IP: what I [he]saw 911 20001 nyc

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:02:05 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: "David S. Bennahum" <davidsol () panix com>
> Subject: what I saw 911 20001 nyc
>
> I'm sending out this note, because in the blur of today's events I 
> received many messages from people asking if I was all right...  So I am 
> taking the liberty of writing all my friends and colleagues to say, yes I 
> am all right.
>
> Many of us woke up this morning to see the World Trade Center on 
> fire.  Many of us saw it first-hand, some fearfully close.  When I learned 
> of what was happening, at around 9am, I was at home, which is three blocks 
> from the Empire State building.  I decided to leave the house (my mother's 
> idea, at 9:10 am, telling me to get out) because at that time two planes 
> had hit the WTC, and it seemed not entirely implausible that the third 
> biggest building in Manhattan could be next.  My 4 story brownstone is a 
> poor match for the100 story building across the way.  So I walked out and 
> decided to go to my friend Doug's house in the East Village, so we could 
> be together and try to make sense of this incomprehensible event.
>
> Walking down Sixth Avenue was unlike anything I've ever seen.  There were 
> the two towers on fire, as on TV, smoke pouring out, the sky completely 
> blue and clear.  An absolutely perfect late summer day.  And the avenue 
> was packed.  Literally dozens of people at every corner, shading their 
> eyes, staring at the towers, while trucks, double parked, played their AM 
> radios extra loud and cars in the center lanes idled, moving a few feet a 
> minute, as emergency vehicles tried to nudge their way through the 
> streets.  Yet everyone was gentle and calm, in a sort of mass hypnotic 
> state.  Dignity was everywhere.  We listened to the descriptions over the 
> air, and tried to connect them with the sight downtown.  A young black 
> woman stood next to me and began to tell me that her sister was in the 
> Center.  "What should I do?" she said.  "She likes to run up and down the 
> floors and visit all her friends in the building."  I didn't know what to 
> say; "nothing will ever be the same," she said.  A man standing with us nodded.
>
> At some point the smoke became really thick, and white, instead of black, 
> and that, we realized, was the dust from the first tower that fell.  At 
> this point I cried, as did most of the people standing in the street.  A 
> man quickly walked by and said to anyone who would listen, "They bombed 
> the Pentagon."  A little while later the second tower fell and a huge 
> cloud seemed to settle over lower Manhattan, where it remained throughout 
> the day.  At this point we began to notice the sound of jets above, and 
> high in the sky we could see fighter planes circling the city.  Somewhere 
> in all this the same man walked by, saw me, and said, "See, I told you-- 
> they bombed the Pentagon, right?"  I nodded my head.  The AM radios were 
> all reporting the news, plus another story, about a plane crashing in 
> Pennsylvania.  By now I was hyper.  I ran over to Doug's.  What could be next?
>
> When I got to Doug's, he'd been watching from his 12th floor window, where 
> he had an unobstructed view of the two towers facing south and west.  We 
> both sat there, dumbstruck.  And utterly sad, then agitated, sad again, 
> until finally we had to do something.  My cell phone was ringing.  His 
> phone was ringing.  My Blackberry was going off.  The TV was on, loud, 
> with the same footage.  We started getting annoyed with each other.  I 
> said we should go get food downstairs in a restaurant, before they ran 
> out.  He said they were all closed already.  I said how do you know.  That 
> sort of thing.  We were just, suddenly, crazy.  Two sensible adults were 
> about to panic.
>
> So we bought 54 dollars worth of baked beans, canned vegetables, rice, 
> pasta, and pasta sauce at the deli downstairs.  I figured it couldn't 
> hurt.  After all, the tunnels were closed and what if we ran out of 
> food?  I was surprised there weren't more people in the there doing the 
> same thing.  While we were at the checkout counter piling our cans, a 
> young man approached with four six packs of beer.  "That's a good idea," I 
> said, looking at his Heinekens.  "I've been there," he said.  We knew that 
> "there" could only mean the WTC.  "Do you think I dress like this 
> normally?" he added, looking down at his shoes.  He was wearing a T-shirt, 
> shorts, and black lace-up dress shoes.  The sort you wear with a 
> suit.  "It made Saving Private Ryan look like joke," he said.  "You know 
> the plaza between the two buildings?" he added.  Doug and I nodded yes-- 
> that's the Plaza with the fountain between Tower 1 and Tower 2.  I knew it 
> well. I've had lunch there, lying on the concrete benches, looking up at 
> the twin towers, marveling at their only-in-new-york brashness (you have 
> one? we have two!).  Those were beautiful buildings.  "There were feet and 
> legs falling down everywhere around me.  I saw a torso, cut open on 
> fire."  He took his bags full of beer from the cashier.  "I've got an 
> apartment full of trade center survivors.  We're going to have this and 
> get drunk."  Doug and I watched him as he walked out the door.  We hauled 
> our cans back up to the apartment.
>
> The absurdity of our food hoarding idea was only apparent later, when 
> thirty minutes after we were eating take out burritos in Thompkins Square 
> park, while the rest of east village cafe society sat along avenue A chain 
> smoking and drinking lemonade.  By then the giant plume of dust had become 
> part of the new landscape of downtown.
>
> All terrorism rests on the precept of helplessness-- there's nothing you 
> can do.  No one to fight back against, no object to identify as the 
> enemy.  You're just left alone, in your own corrosive monologue of anger, 
> fear, and frustration.  Thus the idea of donating blood seemed like a 
> positive thing to do.  After lunch, I walked up to Beth Israel on 17th 
> street and 1st avenue.  There already you could see things had changed (it 
> was 2:30 by then).  The avenue had a special cordoned-off emergency lane 
> running along the left side, for ambulances.  By the time I got to the 
> hospital, it was weirdly apparent that nothing was going on.  At least 
> "nothing" in terms of people being rushed to emergency rooms.  There were 
> nurses everywhere, sitting outside, with banks of wheelchairs and 
> stretchers waiting to be used, smoking, and talking on their cell phones, 
> while people like myself milled about asking where to give blood.
>
> I was told not to bother by one nurse.  "Everyone coming her is either 
> burned, blinded, or choking on dust," she said.  "You don't need blood for 
> that."  I asked her about later-- would they need blood later when people 
> were pulled out of the rubble and the real rescue mission started?  "We're 
> just getting ready for the bodies," she replied, shrugging.  The message 
> was clear enough: those that had survived walked out.  Those that didn't 
> would more likely go to the morgue than the hospital.  I put my name on a 
> blood donor list, manned by a volunteer, along with my phone number, and 
> walked away.
>
> Now that I'm back home, and it's midnight (I eventually went uptown to my 
> mother's, where we had dinner, and drank champagne and toasted to life, 
> because that's all we've got), and the streets nearby are completely 
> deserted, all of 5th avenue below 42nd street is closed to cars, my 
> neighbor, the Empire State, is cordoned off and I had to walk around it, 
> past the one remaining all-nude strip club in midtown which, to my 
> amazement, was actually closed (this place never shuts), I started to 
> wonder, "What am I going to do tomorrow?"
>
> Doug offered to meet me on 14th street and give me some of the cans, if I 
> needed any, since I'd left my share behind.  Turns out only people who 
> live below 14th street can go downtown now (though if you live below 
> Canal, you can't go there at all).  I'm on the other side of the line, and 
> my baked beans won't do me any good if they stay at Doug's, down on 10th 
> street.
>
> Life goes on, though certainly not like before.  It's hard to imagine what 
> this city will be like in the coming days, weeks, months, and 
> years.  Making sense of this will never end.  It's not the sort of thing 
> we can ever bookend.
>
> What I do know is that I've always come home and wherever I've been, be it 
> a month long trip or a six hour trip, seeing that skyline was always 
> exhilarating.  The best damn place in the universe.  Coming to Manhattan, 
> along the Long Island Expressway, to the midtown tunnel, and seeing the 
> island framed in front of you, from the Battery to Harlem, has always been 
> one of the great wonders of the world.  That skyline, with its antipodes 
> of the Trade Center and the Empire State lost its balance today.  And so, 
> it seems, have we.  Somehow in the coming days we will have to regain 
> it.  Otherwise they will have won.  "They" being those who wish to utterly 
> unbalance our way of life, to make us doubt we can be safe in our own 
> homes, our own city.  To make us doubt in the fundamental precepts of 
> liberty, democracy, plurality, and the right for people to design their 
> own lives, as they chose to.
>
> To those people, our greatest act of defiance is ultimately to go on 
> living as we have-- with faith that our way of life, in this wonderful 
> city and country, will persist, thrive, and grow.  With faith that we will 
> continue inventing our own future, for ourselves.  That may offend some 
> people.  It might enrage others, who think we should all live a certain 
> way, their way.  Well, if they thought what happened today would do us in, 
> they completely misread our spirit, and who we are.
>
> I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after 
> that...  I have a life to live, and I plan to continue doing so, with 
> greater appreciation than ever for what we have.  And greater 
> understanding that our freedoms cannot be taken for granted.  They must be 
> earned.  Daily.
>
> So with that in mind, I want to wish all of you a very good night, and 
> hope for tomorrow.
>
> .d



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