I didn’t even realize I had spent a month like that. Paralyzed! They shouted from all over the world asking for their loved ones. The first 2 weeks we did not have much information to give but then the New York police contacted us and told us that if family or friends said, they should bring toothbrushes or hair to identify the remains of people who are already they were beginning to recover in what is now Ground Zero.

Where I returned a few Sundays ago.

There are many stories of people we lost that day, several managed to get out of the building and others like my afternoon / evening shift mates and me the ones who were the lucky ones. Despite the pain of the tragedy and after 20 years, we are grateful to be alive and I think it is up to us to honor the memory of our comrades who are no longer there.

I remember their faces, they were responsible people, workers who made Windows on the World what it was, the most spectacular restaurant in Manhattan. My home in the United States.

After the attack, the owners of Windows on the World opened another restaurant in 2002 called Night where I worked in restaurant management, then I continued in Human Resource Management at a Country Club on Long Island, where I currently live, and I am now dedicated to Hotel Administration in Peru and USA.

But wherever I go, I will never forget those days. Thinking of you, my Windows on the World, Greatest Bar on Earth and Wild Blue Family. Doris Eng, Cristine Olender, Telmo Alvear will never be forgotten.