“This is so fucked up”
“What are you talking about?”
“Turn your TV on.”
Ten years ago I was sitting on my sofa in Brooklyn when my friend B. IM’ed me on AOL Instant Messenger a little after 8:45. I turned on the TV and saw what so many other people did – smoke billowing, newscasters reporting that a plane had hit one tower of the World Trade Center. The two of us IM’ed back and forth, trying to deduce what exactly had just happened – was it small plane that had simply go astray? Something bigger?
I was watching the towers on TV at 9:03 when the second plane hit and there was no mistaking it – this was all planned.
I watched at home alone, IM’ing friends as long as I could, until I couldn’t stand the solitude anymore. I was safe from the carnage in downtown Manhattan, but I was also cut off from my fellow New Yorkers as the ground shifted beneath our feet.
So I set out on foot to find people to connect with. The rest of the day was surreal. I ran into one friend outside a Brooklyn restaurant. We both had the same idea –shouldn’t we go to the hospital to give blood? It later became clear that there wouldn’t be thousands of survivors needing blood. Word on the street was that hospitals wanted you to stay away rather than clogging up their waiting rooms with useless helpfulness. About an hour later I was in downtown Brooklyn and saw a friend I’d gone surfing with several times. She was riding around on her bike, seeing the people coming streaming over Brooklyn Bridge and looked as aimless as I felt.
I spent the rest of the day trying to get to friends in another part of Brooklyn. First I was abandoned by a bus driver with a dozen other people at a remote stop amid warehouses and overgrown lots before a local car service cruised by and returned four of us – an hour and a half later – to the downtown stop where we started. Later I stood on an overhead platform for the G train and took pictures of the blackened mess after the towers fell.
I finally made it to the pub where my friends were and the conversation at every table was, “What’s happened to our city? To us? What does it mean?”
Despite having worked at an office on Wall Street, I didn’t know anyone who died that day. Yet every New Yorker I know reevaluated their life. At the time, I wrote about how it affected the search for love in New York. Personally, I decided I needed to quit drifting and focus on what I really wanted. That put me on a path that eventually led to London and family.
The meaning of 9/11 for the world is still being debated and analysed. But as people poured over the bridges and up the avenues, covered in dust and trying to make it home, life for New Yorkers as we knew it fell away on that day.
I’ll be listening to coverage commemorating the events of 9/11, honouring the people who died and their families and loved ones. I’ll be looking through my book of 9/11 photography. I’ll also be talking to the friends with whom I huddled close in the months (Remember the smell? The fire burned for weeks and you couldn’t go near downtown without being reminded of what lay smouldering at the end of the island.)
I’ll be asking myself the same question I did 10 years ago: what does 9/11 mean? I haven’t even landed on the best way to end this post. That day set individuals and nations on different paths so that we’re still feeling the effects of that day. It’s meaning is a question we’re all still trying to figure out.
Fascinating to get the perspective of a woman who was so close to it all. What I thought was wonderful about the marking of the 10th anniversary was how it really got over that these were individuals that were lost that day with colleagues, friends, family and stories not just one big statistical number.
I remember watching it with an American in London and his response was ‘that it was a terrible accident’ whereas mine was: ‘this is a terrorist act’ – obviously when the 2nd plane hit the WTC everyone knew the true intent but his initial reaction – for me – sums up the average American’s search for the good in people, the positive in a situation and belief in the essential goodness in people. I wonder if 9/11 has taken that gloss off? I don’t know.
What with Iraq and Afghanistan and the general misguided military reaction after 9/11, sometimes the human cost of the original atrocity sometimes gets lost in the mix.
I can only begin to imagine what is what like for New Yorkers on that day. Your account drums home how shocking it was for you as a native but for everyone all over the world, the imaginable had taken place on our TV screens and that image will never be washed from my brain.
Thank you for sharing.
The thought of it all still brings tears to my eyes, in a disbelieving kind of way. The people flying those planes had no right to cause mass devastation and change life for millions instantly. Hadn’t even thought about the aftermath before really, and how wide it must have spread. Horrible doesn’t cover it at all xx