What began as a slow crackle accelerated into a total misalignment. The pieces that collectively created a magnificent archway were no longer in harmony. The vaulted roof gave way and collapsed with a deafening roar onto the airport terminal below.
Had our red-eye from New York arrived thirty minutes late, had my companion and I lingered longer in the glorious new structure, admiring its breathtaking beauty in the early morning light, silent like a cathedral, we might have been buried under its rubble. Instead we were already through customs, already at baggage claim, delirious from jet-lag and thinking about the long week ahead. If there was any large sound or rumbling, or panic from the airport staff, it went unnoticed as a town car whisked us off to Paris.
Only after an opulent breakfast at the Four Seasons, once we had settled into our new office down the street, did I discover the news. Several dead, numerous injured at Charles de Gaulle. Terminal 2E had barely been finished a year before it catastrophically failed. We were just there.
My companion shrugged it off. The disaster didn’t affect him, didn’t alter his course—he had a movie to get off the ground.
But I never stopped thinking about it, days and years later—reading about the unlucky victims, the forensic investigation, the charges of involuntary manslaughter, the razing and rebuilding. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the world quickly forgot. Or didn’t notice at all.
It was twenty years ago today.
Last year my family had an early flight out of Terminal 2E, waiting in the exact place where everything went down. The new structure echoed the magnificence of the original. My kids ran around, watching airplanes on the tarmac. I sat and took it all in, perhaps the only person in the building who could still see the ghosts, still wondering “what if.”
