I am a native New Yorker, both born and bred. I emerged int
o this world in St. Vincent’s Hospital, the same hospital whose emergency room treated 844 patients (a record for a NYC ER) in the aftermath of the attacks.
My relationship with the Towers goes way back. My high school prom was actually held at Windows on the World, although I didn’t attend. My reasons for not going didn’t quite fit the typical desi geek narrative. In a high school where most people went stag, there were actually four women who wanted to go with me, the apex of my high school popularity! Nor did my parents forbid me from going. However they wanted me back by midnight (they were concerned for my safety) and wouldn’t budge. Given that the prom was going to cost around $200 (just for the tux and ticket, no limo, and this was a lot of money back then!), I demurred.
Still, while I may not have had memories of my prom at the Towers, I have plenty of others. Every time some relative or friend would come through town, I would be dispatched to show them the sights. I didn’t go up to the top that often – I was too jaded and too thrifty for that. Instead, I would wait below, in the plaza between the buildings. There I could lie on my back, look up at the hulking masses that stretched far into the sky and contemplate my own insignificance, wallowing in adolescent angst.
The Towers were like Niagara Falls, a must see destination for uncles and aunties. There was always a sari squeezing into the elevator, excited to go up to the top of what may not have been the tallest building in the world, but which was at least the tallest building at the center of the world.
I’m going to let you in on New York’s dirty little secret about the towers — we’re much more fond of them now than we ever were when they were around. Most locals thought of them as big, ugly monstrosities, massive but sterile. New York embraced them only after they were levelled. Before, they were an alien presence. Afterwards they became a part of our psyche, noticeable for the pain of their absence.
I had always used the Towers as a landmark to navigate by when I was far enough south that the streets no longer ran in a grid. You could see them for miles, even far into Brooklyn. Once they were gone, I was confused, and couldn’t find my way around. I kept looking for them, the same way I used to run my tongue over and over in the gap left when a tooth fell out, a visceral loss.
Me too.
I’m so glad you are sharing this with us.
So is/neither can America…
I’m sure plenty of New Yorkers (and former New Yorkers, like me) have their own personal stories about the towers. Here’s mine:
After I graduated from college I found an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. One of the things I loved about my apartment was that I had a perfect view of the towers from my building. The towers were part of my morning ritual: I’d exit my building door, look up at the towers, and walk down the steps to the street. A week before 9/11 I saw a guy at the F train station at 9th and Smith streets lean over the platform railing with his camera (it’s an above-ground station) to take a photo of the towers. I don’t know why, but when I saw that guy I wanted to take a photo of him taking that photo. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me.
I know it sounds strange, but on 9/11 I felt this strange guilt, b/c I’d forgotten to look up at the towers that particular morning. And I still think about that guy who I saw take the photo the week before. I wondered what happened to him and that photo, whether he showed it to anyone, and what he told people when he shared it with them.
Lavanya, thank you. It goes without saying that I’m not just trying to share my own personal experiences here. I also want to hear what other people felt / thought / saw. I’m not looking for any sort of simplistic “healing” or “closure” here. I have a friend with 9/11 related PTSD, I’d never do him the disservice of suggesting that we could tie up all the loose ends easily. Still, we’re a community, and I’d love to hear what others have to say.
ennis – i echo the thanks to you for sharing the snippets of memory that come to you this week. i always feel that writing about something is good and bad. bad because you end up reliving the difficulty, the pain, the confusing moments … and then, good because you can always breathe easier afterward, as though in writing down your thoughts and recollections, you’re somehow (in some small way) a bit closer to gleaning some understanding.
i drove into work with my neighbor this morning and we made a conscious choice not to listen to the radio. instead we shared our experiences of that day, that week, that month – and somehow, in so doing, each of us was better equipped to face this day.
i was not in NYC on this day five years ago. i was driving to work in new rochelle from home in NJ. when the first plane hit the towers, i heard about it on NPR on my car radio. somehow, hearing the news from a non-visual source didn’t make it any easier. there i was in the car, all alone, and unable to talk to anybody about it – only left to imagine what could be happening. i can’t put into words the eerieness of that moment.
perhaps the most eerie image that sticks in my mind till today is that of the tappan zee bridge in the mid-afternoon, as i drove back home to NJ. i was the only person heading that way and the opposite side of the bridge was … just one ambulance and firetruck after another. as i passed each one, i could only mutter a prayer that those whom it was going to help could hold on … just a bit longer.
it’s hard for me to watch all the TV coverage this week – and i’m on an informal TV fast, i think. difficult perhaps because so little has changed, improved in the world since that day when both the brilliant blue sky and heavy black clouds covered the sky.
From our high school building, we could see the whole Manhattan. Each day i had my breakfast looking at manhattan from this hilltop for four years. Its a postcard view with buildings on one side and also the statue of liberty with Sun’s reflection just picturesque in the Hudson. I had graduated that year…
My brother who was a freshmen at the time, barely 10 days into his highschool life, saw this live…like watching it on a big screen plasma.
i needed that this morning, it was unbearable listening to the radio today.
9/11 wasn’t just NYC and the WTC.
I woke up that morning and drove to work in Tyson’s Corner (just outside the DC beltway in Northern VA). I got into work, sat at my desk, and one of our admins asked me if I’d heard about the plane hitting the World Trade Center. I kind of shuffled it into a mental “check on CNN.com later” bookmark, and then went about my morning.
While wandering down the hall, I heard a group of people congregating near our CEO’s office, so I thought I’d see what was going on. They were playing footage of the building, with a huge crater in it, and smoke billowing from the top. A few minutes later, while we were watching, the other plane hit.
Then word came that a plane hit the Pentagon. I’d already put two and two together after the second plane hit (once could be an accident, but twice? no way) and called my various friends in NYC, my friends who work at the Pentagon, and my fiancee at the time, her father, and her cousin, who all worked at federal buildings, and urged them all to get home. Rumors were circulating DC that a truck bomb had gone off at the Dept. of State (which later turned out to be false), but it felt enough like the world was ending that I couldn’t imagine sticking around at work.
By 11am, the phone lines were so thunderously clogged that you couldn’t even get a goddamn dial tone. I wound up sending emails to my friends and family, letting them know I was ok, that most everyone I knew was ok (and thus marked the real advent of the internet, in my opinion–communications just took a right turn instead of a blackout, thanks to email, IM, and the miracle of TCP/IP).
There were a few who weren’t, though. There was a friend who left the WTC after the first plane hit. She was walking in the skyway between the towers when the plane hit, which was scary enough. She tells some pretty horric stories about falling bodies and people on fire lying on the ground at street level when she took off. She has PTSD, too. And there were two friends-of-friends who worked in the WTC, who were lost for days, and then finally just lost.
On my way to England in 2000, I had a stop at a place that I had never heard of before – Newark. As we approached for landing, I saw one of the largest cities I have ever seen from the air through my porthole and as I took it all in, I rebuked myself for never having even heard city of this impressive city of “Newark”. Then as we landed I saw two blue towers gleaming in the distance and laughing to myself, realizing that I was looking at NYC.
One year later, I came back to my college after running some errands in town. I walked into the common room to see a dozen or so people standing around the large television which framed the live pictures of those two towers bleeding smoke and then collapsing.
A fellow graduate student, who was a Navy SEAL officer, was dispatched to Afghanistan soon after. We frantically tried to get in touch with another friend of ours who had just started at NYU. Some time later, I saw a verbal argument break out in the market square between an older faculty member and a student holding up a sign for peace, “you lot need to go back to where you came from.”
Some time after I returned to Canada, I remember a conversation I had with a professor at a seminar in the UK a few months earlier. He wanted to hear my views on the recent destruction of the Bamiyan monuments in Afghanistan. As we talked I remember saying thse words, “somehow I get the idea that they’re testing the rest of the world’s reaction or something.” “Really,” he rplied, I can’t imagine what.” We both shrugged our shoulders and moved on to another topic, thinking that this was too speculative to merit any serious discussion.
The destruction of the Bamiyan monuments before 9/11 are is reason that I started taking interest in the region as well. In March of 2001 National Geographic Adventure had one of the best articles I have ever read (by Sebastian Junger) about the legendary fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud (the “Lion of Panjshir”) and his battles against the Taliban. Massoud was the one man who could have united Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion. Although Karzai has done the best job he can, Massoud was a hero to all Afghans as the person who defeated the Soviets. Two days before September 11th Massoud was assasinated by Al Qaeda. When the planes struck the tower that day I knew exactly who was behind it beacause of good reporting by many people who saw the threat growing. Ever since then I have made a greater effort to know about places in the world where people are being oppressed. You might think that a particular region has nothing to do with us but oppression never stays contained.
Ennis
It’s not just your thoughts and memories, it’s that you write really well too. It is compelling, moving and honest writing. I wonder what a novel or memoir written from this perspective, about the events of 9/11, would be like. Anyway, it’s a pleasure (as much as something like this can be a pleasure) to read.
I was driving to work in New Jersey. From my apartment complex, one can see all of lower Manhattan, so I turned around and went home. Where the towers were: only smoke, everything engulfed in whitish and then brownish smoke. And people forget what a glorious September day that was otherwise, and how, after a few hours, everything became quiet and temperate again. I knew that things had changed for all brown people when I heard the understandably irate proclaiming that all Muslims had to “go home.” Astonishingly, office stationary floated across the Hudson, onto the Jersey shore. I picked one piece up as a souvenir and went home.
9/11…wow I can’t actually believe five years have passed since then. Somehow it feels like yesterday, I was driving home with my mom when we heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the twin towers, and that it was a terrorist attack. We got home and were glued to the tv for the rest of the day. Watching the events unfold felt so surreal, it almost felt like we were watching a movie, until they showed the people and their reactions. It was chilling to say the least.
Even though I live in South Africa, the effects of that event on that day really affected us. It was difficult for my mind to comprehend that while we were watching the live televised feed, these events were taking place in real time elsewhere..across the world…I still to this day can’t get my mind wrapped around that.
My thoughts and prayers are with the ones left behind, those that lost a loved one on that day.
‘That is the Manhattan Skyline with the Chrysler Building and that structure that looks like untamed buck teeth is the World Trade Center’.
I turned towards the massive windows in Newark Airport’s customs’ hall. I had been on American soil for about 20 minutes and I was already in awe as my fellow passenger, a true New Yorker proudly pointed out the famous towers. I saw the towers glimmer and shine in the mid afternoon sunlight and imagined the buzz of traffic and movement around them. At that moment, America became a vibrant land where anyone who dreamt was king and where hard work, hope and diligence were rewarded. The towers were symbols of this belief and I filed the image away forever.
To date, my first idea of America remains the same and five years along the line, that is how I choose to remember the towers and what they meant to my naive nineteen year old self. After all, there is nothing like a first impression!
I remember being woken up by my then fiance with the news while I was still in California. I had just finished my summer internship and was looking forward to a week of relaxation before classes started again. I was glued to the TV the entire day like the rest of the world – it took a while to process everything that was happening and actually making myself believe that it was real.
I thought that the worst was over and now the country would have to pick itself up and get through this together. Boy, was I wrong. Before the day was over, the stories of backlack against Sikhs started pouring in. I had never been much of a leader but those incidents actually started a fire in me and made me active within the Sikh community. Within days we had assembled a group of young adults to get out there and combat the ignorance. That entire week was spent faxing out press releases and forming media connections and the following weeks were spent setting up stalls, visiting churches and temples, distributing bumper stickers and flag pins, organizing an interfaith vigil in the Bay Area and so much more. My parents were upset that this had become my entire life, but I knew they would come around and understand why it was so important – and they did, along with the rest of those who had doubted our grass roots efforts.
I hate that the incident had to happen, and I hate that we had to lose people even afterwards due to ignorant backlash, but it made me proud to see Sikh youth come together to help out the community during such a trying time.
Like you Ennis my prom was at the Windows of the World. I was on the prom committee but alas didn’t get to actually attend for the obvious ‘parents said no’ reason 🙂
I have fond memories of the Tower. I spent that entire summer of 2001 between Pipeline and Morans having drinks after work on Friday evenings. You got the most fantastic view of the towers from down there. I was there the Saturday before having drinks with a friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. The whole thing still seems surreal. One minute she was here, I had drinks with her a few days before and the next minute she was gone, as were the towers.
I woke up for years in the middle of the night and looked out the window to try to place them in the sky. Even today I can walk down Fifth Avenue and on certain corners remember exactly where they rose in the sky, all the way downtown. The most overwhelming feeling is coming out of the tunnel and getting the first glimpse of the massive city and the missing towers.
A bit of a lighthearted memory – during the early 1980s, WPIX-TV (Channell 11) used to run a series of promotional ads, fo rthere “11 Alive” series of commercials. It was about a guy who had to come up with a clever hook on how to tell viewers about all the exciting programming on Channell 11. The end of every commercial would always end with someone yelling out to him to just look at the Twin Towers, which look like the number 11. But the running gag was that everytime he would turn, something would obstruct his view, like movers moving a large piece of furniture. Maybe someone posted it on YouTube.
Every New Yorker has some place where they take all of their out-of-town friends and family when they come to visit for the first time. For one of my friends, that place is the revolving restaurant/bar at the top of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. For another, it is the promenade in Brooklyn Heights.
For me, that place was always the top of the Trade Center. Lower Manhattan was the only neighborhood where I had ever worked, and for a time my subway stop was at Trade Center, taking me through the concourse level every day. And I, too, attended many an event at Windows. Taking friends and family to the Trade Center was akin to showing them around my own neighborhood, quite literally.
And my goodness, even when I worked on the 45th floor of a nearby building, with stunning views of its own, could there be anything more breathtaking than getting a drink on the 102nd floor of 1 WTC? (I always opted to take visitors to The Greatest Bar on Earth in 1 WTC, rather than the observation decks in 2 WTC — if you had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for an elevator ride, might as well get something to eat or drink in the process.)
On a clear day at sunset, one could see the reflected gold from the towers looking out the southeast-facing windows on the seventh floor of Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut. To me (a surgical resident, hanging on by the skin of my teeth back in 1981) they were a beacon, the visible sign of a dream-place: dynamic, worldly, just over the horizon.
That far? Wow. I guess the reflected light glinted a long way off.
When the first plane hit I was pulling into the parking lot of my Jersey City office, listening to WCBS 880 as I do every morning. To this day, however, when I’m driving to work and I hear their “Breaking News” announcement, for a brief second present melds into past, and the bile of panic swells in my stomach.
I walked into the office and told the secretary, who had her favorite pop station on, “Turn the radio to a news station, fast. There’s been another attack on the World Trade Center.” At that point it was barely 8:50, so nobody really knew anything other than that a plane had hit the WTC. It wasn’t even quite clear that it had been a commercial jetliner. But I immediately, in my heart, knew it had been a terrorist attack. My first thought upon hearing of the crash was toremember the attempt in 1993, followed by “Damn, this time they got it…”
We had no TV, so we all crowded around the radio, listening in stunned silence as the reporters described what was happening. We tried to call friends and family in NYC, but the phone lines were jammed. I couldn’t remember whether my brother, whose company was in the process of moving from the Wall Street area to the Grand Central vicinity, had completed the move. I was finally able to reach his wife around 10:30, who confirmed for me that he was safe in Midtown. It would be many hours before we would hear that a cousin was safe. He worked on the 93rd floor of the North Tower. He was usually in his office by 8:30, but that morning he had made the faateful decision to stop and pick up a cup of coffee on the way.
Local phone service and cell service were nonexistent. My husband and I had no means of communicating with each other although he worked less than 3 miles away. It took him 45 minutes to drive that distance to my office because the streets were so jammed with people evacuating the area and because of routes being closed to provide access for the wailing emergency vehicles heading into and out of NYC.
Around noon we decided it was time to attempt to venture home to the suburbs. We knew that the streets were in chaos, but decided that my husband would try to follow me home in his own car. After an eternity of bumper-to- bumper traffic, we finally made it onto Truck Route 1 & 9, which heads westward out of Jersey City. As my car crawled across the bridge over the Hackensack River, I glanced into my rear view mirror to see if my husband’s car was still behind me.
What I saw instead brought my hand to my mouth and tears to my eyes. It was my first glimpse of the billowing cloud of grey smoke that loomed where the towers had once stood.
I had just came to US for the first time for my Masters. I was working as a dishwasher in cafeteria. I heard from the colleagues about the WTC. Both of them responded “DO any people actually work there?”
Even though I was 3000 miles away in California that morning, watching the 2nd plane slam into the 2nd tower as it happened on TV was the single most frightening experience of my life. Thanks for sharing yours.
Ennis and everyone else who has contributed to this thread so far: Thank you all very much for sharing your stories. It’s obvious that writing about this is still difficult for many of you, so you are very brave for voicing your thoughts and memories here. You all write brilliantly too.
Sonia Kaur: I’m very proud of you for your efforts to defend the Sikh community and to educate the rest of the population. God bless you.
JaneOfAllTrades, I am sorry to read about the loss of your friend at Cantor Fitzgerald. I hope you are okay.
Apart from the surreal nature of watching the attacks on British television — the idea that this really was happening and was not a movie was difficult to register at first — one of the many things I remember was the uncertainty about “what happens next”, in terms of how many more terrorist attacks were going to rapidly occur at other locations/cities in the US and what kind of retaliatory response would be involved. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who wondered if the nuclear option would be exercised.
Brings back memories.
Lying down next to that huge globe in the middle of the two buildings and looking up at the sky. I think we have a snap of that from the summer of 2001.
Knowing when Manhattan starts coming back from ikea.
But you are right. They were pieces of soulless monstrosities.
But hey. They say the same about New York City as well. And guess what, the only place in USA where I don’t have to do the shuffle et al is good old NYC. (Jersey is probably the dumps this way, all the pretensions of the city and none of the spirit. I should know, recently moved there)
“Path to War” documentary on ABC last night was chililng. I couldnt watch the final scenes without changing channels. I kept flipping back…
This just made its way to my mailbox from the great folks over at The Wondering Minstrels (minstrels@yahoogroups.com)
I didn’t watch that one. There is a huge controversy over the legitmacy over the “docudrama”. I watched the one one my local chanel 11 showed, about the firefighters in N.Y. that day. It was heartbreaking to see these men tell their experiences and the experiences of those who didn’t make it. Some of them knew they would not make it out of the towers if they went in, but they still did their job and walked up those stairs. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.