Zero hour is the hour in which time is not a dead hour in which everything is stopped and you can see the past. Sometimes that time is good news for life but can also carry bad news. When people get into that small space of time realizes that something has changed in his life.
This is what happened to the families of the victims of terrorism. That day, at that particular time, the world took a turn in his life. Zero hour was approaching for all of them, and did not know nor could predict, so that as each day went to their jobs without having any suspicion that damn time around them slowly, very slowly. The moment came and I, a victim, I realized that everything around me stopped, all I knew was gone and had entered fully into the zero hour. The first ten minutes were horrible panic, I could not speak, could not move, could not get out of the trance in which he was involved, but I realized that something serious was happening. After another five minutes I felt a wave of uncontrollable panic and started to move to go outside where could be heard far away the sound of ambulances and police cars, though, I actually did not hear any sound because in my mind only repeated again and again the big explosion that had rocked the train. A few minutes later, out of the wagon and people were running from one place to another to try to rescue anyone alive. A man approached one of the cars and went inside, wearing a yellow vest and holding a briefcase, after a few seconds came to the place where I was and I cried something in his ear, I could not hear anything I said, so he told me beckoning the ground and I dropped to the ground very slowly. The man's face resembled the color of his vest, and his eyes bloodshot, tired, and sad, looked him much older than it was. The man spoke to me, but I could not understand him and all he did was staring into space because everything was spinning. Then he lifted me off the ground and another colleague, who had arrived, I put a blanket over the body and for the first time, I could see the disaster that was around us, every muscle in my body was paralyzed, all over the floor were scattered pieces of rail together with blood and other things that could not or would not explain, also both left and right you could see the great damage that caused the explosion and the huge holes that broke the metal and smashed the windows, leaving a horrible scene. The partner dragged me out of place and an ambulance took me close to heal a large wound in his leg that made me limp. They had spent forty five minutes a happened all, and I was lying on a stretcher, then, I decided to join and saw several journalists filming it all. Near where I was, there was another journalist from images a laptop and showed me the instant he had caught (just before), next to a car that had been affected by the explosion. Those pictures are etched in my mind and I thought all families at that time have lost a child, a parent, ultimately, to a loved one. A tear fell down my cheek, then a girl asked me a picture with her camera, and someone grabbed my arm and injected a sedative to suffer no more, then, before closing his eyes looked at the clock nurses and I saw what had happened an hour, hour long, painful and distressing of all my life.
A month after the bombing me was reading a newspaper sitting on a train station, in a column of a page showed my picture and read the footnotes. When I finished, I kept thinking about the title of the article: Zero hour . Of course, that title was the best to describe the story just told.
This is what happened to the families of the victims of terrorism. That day, at that particular time, the world took a turn in his life. Zero hour was approaching for all of them, and did not know nor could predict, so that as each day went to their jobs without having any suspicion that damn time around them slowly, very slowly. The moment came and I, a victim, I realized that everything around me stopped, all I knew was gone and had entered fully into the zero hour. The first ten minutes were horrible panic, I could not speak, could not move, could not get out of the trance in which he was involved, but I realized that something serious was happening. After another five minutes I felt a wave of uncontrollable panic and started to move to go outside where could be heard far away the sound of ambulances and police cars, though, I actually did not hear any sound because in my mind only repeated again and again the big explosion that had rocked the train. A few minutes later, out of the wagon and people were running from one place to another to try to rescue anyone alive. A man approached one of the cars and went inside, wearing a yellow vest and holding a briefcase, after a few seconds came to the place where I was and I cried something in his ear, I could not hear anything I said, so he told me beckoning the ground and I dropped to the ground very slowly. The man's face resembled the color of his vest, and his eyes bloodshot, tired, and sad, looked him much older than it was. The man spoke to me, but I could not understand him and all he did was staring into space because everything was spinning. Then he lifted me off the ground and another colleague, who had arrived, I put a blanket over the body and for the first time, I could see the disaster that was around us, every muscle in my body was paralyzed, all over the floor were scattered pieces of rail together with blood and other things that could not or would not explain, also both left and right you could see the great damage that caused the explosion and the huge holes that broke the metal and smashed the windows, leaving a horrible scene. The partner dragged me out of place and an ambulance took me close to heal a large wound in his leg that made me limp. They had spent forty five minutes a happened all, and I was lying on a stretcher, then, I decided to join and saw several journalists filming it all. Near where I was, there was another journalist from images a laptop and showed me the instant he had caught (just before), next to a car that had been affected by the explosion. Those pictures are etched in my mind and I thought all families at that time have lost a child, a parent, ultimately, to a loved one. A tear fell down my cheek, then a girl asked me a picture with her camera, and someone grabbed my arm and injected a sedative to suffer no more, then, before closing his eyes looked at the clock nurses and I saw what had happened an hour, hour long, painful and distressing of all my life.
A month after the bombing me was reading a newspaper sitting on a train station, in a column of a page showed my picture and read the footnotes. When I finished, I kept thinking about the title of the article: Zero hour . Of course, that title was the best to describe the story just told.
NOTE: This story was written by me, months after the attack. I was not in any of the trains, even in the hours went by later, where he sees many people helping the wounded out of cars. But it left a deep and terrible sense to me to and around the world with minimal feelings, they tried feel, at least, the suffering of those who suffered. Therefore, I decided to write these lines I hope, have reflected the feeling of loneliness and anguish suffered by all traveling in these trains on 11th March 2004.
by Dani.
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