I was in New York at the end of April in the days preceding the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, there to take part in a conference on Memory Studies at The New School for Social Research. An American colleague of mine, Alexandra Delano, along with Ben Nienass, presented a paper on the invisible victims of 9/11: the illegal Mexican workers who were in the towers at the time. During the conference, Alexandra movingly declared that these illegal workers had not had rights, alive or dead. Their names are not listed on the sides of the two big pools, which constitute the memorial for the victims of the terrorist attack of 9/11.

I really loved the idea of giving a voice to the invisible, so I decided that it was time to pay a visit to the 9/11 National Memorial. I set out for a long walk across Manhattan to reach downtown. I hoped that the walk would prepare me for what I was about to confront. Once I got to the vicinity of the commemorative site, I found countless signs that explained to me where to book my tour. Everything was organized in a very efficient way, and after waiting for less than an hour, I was able to enter.

I found myself standing in line together with many visitors, thoroughly watched by many kind and smiling policemen, and when I say many, I mean that they were so numerous that it came to mind that there must be a clear and present danger to watch out for. They asked me to let them scan my purse into a metal detector in order to make sure I did not carry a weapon. Finally, after walking along a closely watched path, I stepped into a garden.

There were two enormous water pools, as if they were two gigantic swimming pools with high walls from which two immense water falls flowed down with tremendous force and energy. I noticed that there was absolutely nothing one could tamper with, so I kept on asking myself why all those policemen had been standing there. It looked as if the intent of deploying so many involved a symbolic value rather than a functional one. It seemed that all those policemen were about to tell all the victims whom the memorial had been dedicated to: “We had not been able to protect you when you were alive, but we’ll make up for it now that you are dead.” In other words, the heavy deployment of police looked as if it wanted to speak to me of the sorrow of a nation and its dismay over the impossibility to protect its “sons and daughters” a sorrow to deal with through the activation of a kind of a- fortiori “militarization of suffering.”

Although it is true that the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death was upcoming, I had gone there neither to investigate nor to bother anyone, but to just pray. I was there as an Italian and European citizen to commemorate the victims of terrorist violence. The idea that a place of prayer had to be protected by the police was incomprehensible at the time.

The memorial is astonishingly beautiful. I believe I have never seen such a spiritual memorial: so much water flowing onto the center of the pool toward a trapdoor that seems to be connecting directly with Hades, the kingdom of the dead. The names of the victims are written onto the pools’ sides, at least those who have been legitimately recognized as such by the U.S. Government. There is no doubt: Michael Arad and Peter Walker, the two architects who designed the memorial out of 5200 different projects from 63 countries, created a work of great impact, both esthetically and spiritually. The force of nature caps it all and makes the whole creation more vigorous: the wind whips up splashes of water onto the tourists, who then walk away. It’s those tourists that, taking pictures with their cameras in compulsive ways, try to exorcize the pain they’re feeling. Yes, because paying a visit to the 9/11 Memorial nags you with a pain that spreads all over your body and makes you burst into tears as rivers flow down from your eyes. I had been skeptical about places having their memory and energy, but not any longer. I have to admit that after this visit I have changed my mind. The memorial isn’t just a simple commemorative monument: it is the exact place where thousands of people died, where their bodies were scattered and crushed. That place is imbued with that pain, and looks as if a huge gap between two worlds opened up allowing those souls to keep on talking to us.

While I was looking for some spare space on the sides of the pools, some space that Michael Arad had left out for other potential names of potential victims, I happened to notice a young woman with long black hair. She didn’t take any picture, hiding behind the role of the “tourist.” Without  choice, she visibly let pain spread across her body. From a distance, I looked at her for a long time. When she left, I walked toward the place where she had been, and I found a tiny red rose beside a victim’s name. I rejoice in thinking that she left it there.

That delicate gesture clearly suggests how the semiotic device enacted by the commemorative space works. Those big pools can collect all our pain, and those waterfalls that seem to last forever have the power to cleanse all the violence and all the blood shed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

When I finally mustered my strength to walk away, I was very sure: that ever-flowing water would be able to wash away all that horror throughout the centuries and give peace again to Americans and their loved ones who died in the terrorist attack. All that water would help us, too, to remind us of that sorrow in Europe and to come to terms with the violence that caused it.

9/11 is a very difficult date in the recent past: it’s a date in which the horror of violence has been concentrated, in 1973 in Chile a U.S. backed coup and in 2001. I like to imagine that the big waterfalls honor the memory of all the dead. Such a difficult and painful past: we use words to commemorate, a way to elaborate and respect, so our sorrow is included in the future’s memory.

Are there words and actions that may recount this “cultural trauma” and heal its wounds at the same time? I hope my brief lines, along with my photo of the red flower at the extraordinary memorial may help as a little step.

This post was originally published in Italian on the blog LINKIESTA.