The Day After

They say there are 8 mil­lion sto­ries about the naked city. Today, all those story con­verge on one event: the despi­ca­ble bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter. Here is my account. It’s raw, unedited and prob­a­bly brought to you with more emo­tion than my usual prose but I can’t help doing it that way.

Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001 is a day I will remem­ber for the rest of my life. Yes­ter­day, I real­ized that it was an impor­tant day but the shock had not fully reg­is­tered. Today, it’s hit­ting… hard. I actu­ally wit­nessed most of the drama unfold not through a TV screen but right in front of me.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I joined HSBC.com, which is located in Pavonia/Newport, on the water­front, clear across from Man­hat­tan. The World Trade Cen­ter was by far the most notice­able build­ing in our view of the finan­cial district.

When I got to work, it was a day like any other days. The weather was nice, I was run­ning early so I decided to go grab a cup of cof­fee at Star­bucks before get­ting up to my desk. The cool thing about the Star­bucks near our office is that it has full view of down­town from ground level. The WTC stood majes­ti­cally above the rest of the tow­ers. I had no way to real­ize it at this time but this would be the last time I saw it in its full intact nature.

I got up to my desk, started answer­ing some emails. A loud bang was heard but I mis­took it for con­struc­tion trucks pass­ing by (although, now that I think of it, noise from con­struc­tion trucks would not have trav­eled 11 floors up). Then a few min­utes later (or was it sec­onds, time started to dis­tort at that point), some­one screamed “Oh My God!”

We all looked at it and it looked like some­thing had col­lided with the north­ern­most build­ing. Big black clouds of smoke were going up and we could see flames engulf­ing sev­eral floors. It is a sight that should have pre­pared us for what was going on next.

With our eyes fixed on the WTC, we saw the rest of the drama unfold. We saw the plane com­ing from the south and hit­ting WTC2. We saw WTC1 go down. We saw WTC2 go down.

Once that hap­pened, I went into auto­matic mode. I guess that was my way of cop­ing. I had seen it all and yet it didn’t reg­is­ter. I wanted to cry and yet I couldn’t. I wanted… to do some­thing to keep my mind off the hor­ri­ble thing I had just wit­nessed. By 11am, I had wit­nessed a major fire, a plane crash, what was obvi­ously a ter­ror­ist attack, and the two biggest build­ings in Man­hat­tan col­lapse. It was more than my brain could register.

I started mak­ing a list of what I had to do:

• Get phone num­bers of peo­ple liv­ing in Jer­sey, just in case.
• Call friends and fam­ily to reas­sure them that I was OK.
• Get back to Manhattan.
• See how I could help.
• See how work would go on.

After redi­al­ing sev­eral times, I got a hold of Amy (my girl­friend) and told her about my plan. I had got­ten phone num­bers already, secured two poten­tial shel­ters, and was on my way to Hobo­ken (on foot) to see if the Fer­rys were run­ning (tun­nels, bridges, and trains would not be an option as I assumed that the police would close them so they could evac­u­ate peo­ple faster.

The ferry was not an option. Tons of peo­ple were milling about, try­ing to find a way to get home. I walked to a police­man and asked how I could vol­un­teer. He pointed me in a direc­tion, where I filled out my name and phone num­ber on a form. I was act­ing like a robot, rework­ing if… then loops through my mind. Not want­ing to deal with it, not want­ing to think about any­thing but the next step in my program.

I then went to a bar for a few min­utes to see if I would be called into action or get a way home. I had a phone sig­nal on my cell whereas oth­ers didn’t. I passed my phone around. Some peo­ple made calls (how many and to where I don’t know but I’m glad I could help).

After a few min­utes (or a cou­ple of hours, I don’t know) of sit­ting there, I fig­ured that there was no way I would get home that night. I was get­ting pretty stressed out by the con­tin­u­ous recounts of tal­lies and reports of how much worse the night­mare was get­ting. I took refuge in the idea that I now had to seek shel­ter. I called Tony Emond, a Cana­dian devel­oper at HSBC, and told him I was com­ing over to his place (he had vol­un­teered ear­lier). I fig­ured that from there, I would have access to an Inter­net con­nec­tion to blast mail a note to my list and change the web site so that every­one who knew me could be reas­sured quickly.

Tony gave me a login ID on his linux box and I made the changes. When I walked back into the liv­ing room (where the TV was) I noticed the clock on the VCR. It was 4pm, the first time stamp I can remem­ber for that day.

Things got worse, we ate, we went to sleep. Now, I am not the most reli­gious per­son but last night, I felt I had to say a prayer for the peo­ple who dis­ap­peared in that dis­as­ter, and thank god for spar­ing my life.

To say that I didn’t sleep well is an under­state­ment. Some­how, my psy­che is replay­ing the images again and again. I ended sleep­ing only a few hours, and all of them in spurts of a few minutes.

But so far, things were easy.

This morn­ing, I went to a deserted office (I fig­ured that it made sense since the PATH train is right next door to the office). The area where the World Trade Cen­ter stood was clouded in smoke. If we hadn’t know bet­ter, we could have imag­ined that there was a big cloud cov­er­ing the tow­ers. I signed out of the office, left my con­tact info, and packed up to go home.

The PATH train sta­tion was very quiet. Fam­i­lies were gath­ered there, ready to go home. The train was eerily quiet. Not a word was spo­ken but the faces spoke loudly enough. Shock, dis­may, more shock. We stopped at Christo­pher street and cou­ple of peo­ple walked out of the train. In my mind, I could see a map of the city and saw that those peo­ple were going to an area that was most prob­a­bly affected. The train made another stop at 9th street, 14th street (mind map flash­ing that this was were the city block­ade ended), and 23rd street, where I got of.

Once again, peo­ple moved qui­etly towards the exits. The sub­way sta­tion was deserted except for the atten­dant behind the toll booth. It was 9am, usu­ally a very busy time for this area. Yet, when I stepped out on the cor­ner of 6th avenue and 23rd, the area was empty. Maybe a dozen peo­ple in sight. On the street, emer­gency vehi­cles rush­ing by and the odd cab. At morn­ing rush our, the city was qui­eter than I have ever seen it.

I made my way up 23rd street towards 5th Avenue. On the cor­ner of 5th and 23rd stands the flat­iron build­ing, another land­mark build­ing. I looked up. One of the weird things about yes­ter­day is how impor­tant it has made what remains. I must have walked by the Flat­iron build­ing 100 times this year and sel­dom really looked at it. Today, I mar­velled at it, glad to see not only some­thing famil­iar but some­thing beautiful.

One of the thing that few peo­ple know is that there used to be a cou­ple of angels over­look­ing town on top of the Flat­iron build­ing. Recently, they were rein­stalled there (I read about it in the Times a cou­ple of weeks ago). I looked up and there they were, look­ing over the north­ern end of the city. I thought about how sad it was that there wasn’t a set also look­ing over the south side. Maybe that would have helped.…

At the street cor­ner, a group of peo­ple waited patiently for the “Walk” light to change. There was no traf­fic but peo­ple were fol­low­ing the rules. Today, as we grieve, we are all a lit­tle more care­ful and any sem­bleance of order, even if it is embod­ied in a “Walk/Don’t Walk” sig­nal is some­thing that we cling to.

In Madi­son Square park, life seemed to be going back to nor­mal. Parks depart­ment work­ers were clean­ing the place up, blow­ing leaves out, emp­ty­ing trash­cans. It’s funny how you notice those things in a sit­u­a­tion like today. I was happy to see that life was get­ting back to nor­mal. Inside me, tears that had been trapped started pil­ing up.

As I moved up Madi­son avenue, I noticed that there was a graf­fiti piece on a bus stop. It said “Bomb Mus­lim Busi­nesses.” I thought that was ridicu­lous. Yes, I’m angry, but I don’t think that I should go out and take it out and more inno­cent people.

I finally got home and hugged Amy harder and for longer than I ever had. My quest home had ended and I was exhausted and elated to see her… and then I fell apart. I cried for a long time, hours maybe (I’m still cry­ing as I write this).

I got around to check­ing email and would like to thank every­one who emailed to tell that they were fine or check if I was OK. At the same time, I would like to give my con­doleances to the fam­i­lies of friends and acquain­tances who are already reported as con­firmed dead (three so far and I’m afraid there will be more).

The next few days will be tough. I’m going to go back to work tomor­row and hope­fully, that will help some­what. I’m try­ing to get back into a rou­tine so I can deal.

Like many peo­ple, I’ve lost a lot yes­ter­day. I’ve lost some friends, and I think all of us lost some­thing else. I can’t put my fin­ger on it. Maybe it’s inno­cence; Maybe it’s a cer­tain naiveté; Maybe it’s some­thing else. What I do know is that what I saw yes­ter­day is some­thing that I hope to never have to wit­ness again in my life; What I know is that those pic­tures will be for­ever etched in my mind; What I know is that my life will never be the same. How will it change, I don’t know but I do know that I was changed yesterday.

I know it may sound crazy but one of the good things to come out of this is that it has made me recon­sider a num­ber of things. A big shock like this makes you real­ize how valu­able life is and how incon­se­quen­tial some of the lit­tle prob­lems you have are.

What has also amazed me is the feel­ing of kin­ship this has cre­ated in every NYC res­i­dent. We’re under a state of siege but peo­ple are work­ing hard to help each others.

Amy and I went to one of the red cross shel­ters to ask what they needed (if you’re in New York, find your near­est red cross shel­ter and bring socks and cell phone bat­tery charg­ers. That’s their top pri­or­ity right now). Peo­ple were bring­ing in brand new prod­ucts they had just bought. For exam­ple, I saw a bunch of peo­ple bring­ing sheets and blan­kets they had just bought at Macy’s. Other peo­ple were bring­ing in plat­ters of pre­pared food they had bought at local stores.

Online (a vital link for a lot of peo­ple as mobile phone traf­fic seems to have over­loaded the net­work), peo­ple were orga­niz­ing quickly for blood dri­ves, dona­tions, and space (some Inter­net busi­nesses away from the dis­as­ter area are offer­ing their space up to help out other busi­nesses). Mes­sages are break­ing down between “how are you,” “I’m OK,” “so and so is OK,” and other infor­ma­tion about the cri­sis at hand.

We’re all chip­ping in, we’re all doing our part and hope­fully, we will all get back to more nor­mal lives soon. If you are look­ing to help and are in the US, the top thing to do is to give blood. There will be a lot of wounded and blood will help. Oth­er­wise, look through your clos­ets and see what you can spare in terms of cloth­ing for people.

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