So what where you doing on September 11th, 2001?

I was in the studio (Filmhouse) mixing something. I had a deadline to meet so I was a little peeved when people started running into the only room in the place with a TV that had a tuner. Half of FP7 ran in demanding I turn the news on. This I did, and I saw the smoke. The story unfolded and we all looked on. We were all upset. Immediately we grasped the implications. Karim was the first to run into the audio room. After watching the news he was trying to find out if Tarek was all right. Tarek was in NY and couldn't be reached.

The comment I remember most clearly was from Adnan: "I wouldn't want to be an Arab in America right now." That turned out to be less of a problem than imagined - a testament to the basic welcoming nature of American people, although there were a few incidents.

It turned out that being an Arab in America was safer for many than being an Arab in your own motherland. 

Some people were saying already that the American government did it themselves. The conspiracy memes were inevitable. The marketing manager of one of our major clients said that whatever one may think of the morality of it, looking at it "objectively," it was an "achievement."

It was painful to hear that, but it threw me back to my family's holiday in the US in 1986. When we flew domestic flights we were shocked at the fact that there was no real security. One could get many dangerous things onto a plane. I actually remember saying to Mum that it would only take one suicide bomber for something terrible to happen. This was in 1986.

Some people were sending "Mabrook USA" texts. That was upsetting. I noticed that Iran expressed regret and that pro-Iran/Hezbollah/all that jazz people in Bahrain would say to me that the attack was "too much." I remember somebody saying they thought America "deserved" this, "but what's the USA going to do now?"

Most people were horrified and said so. After all these years, I can still say a silent thank you for that. It's good to know most people are outraged by the murder of the innocent.

An FP7 colleague lost her brother. I won't mention her name here. I hope she has found a peaceful space. I don't want to imagine how she was feeling at the time.

Thinking of the dead and those they left behind today. I know that our 9/11 is some people's 24/7, but it was a very sad day, a day that changed the Western World.

Frank Herbert, a favourite author of mine, said, “ Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself — a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred. ”

I wish the enquiries had given us more information. I wish our government hadn't used the attack as a pretext for a decade of greedy, bloody rampaging through the Arab world and beyond. I wish the people of the world could demand of their governments that we come together somehow to break these circles of violence and revenge; that we find a discourse, a language, of unity.

RIP, poor victims of the madmen, and all of those who have suffered and died in the ensuing collective insanity. You deserved - you deserve - better.