The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 is an event that many Americans experienced and will never forget. No one, however, will ever be able to imagine the attack through the eyes of the terrorists themselves. Despite this losing battle to find true understanding, Martin Amis does a unique job portraying the event through Muhammad Atta’s perspective as one of the suicide pilots to fly into the World Trade Center. Although we will never know what these few men thought in the time leading up to the attacks, Amis adds a new perspective to 9/11.
I thought it was particularly interesting when Amis wrote, “It was appropriate, perhaps, and not paradoxical, that terror should also sharply promote its most obvious opposite. Boredom.” I do not fully understand what Amis means by this, but I think most people would agree that 9/11 promoted boredom. If anything, it set in a motion a world of skepticism and harsh criticism. This includes culture, race, government, politics, and more. Regardless of what Atta and the other terrorists intended to prove, I do not believe boredom was a result.
People will continue to write and speculate about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I don’t know if we’ll ever be satisfied with a certain view of the events leading up to and following September 11 but many people provide interesting perspectives about that historical day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/books/review/06filkins.html?pagewanted=1&ref=mohamedatta
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