Aftermath (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

Before anything else: This is not a joke. Also, this Photo Hunt entry is neither meant to offend nor upset. Rather, it's intended to make a few salient points; including it being in so that in the aftermath of the events in 2001 that has come to be known as 9/11, it's hard for people to see or hear the words World Trade Center (or -- in British English -- Centre) without thinking of the twin towers that no longer exist in New York along with the shocking events that took place on American soil on September 11, 2001.

This even though there actually are numerous World Trade Centers/Centres in other parts of the world, including Dubai, London (whose original building, more than incidentally, was heavily damaged by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb in 1996), Mumbai and Hong Kong (which recently has been having renovations done to it -- hence the erection of the sign in the photo -- and on a lower floor of which is located a favorite sushi restaurant of mine).

I think this is particularly true of Americans but also those of us non-Americans who were living in the USA at that time. (As a reminder, 235 non-Americans -- excluding the perpetuators of the international crime -- died as a result of the events of 9/11.) Alternatively put: They are tragedies we will never forget and that have most definitely impacted -- changed in irrevocable ways -- our lives. And whose aftermath and welter of psychological scars it inflicted on individuals along with governments and whole communities of people we still are having to deal and come to terms with more than seven years on.