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| This is where I watched 9/11 happen in New York. |
“A
plane just flew into one of the twin towers!” Kelly exclaimed. She had just opened the door to the apartment
after having walked our dog Henry.
That
was how I woke up on September 11, 2001.
I loved those buildings. From our
apartment, it took about twenty minutes for me to walk down there. Sometimes I walked down by the Hudson River
and crossed the pedestrian bridge at Stuyvesant High School. Most of the time, I paused on the steps to
the street to take a long look at the twin towers. I marveled at their size and symmetry. I gazed at them frequently. Walking around New York, buildings often
block your view of other buildings.
Whenever I could see them, I drank them in.
"What?"
I uttered.
"This
plane was flying really low. It was very
loud! I was talking to this woman, who
was also walking her dog, and we both heard it and looked up at it. Then we heard this loud explosion and saw
that it had hit the World Trade Center!" she said.
I
immediately got out of bed, put some clothes on, and went down to the east
corner of our block. There it was: the
gaping, smoking hole in the building that was left by the first plane. I stared at it, along with other people who
had stopped at the same street corner to look at it. After giving Henry some food, Kelly joined
me.
“Wow. What if a terrorist had been flying that
plane?” I asked Kelly.
“Wow,”
she said.
We
continued to stare at it. We were
transfixed by what we saw.
"Does
anyone know how it happened?" a man from our corner group asked.
"A
plane hit it," Kelly replied.
"I
don't know about that," said another guy at the corner. "I didn't see a plane hit it."
"Well
I did," said Kelly.
This
guy continued to verbally doubt that a plane had hit the building.
We
were looking at the burning building when a huge explosion occurred on the face
of the other building. One of the things
I'll never forget about that explosion, from seeing it on the street, is the
huge fireball that slowly rose and poof!
It disappeared.
Our
corner group reacted to that. I went
back inside, grabbed my camera, and took pictures of the burning
buildings. Equally interesting to me are
the people who were caught by my camera's eye, who were on the street watching
the buildings.
"It
was a plane! I saw it!" said one of
the men on our corner about the most famous explosion in world history. Strangely, he had a smile on his face when he
said that.
It
was confirmed that we were under attack.
I looked down and kicked the concrete below me. I was an angry American. Not only was this my country, but it was my
city and my favorite buildings.
Our
group became larger as more people stopped to watch.
"There's
niggas inside there?" a man asked.
Kelly
and I looked at him and nodded.
"Oh,
shit!" he exclaimed.
I
saw some people on the street who were laughing. I saw a woman running uptown; she was
crying. I saw our downstairs neighbor,
Danny.
"Hey,
Danny," I said.
This
little old man was angry. "Can you
believe this? They hit the Pentagon,
too!" he said.
That
was news to us. We followed him into our
apartment building like zombies. It was
time to turn on the television. We were
freaking out. What if more planes are
headed to New York? What if one of our
planes shoots one down, and it crash lands on Manhattan and kills us? Those thoughts were running through my mind.
Poor
Henry seemed to be confused and troubled.
I remember him looking at me. He
knew that Kelly and I were upset, but we weren't fighting.
The
phone rang. Kelly picked it up. "Hello?" she said. "Oh, hi Doug! I know!
So I assume that the store is closed until further notice. Okay.
Good-bye." She hung up the
phone. "The store is closed until
further notice," she said to me.
That meant I had the day off from work.
When
the towers fell, I was shitting: literally.
I felt like I didn't have the luxury of being glued to the TV set; we
might have to run for our lives. I
better take care of business while I have a chance to. I've never been more afraid for my life
before or since. Upon exiting the
bathroom, I realized that Kelly had gone out.
I went out as well. While
standing on LaGuardia Place, I saw World Trade Center Building 7 collapse. More cries from the witnesses were heard.
A
white man, who appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties, passed by
on a bicycle. "Deport every
Arab. Kill every Arab you see," he
was chanting to whoever might be listening.
"Shut
the hell up!" a voice yelled loudly from behind me.
The
man on the bike shut up.
I
turned in the direction that the angry voice had come from. I saw a young man with an olive complexion
return my glance with furious eyes.
I
saw a man jogging shortly after the Towers fell. That's a man who's serious about his
exercise. I suppose that would make some
people angry: not me. I exercise four
days a week without exception. It's
important to me. Besides, if he had
nothing to do with the attacks, then why hate him for jogging?
What
bothered me was seeing a man and woman, both in their twenties and dressed in
black, riding bicycles on Bleecker Street right after the Towers fell. They looked like East Village bohemians. They were smiling and laughing, and they seemed
to be completely unaware of the catastrophe that was only a twenty-minute walk
away. Oh, you're so different from
everybody else, aren't you? You're so
cool.
Kelly
and I got dinner from a Chinese restaurant and ate it in front of the
television. We were listening to an
interview with a man who had escaped from one of the Towers. He was covered in dust, and he was telling
the story of how he had survived.
"As
I was going down the stairs, I passed by handicapped people who were waiting
for someone to help them," he said before choking up.
Kelly
and I both cried for the first time that day.
The
next day, like many people all over the world, we continued to watch television
coverage of 9/11. The phone rang. Kelly answered it.
"Hello? Hi, Doug," she said. She became very angry. "Are you serious?!" she yelled.
"Give
me the phone," I said to her. She
had just yelled at my boss.
"Hi,
Zach," Doug said. "We are
opening the store today."
"Okay,"
I replied. It was Wednesday, one of my
scheduled work days.
Kelly
was really pissed off. She thought it
was a terrible idea to open the bookstore the day after 9/11. I understood why she felt that way. You're living on a small island, and the day
after thousands of people were murdered on that island, you're going back to
business as usual. In fairness, Lynn and
Doug, the owners of the store, opened it seven days a week. They probably reopened it out of habit. I was concerned about the fires that were
raging fairly close to my home. In
retrospect, it was very unlikely that the fires would be allowed to spread that
far. At the time, though, I was still a
little shell-shocked. I was thinking,
okay, I'll go to work. However, if I
need to leave, to help Kelly evacuate, I won't hesitate.
Doug
had told Lynn about Kelly yelling at him over the phone. She was angry at Kelly. "Wouldn't you rather be here than
watching TV?" she asked me.
No,
I thought. "Yes," I said.
The
store was busy that day. It annoyed
me. It’s the day after 9/11, and you're
shopping? We had no break room to eat
our lunches in. We would just sit in a
corner of the store and eat. Sometimes
we had to move because we were blocking books that a customer wanted to
browse. Frequently, we had to stop
eating to help a customer. It was pretty
annoying, but at least it was paid time.
Once again, my lunch was interrupted by someone who needed help finding
a book. This time, I was more irritated
than usual. I have to be here. Why are you here? I know that a lot of people demonize
television, but aren't you interested in what's going on in the world today?
I’ve
heard people say, "Never forget what happened on 9/11!"
I
couldn't forget it if I tried. I think
about it nearly every day. Even after
that day, I would still look in the direction of the Towers, hoping to see
them. Ground Zero burned for
months. One night, there was ash on the
sidewalk in front of our apartment building that looked like snow. It’s still a little hard for me to believe
that it all really happened. I'm somewhat
obsessed with 9/11. I have magazines and
newspapers from the day after. I've
recorded lots of documentaries about it.
I
love music: especially heavy metal. The
next CD I wanted to buy was Beneath the Remains by Sepultura. Before I went into the Sam Goody store that
used to be on Sixth Avenue near Eighth Street, I looked south toward Ground
Zero. The familiar plume of smoke
emanating from there was drifting toward New Jersey. This is a pretty morbid title to be
purchasing, considering what happened down there. Should I buy it? Sure, I thought. I had nothing to do with those attacks, nor
would I ever do anything like that. I
bought it. Besides, if I hadn't bought
it, then the terrorists would have won, right?
I
walked down to Ground Zero while it was still burning. I was very familiar with the route I took, it
was the circumstances that had changed drastically. I came as close as I could, and in doing so
joined a small group that had gathered at the gates of hell. Two cops were there to keep anyone from
getting any closer. They appeared to be
quite irritated. Traffic was also
blocked from coming any closer to Ground Zero.
A man walked onto the street so he could get a better picture with his
camera.
“Get
out of the street!” yelled one of the cops angrily at the man with the camera.
“Okay,”
he said, while snapping another photo.
“Get
out of the street or you’re going to be arrested!” shouted the cop.
That
did it. The man went back to the corner,
where we were looking at a building that had tons of steel and other debris on
top of it. That was all we could really
see, but it was an incredible sight nonetheless. A woman went into the street to snap a photo
or two. Apparently, you could see a
little more from the street.
“Get
out of the street now!” the other cop roared.
“Okay,”
she said. She continued to take
pictures.
“Do
you want to go to jail?!” he shouted.
“No,”
she replied. She went back to the
corner.
“These
people are pathetic,” one cop said to the other, who agreed with him.
I
disagree. I can’t speak for the rest of
the people on that corner, but I was there to see part of an unbelievable
moment in world history. I believe that
9/11 is the most incredible day in human history. You almost can’t overstate the importance of
9/11. Who knows? It may turn out to be the beginning of the
end of our world. It led directly to one
American war, and, as many people have alleged, it made the war in Iraq
possible. How many people have died in
these wars? How many people have been
killed in the war on terror? As for the
cops, instead of being angry at us, they should have directed their anger at
those who were responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks.
Life
must go on though. 9/11 happened on a
Tuesday. Kelly took the rest of the week
off from work. After all, she had seen all
the major events in New York with her own eyes: not through the filter of
television.
Weeks
later, I was working at the store with my coworker Jose. The phone rang. Jose picked it up.
"Memoir
Bookshop," he said. His demeanor
suddenly became serious. "It's
started? Okay. We'll turn on the radio. Thanks.
Bye-bye." He hung up. He turned on the radio and twisted the knob
to find the station that he wanted.
"We're
attacking Afghanistan," he declared.
"Wow,"
I said.
Some
of the customers heard that exchange.
"Excuse me, what did you say?" a lady asked.
"The
military is attacking Afghanistan," Jose replied.
Some
of the people in the store displayed fear on their faces. They knew our country was heading down a
dangerous road. I'm sure they knew that
a response to 9/11 was inevitable, but it seemed like they weren't quite ready
for it.
