My new book – Tortured- takes you into the mind of a torturer. Rewritten and still just as terrible!
Tortured: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9798870606248: Books
Phase 1 – Beginnings and setting up the board
Thou causest the night to pass into day, and thou causest the day to pass into the night.
Koran
I lie awake at night and I see those bodies falling from the twin towers – people throwing themselves out of windows and off roofs and drifting down as some camera held by a detached observer tracks them through the liquid air.
Somebody, in the midst of all that madness, had the foresight, the calmness, the capacity to film it as it was happening. On many hand-held devices and network cameras the events were recorded. Objective eyes operated controls. That level of detachment is understandable to me. But that is not my main focus, not why the event is so important.
That they did film the destruction of the twin towers is remarkable; for they have documented something so horrific, so unreal, so unbelievable, that it is bizarre. Something that intrigues me, obsesses me. For I find myself witnessing something I cannot understand, cannot come to terms with. Those images are seared into my mind. I replay them and wonder, trying to make sense of it all.
There is a silent serenity to those scenes of falling people. I watch as they slowly tumble through the air, as if they are polystyrene mannequins falling in slow motion, their clothes streaming out behind them. I do not see any sign of panic. They seem at peace with themselves as they slowly drift down towards the unforgiving concrete. That is far from understandable to me.
I have never witnessed such terrible calm.
As I lie awake in the dark I see those drifting, swirling figures falling and I do not get any sense of terror, of horror, of panic. They seem so resigned. The scene is one of beauty, not horror.