Year of The Cheetah Ch. 00

Crocodiles devoured six critics of the regime overnight. But the news barely moved the morning price of commodities from the Ivory Coast. Cocoa was unchanged, and coffee was slightly up. Vietnam, Tanzania, Java; the beans had travelled the world before their distinct flavor exploded in his paper cup stamped with the green goddess.

Djambo Diallo set it down on the right side of his keyboard. He always arrived first in the morning. At twenty-three, he was also the youngest intern at Occidental Trading. After four years at the University of Chicago, crowned by a joint MBA in Finance and MS in Information Technology, he was at the right place at the right time.

Young Wall Street analysts came from every corner of the world to the vast and promising rectangle of America. Increasingly, they came to search the torch of liberty from the Third World. This was also his case.

He was Djambo the Cheetah, the young boy from the African savanna who had left his village to live his dreams. And this was his first opportunity after college.

He took a sip, and instantly the sweet acidic flavor of the well-roasted Italian nectar transported him home with nostalgia: The coffee trees, the plantations, and his adoptive white parents, Robert and Francoise Martin. They were so proud of his journey.

In four short years, he drove a yellow Chevrolet Caprice Classic, the quintessential cab of the nineties, put himself through school, and successfully graduated. On the Windy City's South Side, grass grew through the cracks of abandoned McDonalds and empty churches, but Djambo never let the surrounding landscape obscure the brightness of his hopes.

Now that Y2K was behind, it looked like clear sailing in the financial markets. He flicked on the bulky computer screen to scan the overnight world market quotations, and began reading the morning news. The entire eightieth floor was empty. Cool, Spartan, dominating the city, it was an ivory tower; a bunker of some sort, where white shirts, ties, suits, and trading tickets would soon buzz around during the frenzy of the 9:30 am opening.

Djambo loved this time of year. It was a pure, blue, early fall morning, with cool air already. The city's humidity evaporated into the heavens without leaving a trace. Coffee, in America, is a religion, a comforting ritual. Without it, mornings are meaningless.

He closed his eyes for a second time, grabbed the cup gently, inhaled it all in his deep lungs, and thought about Felicia whom he had left in Chicago.

When he opened them again, a 767 jumbo jet flying at five hundred miles per hour, carrying eighty one passengers, a crew of eleven, and ten thousand gallons of kerosene in its belly was coming straight at him. It was closing in fast on the other side of the bay window.

It was exactly 8:46 a.m. in New York that morning. The impact did not register in his mind. It was that quick. Instinct took over his body and his limbs reacted automatically. When charged by a herd of Cape Buffalos a decade before in the presence of Robert Martin, far, very far from that cool New York morning, he had plunged to the ground in the same manner. The feeling was identical: Death had arrived.

It did not come from nature this time, but in the cigar shape of a terrifying man made flying machine. The wing decapitated the entire office: Fax machines, computers, water cups, and millions of pieces of paper were flying around him like confetti. Djambo coiled under his desk. Everything had turned black around him, and he immediately ripped off his business shirt.

The heat emanating from the floor below briefly rose to a thousand degrees, and it must have been well over a hundred in his now completely demolished office. It had transformed into a war zone. It looked like the presidential palace in his native Ivory Coast after being looted by the revolutionaries. He was coughing, gasping for air. The windows were pulverized and the sixty-eight Fahrenheit breeze was mixing with the ashes, lighting up fires everywhere.

Djambo crawled to the entrance of the darkened trading room. Six instantly carbonated bodies were lying outside of the elevators from which black smoke was slowly puffing out. He retreated back in, around the reception area. There was a pool of blood, scattered limbs, where young Molly Parks greeted him with a smile at 8:30 am every morning. He had absolutely no idea of what had just happened. Nothing came to his mind, except that he was there, at that moment, and alive. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go.

The trading room was no sanctuary. It had erupted into an orange ball of fire and begun to melt. Djambo crawled down the hallway to his left, but an entire wall had collapsed, obstructing it right in the middle. Daylight appeared from a small office on his right.

He looked behind him; smoke was already swirling his way. He threw himself into the room, and kicked the door behind him.

"HELP!" He yelled.

Debris accumulated all the way to the ceiling; Burnt paper, chairs, metal, wood, plastic had piled up as if an entire Office Depot had suddenly compressed it all, getting it ready for a landfill.

"Climb over the wall." A man's voice said from the other side.

Djambo looked up: There was a small opening at the very top, rough, edgy, with metal pieces erect like barb wire. All he saw was a hand, and he coiled his legs. Speed was his forte, but he was not a weight lifter.

He briefly felt the top of the drywall under his fingers and slid back down on the debris. He took a deep breath, jumped again, reached the top, hung on to it, and the man managed to pull him down on the other side.

Djambo hugged him. They both quietly began crying. He kissed the stranger, and sobbed like a baby. Three thousand people from more than one hundred countries died that day. The choice for those trapped on the floors above his was between asphyxia and jumping out of a window.

How long did it take them to rush down eighty-four stories in a dark stairwell, unable to breathe?

Another man, tens of thousands of miles away, with his own beliefs and illusions thought he was a new prophet, a messenger of God. He had masterminded it. That night, millions around the world celebrated the one-day, man-made apocalypse in America. It had been meticulously prepared, pre-meditated, articulated, sliced, diced, and masterfully executed.

Once on Liberty Street, Djambo immediately thought about Felicia. She was the love of his life. He had no one else but her. In the chaos that ensued, he ran for his life, fast, leaving both towers crumbling behind him.

Felicia was in Chicago that morning. She was twenty-three, about to finish her thesis in theology at the University of Chicago where they had met the summer before. When she saw the towers collapse on television, she immediately realized Djambo worked in one of them. She sobbed alone in the faculty bathroom for a moment and managed to walk home in a daze.

She called again, from their cozy one-bedroom in Hyde Park. But he did not answer. She tried her parents in Wisconsin:

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Mom! Mom! My baby is in there! He works there!"

"Felicia, stay calm. This is a terrorist attack."

"I know that, Mom! I haven't heard from him."

"You have to give it some time honey. Stay calm."

"Mom! I love him."

She curled into a fetus position on the sofa, phone in hand, and cried liked an abandoned child. Hours went by, with the same confusion, television footage, and repetitive clueless commentary. Djambo no longer had his cell phone with him. What he said did not matter when he called her at 4 pm from a lonely booth in New Jersey to tell her he was alive. Felicia cried more than she ever did.

"Do you believe in miracles?" she asked once he was home.

"I do, baby, I do. This is a miracle from God," he said.

"I don't know. I don't know if there is a God. Lots of innocent people have perished in those towers."

"It's hard to wrap my head around it, baby. That man, that dark stairwell..."

"Do you believe in me?" Felicia asked.

"That's all I believe in, sweetie. Without you, the idea of you, I wouldn't be here now."

"I didn't think of it this way." She said.

"That's how I feel."

"What does it mean for us?"

"It means..." and he paused, tears were coming to his eyes:

"You know, we believe in those things in Africa, the things of the spirit. It means there is a greater force out there; a force of goodness, a force...stronger than us, wanting us to be together."

Silence invaded their small apartment. They could hear sirens far away. Heat had risen, and their flat had no air conditioning. It was late summer and not autumn yet.

Cold water in the white ceramic bathtub was their only relief. Felicia turned on the rusty faucets. She heard the neighbors making love upstairs, already, that early in the afternoon. The both of them were soon in the tub, and Felicia began caressing Djambo's long and tender penis. It emerged in the silence, now and then, through the white foam, and grew thicker, electrified by his fiancée's hands.