I've been thinking of writing this for some time; a personal recollection of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001, as I experienced them from my perch here in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, New York.
The attacks are now nine years in the past. Some images have become a part of our collective national consciousness - the eruption of flame from the plane striking the building, the final collapse in a shroud of gray dust, the dumbstruck men and women on the streets - some are peculiar to those of us who were here.
What follows are my recollections of the attacks. They are, of necessity, subjective.
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I grew up in Europe. Terrorism was always a part of my psychic landscape; the IRA's indiscriminate slaughter in London, Baader-Meinhof in Germany, Italy's Brigate Rossi. People killing other people, often enough at random, to make some point, remedy some injustice real or perceived.
Not for a moment did I think the same was possible at home.
"Honey, wake up. The World Trade Center's on fire."
That's how I woke my then newly acquired better half, a few minutes before nine A.M. We walked together towards the front of the apartment, the side that faces Manhattan; the North Tower was a torch, maybe three miles away through the clear air.
We didn't know what was happening. It was early; maybe the building - the entire Trade Center complex during working hours held fifty thousand people - was still relatively empty. Maybe it had only been hit by a small plane. Maybe this was just an accident, a pilot error. Something manageable.
That's when we saw the still pristine southern tower erupt into flames. It was clear, in that instant, with that sharp intake of breath, that this was no accident.
The next half hour is a blur. The TV didn't have much to add to what we could see and hear; the sirens racing towards the river from all around us were enough. At one point we heard that another plane had struck the Pentagon, that others - who knew how many? - were still in the skies, and that we had not yet reached the full measure of devastation.
Still, at that moment in time, we had little idea of what was to come. Nobody, I think, even considered that a building of this sheer size was capable of sustaining a mortal wound. But we were wrong; the South Tower fell in on itself, slowly - or so it seemed - shattering a thousand feet to the streets below.
The time was 9:58:59 AM Eastern.
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The north tower, One World Trade, was still burning. It stood, obscenely, alone, with a long smear of smoke staining the clear sky. We could see entire floors on fire. At that time I still had some hope that the building and the lives within it would survive. Every minute that passed with the tower still standing fed that hope. And all around, the sirens were still howling on their way to the inferno, doing something at least.
At some point, the dauphin, George Bush, gave his first frightened little speech to the nation. I've always hated that little man; but never more so than when his small, frightened face muttered platitudes that morning, completely inadequate to the scope of what I could see from my windows. There's a saying that the hour makes the man; this hour had too little to work with.
Across the blue gulf of air, the spire of the tower began to lean. Then it too, like its twin, made the slow-motion fall into nothingness, into a dark plume of dust and ash. We knew that we were seeing thousands of people die.
The time was 10:28:25 AM Eastern.
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We were numb. There was nothing to say. Leaving the house, there was complete silence, broken only by the bells of the churches. The sirens had stopped; there was nowhere to go. People were walking by covered in gray dust, streaked with soot, empty faces trying to comprehend what had just happened. Here and there, our neighbors were sitting on their stoops, with little transistor radios giving what little news was to be had.
And the news was all bad. Thousands missing. The White House and Capitol, evacuated. Manhattan, closed off. A hijacked plane crashed, somewhere. Seven World Trade, down. Forty Liberty, also down (a false report, it turned out). Bomb scares across the metropolis, uncounted numbers evacuated from Manhattan. The borders and skies of the country, closed. Fleets of airliners forced to land or turned back from American airspace. Someone said "Al Qaeda", and soon those words were on everyone's lips.
In the early afternoon, there were planes in the sky again: fighter jets, ready, or so we were told, to shoot down any plane that entered the closed zone. That closed zone being our home.
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These buildings were not loved. New Yorkers view many of our towers with affection; the elegant Chrysler Building, the colossal Empire State, the sleek Flatiron. The World Trade Center was different, a titanic exclamation point at the foot of the island. But they were always there, like an urban lighthouse. You could step out of the subway and know this way south, this way west. It was only when they were gone that we knew what we had lost.
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The next few days were a jumble. After a while, you could go back into Manhattan. The smell of burnt plastic became, after some days, a sick-sweet smell of decomposing flesh. Everywhere there were little posters, headlined "Missing", small handmade things for absent loved ones. You hoped and prayed that they would bear fruit. Most didn't. And suddenly, there were American flags everywhere; I hung mine out on the Twelfth. One night, I think spontaneously, we put candles on the sidewalk; within the hour, for blocks and blocks, there was a trail of lights. People burst into tears just looking at the empty firehouses draped in black. The New York Times began publishing its series Portraits of Grief, a wrenching daily drumbeat of the missing and dead. It was weeks before I heard anyone laugh.
What was astounding to me was the love and grief that flowed to this City. On the Thirteenth, there were vigils all over the world, for us, in London, Paris, Moscow, even Tehran. Some places that bear no great love for this country, all sharing our pain.
Something good could have come out of this.
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Now, nine years later, that spirit is dissipated. The little man is gone, the wars of vengeance he launched, waving our bloody shirt, are still going on. The hole in the sky is still there, but will be filled within the year, for the next anniversary.
The spirit of 9/11 was real. It's up to us, as Americans, to make it matter again, not with vengeance, but with healing. When someone says, "Never Forget", remember this: we weren't alone that day. The whole world was with us. Peace.