All We Have Left

NOW:

Sixteen-year-old Jesse is used to living with the echoes of the past. Her older brother died in the September 11th attacks, and her dad has filled their home with anger and grief. When Jesse gets caught up with the wrong crowd, one momentary hate-fueled decision turns her life upside down. The only way to make amends is to face the past, starting Jesse on a journey that will reveal the truth about how her brother died.

THEN:

In 2001, sixteen-year-old Alia is proud to be Muslim... it's being a teenager that she finds difficult. After being grounded for a stupid mistake, Alia is determined to show her parents that that they must respect her choices. She'll start by confronting her father at his office in downtown Manhattan, putting Alia in danger she never could have imagined. When the planes collide into the Twin Towers Alia is trapped inside one of the buildings. In the final hours she meets a boy who will change everything for her as the flames rage around them . . .

When I went to New York last summer, I remember going to the One World Trade Centre and the 9/11 Memorial Museum and feeling so haunted by the experience. It's hard to describe but standing on "Ground Zero" and seeing fragments of the destruction that those terror attacks unleashed, hearing first-hand accounts of life and death, horror and survival, watching live footage of the eerie moments before and the wreckage amid the aftermath, chilled me to the bone. It is something that I will never forget. It's like every nerve ending went haywire...it is an experience that makes you feel, from the inside out, the depths of the horror that victims and survivors alike suffered. I can't remember ever feeling so raw and emotionally disturbed. 

All We Have Left, while fiction, captures that. The two "eras" between which it is split is an insight into two innocent lives that were destroyed, among thousands, by the events of 9/11 as well as into the ripple-effect that inevitably claimed the lives of loved ones as collateral damage. It is pain-stakingly accurate, as far as I'm aware, in painting the horror-scape of the explosions over the course of 102 minutes. It is a heartbreaking appreciation of how tragedy forces out the strength and fragility of human nature, how it pushes relentlessly on innate survival instinct that is both selfish and selfless...how a cruel twist of fate can bring out the best during the worst. It somehow lets us imagine a fraction of the surreal terror that hundreds of people just like you and I experienced on a day that should have been just like any other but instead became a day that changed the world...that saw a destruction of epic proportions that even to this day, feels like something of the worst-imagined nightmare.

|   I realise that maybe everybody's story is important, because 9/11 didn't just happen to the people who died, it happened to the entire country. People were living their lives, doing everyday things, when suddenly the planes hit, and time ripped into two pages titled "Before 9/11" and "After 9/11". With their clumsy stories, they are saying: "We all felt it. We remember where we were when the world changed." - All We Have Left, Wendy Mills

It's also a glimpse into lives that were torn apart by the events that day. How it fuelled hatred for a religion that ironically, felt the impact of those attacks too and then had to take the brunt of its aftermath, how it created a vessel that couldn't possibly contain the grief and pain only loss can inflict and so instead, was forced to hold the fury of a nation. And it is the perfect illustration of how damaging that fury can be. How grief can blind, how ignorance can blind, how being uneducated about other people's beliefs can blind...how painting everyone of a certain religion, or colour, or race with the same brush, can blind. All We Have Left shoulders that weight.

While I feel that the post-9/11 segments felt stilted and could have been written with a more mature, authentic approach, I thought that the two time periods were distinctive, the narratives compelling, and the evocative nature of Wendy Mills' writing worked incredibly well. It is significant in so many ways; it is a lesson in compassion and humanity, and how important it is to see the wider picture enough to embrace the knowledge that not all Muslims are terrorists. It's a brave venture into exploring both sides of the coin and all things considered, it's open, honest, and a walk in the shoes of every single person - you and I and the seven billion others in this world - who felt the impact of 9/11. And beyond that, in the day and age that we find ourselves in now, it is a painfully relevant read.