DAY EIGHT:Sept. 18:
One week.
It's been one week. Given the intensity of that time it's impossible to say what that means. Has it flown by in a blink? crawled at a second-by-second, deep pace? Is time in New York City today still passing by in the cliched "In a New York Minute?".
Today is Roshashana, the jewish New Year. For observant Jews this is a time, as I understand it, to reflect in two directions: Past and Future. The Present is obscured as the spiritual mind reflects and forecasts. I can think of no better description of what Time means in Gotham today. We have reached the one week mark, so we collectively find ourselves looking back upon all that has befallen our beloved city since Tuesday September 11. And we anxiously look ahead, worried that our nation, even the whole world, will now descend into a recession, and cash to rebuild our city will disappear. We still wonder what terrorist shoes have yet to drop. We fret about impending war.
At Columbia University last night I found my journalism students remarkably helpful. Their wide-eyed, sometimes navie questions forced me to take a deep breath and be reflective, taking stock not only of my coverage to date, but of the media generally. They wonder why officials are bothering to DNA identify every scrap of flesh found in the debris, and can't imagine that it really has forensic value. I patiently explained the need for closure for the families, but the students would have none of it. They insisted most families will never get DNA identification, regardless, and the entire mountain of debris ought to be turned into a giant monument, with the remains of the dead inside. They are young, of course, and I doubt any of them have yet in their innocent lives experienced the loss of a loved one. They cannot understand what they have never personally felt.
Which, of course, is a dilemna for any journalist -- trying to understand and empathize with that you may not, internally, experience. All of us, as New Yorkers, have experienced this disaster, whether or not we are reporters. But the loss? The pain of grief? As the death toll mounts -- and is still likely to eventually top 10,000, I believe --- more and more New Yorkers are also feeling personal grief.
Today the Brooklyn Bridge reopened and I walked across it to downtown Manhattan, as I would do every day in "normal times". I love the bridge, which is truely majestic. As I walked I recalled how angry the idiotic remake of "Godzilla" had made me because it depicted the monster tearing the Brooklyn Bridge asunder. And I thought, "Thank god the terrorists spared us our precious bridge." Built by survivors of the Civil War, and completed in 1875, the Brooklyn Bridge has seen New York through many a disaster in the past, and will now span the city into its uncertain future.
Though the bridge is open, the usual hordes of tourists, cyclists and autos are still absent, and only a few hearty souls ventured to use it this morning. There was a sort of determination in their faces, as they walked towards the devastation. Along the mile and a half span today signs of returning life in the city are abundant. The harbor isn't up to normal capacity, but commercial boats and tugs are back, shoving garbage and goods up and down the East River. Though the downtown FDR highway remains closed to all but emergency traffic, autos have returned to many downtown streets, and delivery trucks are braving the debris and congestion to get supplies and inventory in place. Eager for their inventory are immigrant shopkeepers whose tiny stores in the Wall St. district reopened yesterday.
It is the energy and determination of New York's enormous immigrant population that stands out right now. Roshashana finds the second and third generation Jews of New York bent on picking up the pieces, and the new immigrants -- Africans, South Asians, Mexicans, Caribbean Islanders, Central Americans, Arabs and Asians -- demonstrating genuine pluck. It takes true grit to move overseas to a strange land and build a business, a life and a future for your children. It is that collective immigrant grit that is today forming a backbone of power and energy for New York. Immigrants have always been one of this city's greatest assets.
It is striking, therefore, to receive Emails from European friends describing anti-immigrant reactions in their countries in response to the WTC attack. Here, on Ground Zero, such attacks have been few in number, carried out by small bands of horrible hooligans. No New York politicians are making such racist remarks --- on the contrary, even the conservative politicians and Pres. Bush have been quick to call upon Americans to distinguish terrorists from "all Arabs" or "all Moslems", and to show no retaliation towards immigrants in this country. The European response seems bizarre, from a New York perspective.
Even more bizarre, and unnerving, is the view of downtown from the Bridge today. Far less smoke is now arising from the WTC site, and the once-thick black, acrid belchings have turned today into wispy white smoke, mixed with steam. So it is possible to truely see the devastation, and, horribly, to see the World Financial Center. The Twin Towers used to obscure the Financial Center from Brooklyn view, as the Center is located on the Hudson, facing New Jersey. When I first noticed them late last night from the Brooklyn Promenade I was confused: "What am I looking at? Where are my bearings?" And then it dawned on me that as the smoke cleared, the gapping hole on the Manhattan skyline was so massive that I could see through to New Jersey.
I paused for a moment on the Bridge to reflect upon that. I looked back at the Brooklyn waterfront, which after years of debate is now being transformed into what we had hoped would be a glorious miles-long park. And then I glanced down to the tip of Manhattan, where the Guggenheim Museum plans to erect a Bilbao-like Frank Geary structure that would reflect upon the harbor waters. Recently Brooklynites have been increasingly excited about all of this, daring to imagine that the waterfront would, in a couple of years, be spectacular, and the views breathtaking. Now I found myself wondering whether all of this will come to a halt, as money is diverted to rebuilding that which we have lost, rather than creating new glories.
Much of this depends, of course, on the pending (or already in play) recession. Yesterday's stock market plunge prompted this lead on the cover of today's NY Post: "American capitalism showed its strength in the face of terrorism yesterday as the markets reopened -- but it wasn't a pretty sight." Guiliani has tried to inspire confidence in NYC investment lately, and now sounds like a cheerleader in his press conferences. But if the whole nation's economy tanks, what, realistically, can be expected for New York?
One thing is for sure: The carefree monied days in Gotham are gone. Even after the dotcom businesses plunged nearly two years ago New York's economy kept in party mode. Five star restaurants continued to do battle for designation as the trendy dives of the moment, dance clubs were still selecting clientele from snobby A-lists, supermodels continued to reign as queens and princesses in this town, courted by hip hop stars and studly actors. Real estate still soared in value and conversations were punctuated with quotes on how much more a person could get on the sale of his or her apartment in 2001, compared to what he or she paid for it in the 19990s. Gone. Poof. None of that makes an iota of sense anymore, if indeed it ever did.
On the Manhattan side of the bridge there has been a sort of epidemic of naive art, as people have painted crude American flags and signs of memorial on the sides of their buildings. Some have hung their fabric flags in the distress position. And funeral bunting is festooned across the entry of the now-reopened City Hall.
Looking up from the Manhattan end of the Bridge one can see police snipers on the rooftops of most tall buildings surrounding City Hall -- a sight I've never previously observed on any occassion. And new signs and barricades direct pedestrians to Wall St., but prevent access to any other regions of downtown Manhattan.
Along the streets downtown are lined full dumpsters, piled high with twisted automobiles, piles of brick and steel, electrical cables, plumbing and massive chunks of concrete. As far east as the South Street Seaport, it seems, large chunks of the WTC and neighboring buildings were strewn. And, I thought in my grisly manner, bits of human beings.
As I headed to Wall St. this morning I spotted my longtime pal, Inge, of Svenska Dagbladet , a Stockholm newspaper. We've known one another for more than 15 years, on the HIV/AIDS beat. Inge had been covering Dr. Robert Gallo's annual retrovirology meeting in Baltimore when the terrorists struck New York, and now is combing our streets for news. She is one of many foreign colleagues I have run into or heard from in recent days. Most, I met covering some tragedy overseas, and now they are here, to cover New York's horror, just as they might have reported from the massacres of Rwanda or the seige of Sarajevo.
When I reached John St. I looked to the West, where the WTC should have stood, and saw the World of Golf store, its windows shattered and business closed. Looming behind the golf shop are the steel framework remains of one of the smaller buildings that once was adjacent to the WTC.
The air is still thick down there. Masks are a wise idea, as dust is everywhere, including inside unprotected lungs.
Looking westward along Liberty Street I spotted a multistory advertisement, painted on the side of an office building: "Finally, a place on Madison Avenue where you can invest money instead of spend it. I think we're onto something. E-Trade". Behind this seemingly archaic reminder of a boom economy gone bust are all that remains of the World Trade Center. A rusty, twisted steel cadaver reaches in a soft spiral upwards for some 15 or 20 stories. At its feet lays several-stories high piles of rubble.
"This is totally different from what you see on TV," I heard a man say over my shoulder, and truer words have not been heard. From photographs and television one gets a picture of something comprehensible, of recognizable rubble that looks like earthquake damage or the wreckage of a mundane building collapse. What is missing -- what the photo image can never capture -- is the sensation. The buildings' cadavers bring to mind Dresden following the U.S. bombing in WWII and Hiroshima after the A-bomb. We are told that the blast at the WTC was equivalent to a one kiloton bomb. When you see it from the ground, you believe. The only frame of reference is war. No natural disaster -- no earthquake or hurricane -- can produce this sort of human-against-human devastation and desecration.
"We gotta rebuild," another man said, his voice shaking.
A woman, speaking in French, mumbled, "I have never seen such a thing. Never."
An African American woman, tears streaming down her face, turned abruptly from the sight and said to noone in particular, "Everybody on this planet needs to come and see what they have done to this city."
The steady, quiet and surprisingly small stream of New Yorkers now making their pilgrimages to pay homage to the WTC are out-numbered by the TV cameras and photographers, all of whom are jockeying for some position or angle that is unique, that tells a story. But what story can be told that hasn't already? Absent the camera clicking it is oddly quiet, even surreal, at Ground Zero. A handmade sign taped onto a phone booth on the corner of Liberty and Nassau reads, "Know that an angel is always watching."
On a scaffold surrounding the building across the street is a now macabre sign: " A hit from way off Broadway!", it says. Yes indeed, two direct hits from wa-a-a-ay off Broadway.
On Wall St. the enormous patriotic American Flag draped over the entry of the NY Stock Exchange has failed to inspire the "patriotic investing" Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill called for. The traders inside are busy selling, not buying, and nervousness is palpable.
Returning to Newsday, I spotted some of those now ubiquitous missing persons signs taped along the columns of the No. 6 station on Canal Street. One seemed especially poignant, as it extolled the lovely personality and wit of Mr. Baba Karamo Trera of Serre Kunda, Gambia -- last seen on the 97th floor of WTC2.
Happy Roshashana.
Be safe. Be well. Be defiant.
Laurie Garrett
