I was working as an investigator in Texas. I was just planning my day when a coworker called me. “Turn on the television!” She urged me. “Terrorists have attacked the White House, New York, and everything!”
It sounded like a line from a bad movie. I made a comment about our political differences, as she was a jokester. She insisted I do what she said. I agreed and hung up the phone, grabbed the remote.
What was that? Camera zoomed in. Dear God, that was a woman. She was jumping out of the window. Why was she holding her purse? Was it an innate response for a woman to take her purse, or was it so someone could identify her remains? And doesn’t she realize at that distance…
I don’t remember what I did, what I felt, except I watched the people, listened to the noise, my eyes never left the screen. I wondered what the police were going to do. There are tactics for a fire, there are formations for a riot, but there are no disaster plans for hell.
This huge monolith fell, crumpled like a giant, invisible hand had grasped it, crushed it, and smoke billowed out. Screams all around, smoke pouring out, and we all watched thousands and thousands of people die.
That day I had to deliver legal papers to an office. The highway was strangely empty. It was surreal. The office was located in a usually busy downtown high rise, normally teeming with people. Today my steps echoed in the hallway. I delivered the folder to a somber receptionist, who left her small television set long enough to receive the paperwork. As I drove home, I listened to the radio. Details were becoming clearer now.
When I arrived home I turned on the television and sat down. I did not move all day. I could not cry. I could not speak. I watched those survivors, like grey ghosts walking out of the mist of the rubble, with that look on their faces.
Their eyes, no one can describe their eyes. We can see it on television; we can listen to the broadcast, but look into their eyes. These people, walking away from the city, some carrying the tools of their trade: briefcases, tool belts, a purse or jacket. They do not look back. They walk with a heavy, solid story draped across their shoulders, to safety, but where is safety?
I wished I was there to help, but what could you do? The people who were there seemed to wonder themselves at times. Within the day I telephoned friends. A good friend of Arabic origin, who lived in D.C., told me she feared going out in public due to looks she received. Another friend told me how she had shopped in one of the towers just last year on a visit to New York. And all the while we wondered, was this the end of the world?
It’s not the end of the world. It’s the beginning. It’s a new way of looking at what we have – and what we don’t. It’s a way to remind ourselves to appreciate and cherish what we love for it can be gone in an instant, in the second it takes to clutch a purse and step off a ledge. It’s a way to remind us life is precious and so easy to lose, one by one or by the thousands. And that safety is not easily defined.
I am not alone in my memory. We are in this together. Perhaps this is what we need to remember most of all.
Dedicated to NYPD & NYFD: “When others rushed out, you rushed in”
Comments