Reliving 9/11

I guess its fitting that today, as the 9/11 Commission begins hearings in NYC, my office building had a full evacuation rehearsal today. There was a time when such drills met choruses of groans and saw people hiding in conference rooms to avoid having to file down the staircases and out into the streets. Now, however, there’s a much less grudging compliance, accompanied by stories of friends and relatives who escaped one of the WTC towers and how these drills are not so bad after all.

My story is of my friend “Antonio” who was caught in an elevator between the 35th and 36th floors of the second tower (I think). The smoke knocked him unconscious and it took the firefighters quite some time to rescue him, so that they had barely closed the ambulance doors and sent him on his way to the hospital when the first tower collapsed. Antonio’s fine today (although he avoids elevators), and he knows how very lucky he is.

The 9/11 commission warned the city:

“The details we will be presenting may be painful for you to see and hear.”

In a vivid departure from previous commission hearings, the panel will revisit the jarring sights and sounds of the attack and its aftermath. Videotapes to be aired at the hearings show the confusing, rushed recovery efforts, and the recollections of those who survived.

The actual day itself is a blur to me. By the time I walked back downtown to my apartment, both towers had collapsed, but my friends who worked in Soho had watched it all. They said they literally screamed and ran when the first tower collapsed, although there was no way it could reach that far. When I got home a thin layer of white dust was everywhere and the local Italian restaurant was handing out linen napkins against the dust in the air. We all walked around with these lavender “bandit” masks and wondered what to expect next.

Canal street was beyond surreal. That was the demarcation point, two blocks from my place. You couldn’t get down there unless you lived there, and even then many blocks were off limits. I walked down there at night and watched the emergency vehicles and huge trucks roar through the ghostly dust fog and humungous emergency lighting that made the street look like a futuristic movie set. Huge trucks and emergency vehicles would be the only things on the roads for some time downtown.

For dinner that night, I met a few friends at a Middle Eastern restaurant in the East Village. At that time we expected the backlash against Muslims to be very severe, and this was our way of showing support. The restaurant was packed. If there’s one thing I credit President Bush for the most during his presidency, it’s the fact that he came out early and strong with support for American Muslims. After dinner we watched television. Tell us more, was our mantra. I recall a conversation a few days later where I told a friend that the news updates appeared on Yahoo about 30 seconds before they appeared anywhere else. That’s how starved we were for info.

What had really happened didn’t strike me until the next day for two reasons: First, it was the first time I was able to get through to my mother on the phone. I don’t know why exactly, but until that point I was actually fine. Hearing her voice, however, I broke down. Second, as I tried to get some work done (I am a New Yorker, after all, we channel all our anxiety into work and/or play) I needed to run up to a framer and collect some artwork. The framer was closed, of course, but on that street in midtown I saw the first of what would be a very familiar sight in the coming months. A man had made a sandwich board, plastered with pictures of his girlfriend? wife? and he was walking around, beyond exhausted, begging people to tell him if they had seen her.

Again, totally distraught people would become all to common a site in the coming weeks. Walking down 8th avenue one night, less than two blocks apart I watched two different women break down and start sobbing. A few blocks later another one. The city was in emotional crisis. The candle-light vigils and park memorials were overwhelming. How many flowers, how many candles, how many photos?

We clung to the news. Tell us more. We need info. There was never enough of it.

Now we’re going to get plenty, it seems.