All We Have Left

Heralded as an architectural marvel at the time of their opening in 1973, the Twin Towers, located in the heart of Manhattans’ Financial District, symbolized American achievement, power, and prosperity. Their destruction, in addition to the inestimable cost of human lives, disrupted stock market trading and phone communication for lengthy time periods. No air traffic was allowed within the surrounding airspace; airline passengers were stranded all over the world as they awaited the ability to fly home to New York.

Alia, in the description of the events of the morning leading up to her attempt to visit her father’s office, notes that “[t]he lobby is white marble, soaring windows, glass and metal” (98). A monument to contemporary design and technology, the Towers embodied achievement. Their destruction, as detailed in Alia’s narratives, takes on an almost anthropomorphic quality. The Towers die a bit at a time; initially, their computerized mechanisms malfunction; subsequently, they succumb to fires and explosions and finally, almost anticlimactically, they implode upon themselves. 

All but archaic by 2016, answering machines provided a new sense of technical assistance in communication in the 1970s. Essentially, answering machines were old-fashioned tape recorders that were automatically triggered to save audio messages when no one was available to answer the phone personally.