9/11/1997

I was not yet American when I first glimpsed the New York City skyline. I saw it from a small round window of a flatbed cargo van which was taking me, my baby brother, my parents, grandparents, another family, and everything we owned into Manhattan from the JFK Airport. Until that moment, the tallest building I'd ever seen was the one in which I spent my childhood—a 16-story Soviet prefab in Kharkiv, Ukraine. But when we reached the midpoint of the Queensboro Bridge, those of us still awake from a ten-hour flight shared a vision: a wall of towers shrouded in a dreamy Autum mist, some rising so high their crowns disappeared in the rainclouds. No one moved. I held my breath. My father cried. 

Years later, in Brooklyn, somebody took this photo with a disposable camera from the rooftop of Americana—the tallest building in my neighborhood. It was 1997. I was 18 and a U.S. Citizen.