I
woke up many times throughout the night, sweating, heart pounding and
terrified.
11
AM I watched the National Cathedral Memorial service on TV. When the Muslim leader spoke about how Islam
is about peace and love, not killing, I started sobbing. Finally.
It was almost a relief to cry.
Almost, because it wasn’t a nice crying, it was an I’m-going-to-puke
crying. A friend of Cary ’s called and I talked to her a bit. She asked, are you okay. I said sniffling, I’m sorry, I haven’t cried
yet, it’s just starting to hit me.
I
went to the office for email and phone calls.
Lots of emails still coming, are you okay?! From friends, family, co-workers,
business acquaintances I’ve met along the way.
A friend in Virginia
whose husband is a marine stationed at Quantico
wrote to me. God help all of you who
will be called to respond to this, I told her.
She replied that they were all on the highest alert they’ve ever been
on, in fact they had to look up the protocol for this level of alert because
they were unfamiliar with it. I sent an
email to a Muslim co-worker who sits on the Diversity Council with me. This is going to be a hard time for you, I
wrote. Your faith is going to be
targeted. What can we do?
I
left the office and walked to Canal and Westside Highway again. There were more people than the day before,
gathered all up and down the Highway, holding signs, “God Bless The U.S.,” and
encouraging the exhausted workers. There
were so many thousands of people volunteering to dig through the pile to find
survivors. They poured in from all over
the country. Hundreds of doctors and a
huge triage center stood ready.
Waiting. Empty. But after the first day, no survivors were
found. Ever.
Pet-owning
residents of Lower Manhattan gathered at Canal
and Westside Highway
waiting for Sheriff and SPCA escorts to their apartments to get their
pets. They were the only people allowed
below the checkpoint. The thought
crossed my mind, what if I told them I had a pet? But then I thought, I wouldn’t lie like that
in normal times, there aren’t really grounds to start now, just to get my phone
charger and satisfy this obsession to be in my home. People were dying. Animals were suffering. I didn’t need anything that badly.
But
I still wanted to get home.
I
talked to the checkpoint officers. I
live down there, I want to go to my apartment.
They said, no one passes here. I
walked east on Canal. All of the
southbound streets were road blocked, manned by NYPD officers to stop people
from going below Canal Street . I passed a couple of roadblocks and finally
asked the officers at Hudson
Street if I could go down to my apartment. No one passes here, they said. So I walked on and asked the officers at Varick Street the
same question. They asked for my
ID. I showed them my drivers license,
which is a California
driver license with my New York
address on it. They questioned it, I
explained for the first of what would be many hundreds of times to come, the
story of my suspicious looking ID, that I mailed in for renewal of my California license and
gave them my New York
mailing address and they put it on the license.
That’s very odd, the officer said, raising an eyebrow at me. Then he said yes, you can pass.
I walked
quickly down Varick, before the officer could change his mind about letting me
pass, and made my way west to Westside
Highway .
There were no cars on the streets except official vehicles. All the stores and restaurants were
closed. The only people out were rescue
workers, firemen, Red Cross, etc. There
were palettes of food stacked everywhere, in the streets, on the sidewalks. The restaurants that were open were only
serving the rescue workers. A dozen ashy
fire suits were piled eerily on a sidewalk in front of a restaurant. The fire fighters were inside eating. McDonald’s had set up a mobile food truck to
hand out burgers and fries. Sidewalks,
gutters, cars, awnings, any space that was not being trafficked was covered in
thick white ash. It looked like nuclear
winter down here.
I
walked the final few blocks down Westside
Highway to Chambers, the main entry point into
North Battery Park City where I live.
The sidewalks were blocked by vehicles, tents, trailers, huge piles and
palettes loaded with boxed supplies – water, clothes, food – for the rescue
workers. I had to walk in the Highway,
taking care to step over cables, avoid being squashed by buses, trucks, squad
cars, fire trucks, and just generally stay out of the way.
The
fire four blocks down still burned, the smoke plume had not dissipated. The acrid smell was difficult to bear. Crushed vehicles blanketed in thick white ash
had been towed hastily and shoved in corners out of the way – on sidewalks, in
vacant lots and driveways of evacuated buildings. There were many hundreds of people working on
the site, searching for survivors. NYPD,
FDNY, National Guards, FBI, Office of Emergency Management, the Red Cross and
countless other agencies had set up in trailers, in tents, on the Highway, in
the High School and PS I89 on Westside Hwy and nearby cross streets.
The
enormous, twisted, smoking Pile of wreckage dwarfed the cranes, bulldozers and
people who scrambled over hot spots, searching frantically for any signs of
life.
I
picked my way through the madness and ask the Officers at the barricade at
Chambers if I could make a quick trip to my apartment. The few other residents who had made it this
far were being escorted in little groups to get stuff from their
apartments. I felt like Richard Dreyfus
making it to the extraterrestrial landing-site mountain, finally welcomed by
the government workers who had tried so hard to keep all citizens out of the
area.
They
were only going to the three buildings North of me, however. An officer told me, no way can you get to
your apartment, they haven’t cleaned your street or building yet. He said, there are five inches of dust covering
everything and the dust contains high levels of PCBs, which are highly
carcinogenic. You don’t want to track
that all over the City and endanger us all, do you? I think you’re being a little dramatic, is
what I didn’t say. No, I don’t need
anything badly enough to endanger anyone, is what I did say.
I
turned to head back uptown, feeling unfulfilled that I hadn’t reached my
destination. A man with a notebook and
hardhat stopped me. He was a reporter
for the Daily News. I told him what I
knew about what was happening with the residents of Lower
Manhattan , which wasn’t much.
I gave him the Web site address of the emergency site that the Battery
Park City Authority had set up for residents.
He seemed mostly interested in reports of looting of stores and
apartments near Ground Zero. I had heard
stories of looting, I said, but I didn’t know if they were true. He gave me his card. Call if you hear anything interesting, he
said.
I
walked east across Chambers. I stopped
at West Broadway to stare at the burning piles of twisted steel and crushed
concrete, more than fifteen floors high in areas, and surrounding buildings
that had gashes and giant holes where pieces of building and plane fell into
them. How did this happen? Why? Are there people under there alive?? A soldier standing with NYPD officers and
other soldiers asked me to move along.
You shouldn’t be here, he said. I
know, you’re right, I said. I just... I don’t
understand this. I know, one of the
soldiers replied. But you really can’t
stay here. I felt bad for making their
jobs harder and left quickly after apologizing. I still walked east a couple of more blocks,
however, instead of turning north immediately, to see more of the Site.
On
my walk back north through Soho, I passed the same Church on Houston where I
had sat on September 10, crying about my aunt’s brush with death and the
possibility that my days of living the Manhattan “high-life” as a gainfully
employed person were ending.
A
woman was standing on the same steps where I had sat, she was yelling at the
chained doors of the dark church: “Today
is a National Day of Prayer, why is this church not open?! We have lost all of our firemen, they’re all
dead! We need to pray, we need to be
together!” She was sobbing. People passing by, like myself, stopped to
stare at her. Her cries echoed down the
entire street.
She
crossed the street to the Priest’s House and knocked on the door. The door
opened and she yelled at the man: “Why is this church not open? You need to open this church, how are we
supposed to pray?!” The man promptly
slammed the door in her face. She stood
in the middle of the street, screaming and sobbing. A man on the street yelled at her, “Shut
up! Just shut the fuck up!” I think
her grief was too unsettling for him to bear, which is why he yelled at her like
this instead of just walking on.
It
was unbearable to see her. I couldn’t
stand it. I went up to her and put my
hand on her shoulder. “We don’t need to
be in a Church to pray,” I said. “We can
pray right here! God will hear you
whether you are in a church or not.
Let’s pray.” She looked at me,
her eyes on fire with anger and grief, “I knew those firemen. Why is this Church not open? God damn them. To hell with the Catholic Church!” And then she ran away, down the street. I was afraid she would hurt herself or be
lost in the City, a sea of grieving people, just another person collapsed under
the weight of her grief. I hope she
found relief.
A
week or so later, I talked to the stock broker that I had dinner with on
September 10. We were both a little
spooked that we had talked that night about what would happen in Manhattan in
the event of a major disaster. But he
did not “flee the City in his nuke suit” as he had said he would. He volunteered on September 12 for many days
as a medic, looking through rubble for survivors and assisting injured
workers.
I do
believe in God, and I believe that we find God in each other.
DO NOT
WEEP
Do
not stand at my grave and weep
I
am not there, I do not sleep
I
am a thousand winds that blow
I
am the diamond glints on snow
I
am the sunlight on ripened grain
I
am the gentle autumn's rain.
When
you awaken in the morning's hush
I
am the swift, uplifting rush
Of
quiet birds in circled flight.
I
am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do
not stand at my grave and cry;
I
am not there, I did not die.
-- Mary E. Frye, 1932
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