JENNIFER K MAHAL -- REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

I can’t believe they’re gone. I know they are. I saw the news footage.

But I just can’t believe the twin towers have fallen with thousands of

lives trapped between the floors. It’s like a knife has been plunged in

my heart and I’m so cold. So cold.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center are -- were -- my personal

connection to New York. I was born, along with my twin sister Lara, on a

September day in 1973 on the island of Manhattan. That same year, Tower

Two of the center was completed.

Whenever my family would go to New York -- we lived in New Jersey --

my mom would point out the twin towers. Lara and I thought the two

110-story office buildings standing so proud against the skyline were

named for us. The gullibility of youth.

A week to the day of the attack, I was in Manhattan visiting my

sister. At one point, we had plans to go to the World Trade Center early

in the morning to buy discount Broadway tickets. We were to go to the top

and see the view. An argument sidetracked us, and we decided to skip

going to a show altogether.

I will never get to see that view.

I will never get the sight of the tallest buildings in the New York

skyline collapsing out of my mind.

All the lives lost. The lives changed. The work of architect Minoru

Yamasaki gone forever.

I am lucky. My family members work on the opposite side of Manhattan

from the towers. But I have a friend who did not fare so well. He is

still waiting to hear word of his close family, who had offices near the

top floor of the World Trade Center.

My heart hurts for him.

My sister called from New York while I was writing this column. It was

a beautiful day, she said. A clear and beautiful day. “Everyone’s

walking around and it’s like we’re in shock,” Lara said. “We’re in

complete and utter shock.”

She was about to walk out the door when news of the first plane came

through on the radio. She watched as the second tower got hit. Then my

sister, a post doctorate at Sloane Kettering Cancer Research Center, went

to work, sent everyone she had control over home and joined the lines at

the local blood bank. They wouldn’t take her blood because she went to

India last year.

“By the time I was out of there, the line was three blocks long,” Lara

said. “The city is in a daze. New Yorkers are being nice to each other.

You really see the heart of New York.”

The worst brings out the best in us. I’m trying to remember that.

When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, I was proud that the

tower did not fall. America was hurt but we stood. We’re hurt now. But we

will stand. Even if our symbols do not.

* JENNIFER K MAHAL is features editor of the Daily Pilot. She can be

reached at jennifer.mahal@latimes.com