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Twenty-five years after 9/11, a writer recalls the awful, gutting grief of that day—and the balm of Pharoah Sanders’s “Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah.”

I don’t hear it at first. I’m drowning in class prep—my second week as a newly minted, overwhelmed, tenure-track literature professor in Cleveland and I have to teach a lesson on poetic imagery in five minutes, I’m taking notes on Carolyn Forché’s poem “The Colonel”—oh, the phone’s ringing—but I’m scribbling the conclusion of the lesson, I’ve almost got it, this important final point, four minutes to class, and I don’t want to pick it up.

But I do, and it’s my wife, Amy, a quaver in her voice. We’re three years married, trying to have a baby—that’s my first worry. But she’s saying something about a plane crash. New York. I think, what’s this got to do with teaching poetry? 9:27. No, she says, followed by something something towers. I hear the words but can’t put it together. None of it makes sense. 9:28, two minutes to class. Not one, two plane crashes, Amy says. They’re thinking it’s an attack, she says. Thanks, love, sorry, I say, gotta go teach right now. I hang up the phone and rush to the classroom.

Now that I’m reading “The Colonel” aloud in front of the class, it hits me—what’s happened. I’d spent the past decade involved in antiwar activism, trying to stop the sanctions on Iraq that had led to hundreds of thousands of dead. Did I think it would never come back to haunt us here? 

I couldn’t imagine it. The students are quiet, their faces radiating confusion. They’ve already heard the news. Okay, I say, let’s talk about imagery. I falter over the words of the poem, its polite Salvadoran military officer hosting Americans for dinner. The daily paper, the pet dog, the cop television show in English, the maid, the rack of lamb—the images create a portrait of a privileged life, yes, but it’s sinister, since the place is protected by a wall with broken bottles. The colonel pours out a grocery sack with “many human ears,” and “shook one in our faces,” and then dramatically sweeps them to the floor with his forearm.

As I’m reading the poem, I see it, suddenly—it’s us. It’s about us, in our own bubble, and it takes everything I have not to break down and weep in front of them. The poem seems prophetic, but also grotesque. I put it away. Let’s talk about another poem, I say. I shuffle my notes, looking for something, anything else. 

As I’m reading the poem, I see it, suddenly—it’s us.

By the end of class, both towers have fallen. In our department, we’re all watching it, the planes hitting the towers, again and again, the burning—as if, somehow, if we watch it enough, it would happen differently, or we’d come to understand it—the smoke billowing from the buildings, the sudden dramatic implosion and collapse. And the death. How many thousands dying inside. 

Later, at the all-faculty meeting, I overhear someone saying, fits the description, and catch sidelong glances, and suddenly I feel Arab in a way I never have before. Exposed. Alone. The day passes like a bad dream there’s no waking from.

That evening, I climb into my Accord and turn on 89.3 to distract myself. The deejay says, This is Pharoah Sanders. It begins. Handclapping, a shaker, a tambourine, the delicate tapping of a high-hat, and then a piano, the three-note figure. Like someone at the door, wanting in. A saxophone enters, plaintive and probing, testing the boundaries of the space, sweeping clear the hallways of silence. The sax goes quiet, and a voice speaks:

. . . Peace is the will of the people and the will of the land
With peace we can move ahead together
We want you to join us this evening in this universal prayer
This universal prayer for peace for every man
All you got to do is clap your hands
One-two-three

It’s so catchy I tap the steering wheel, drawn into its rhythm. A voice sings, Hum-Allah, hey. Repeatedly. Not pure Arabic, exactly, this praise be to God, but it feels so close we could leap there, his voice yodeling the hey, pulling it into multiple syllables, calling us in. 

Prince of peace won’t you hear our pleas
And ring your bells of peace
Let loving never cease

Calling us in. A voice and its falsetto, a flutter of the wings of voice. Rising. Falling. Rising again, and I’m driving into the darkening evening, the sky’s blues turning to bruise. 

The instruments take their turn to solo, the sax, then the piano, again drenched in the plaintive musing, then building, the drum work knocking on some important door, and now it seems to be a hammer nailing boards together, maybe he’s building an ark, one-two-three, one-two-three, instruments building and quieting, building and quieting, and now I’m not thinking about the burning towers, the molten fire biting through the steel as thousands tumbled down the throat of staircases, until they began collapsing, not thinking about smoldering wreckage, of ground zero, of the grief and the grievance that surge toxic smoke, the dragon of war waking, I’m not thinking about the thousands and maybe millions that will be swallowed in this machinery of vengeance, and I'm no longer driving this old Accord, I’m inside the ark that Pharoah Sanders has built, the floating holy vessel of music, sanctuary of sound—and Pharoah is calling for peace, singing peace, making peace.

I’m inside the ark that Pharoah Sanders has built, the floating holy vessel of music, sanctuary of sound.

I’m halfway home now. And that’s when the sax solo begins. 

At the center of the ark of peace, it pours forth from the mouth of his horn, agony, like a wounded animal, its leg trapped and unable to wrench free, crying out to its mother.

It seems to last forever. Agony not of a single animal only, but a herd of screeching, a furyhurt beyond words. 

Why did I think that working for peace might spare me, might spare someone else, of the horrors of war, this awful, gutting grief? 

I won’t know for some days all those lost in the towers—the former classmates, the father of a friend—or how the ruins would smolder for days, or the fury that would be unleashed, and millions across the globe who would burn.

There’s no escaping it. It surges out of me, in waves, what I tried to hide from my students before. The road blurs.

It surges out of me, in waves, what I tried to hide from my students before. The road blurs.

And then, oh mercy, it finally breaks—like a fever cresting, crashing, and ceding, I’m wasted in its wake, wrestling in the waves for air—the song returns to the melody, the yodel and its rising and falling, and the beat that's never been lost, one-two-three, one-two-three, and that call for the prince of peace to hear our plea, to ring your bells of peace, let loving never cease. Hum-Allah. And the African kalimba enters the song, its sound almost exactly like a doorbell, inviting us in.

I’m home now, in the parking lot of the Peace House—where the Quakers meet on weekends, where Peace Action had a small office, and where my wife and I are lucky enough to live—and the song, at last, trails into silence. I look through the dark up to the window-glow of the second-floor apartment of this grand old building, where Amy is stirring something, no doubt with the radio on as she takes in the latest reports from New York. It feels like a different house than the one I left that morning, and I pause before entering, wanting to hold onto the song for another moment. Would we even want to bring up a child in this new world? If we do, what ark of peace could we build for them? And what sorrow might we hear at its center?

Twenty-five years later, I can almost see her there, hear her listening as she stirs.

Cleveland, Ohio