On 11 September 2001, watching the news of the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center, dumbfounded like so many millions of viewers, I was struck by the apocalyptic spectacle, which reminded me of Emil Cioran's invocation of 'smoke and dust as after a great cataclysm".¹ On what became universally known henceforth as "9/11", New York City, "enveloped in the smoke, dust, and debris …, experienced the real trauma of a real skyscraper catastrophe".²