MY DAY IN HELL
October 9, 2002

(This photo essay originally appeared in an online forum, a month after the events of September 11.)

by Paula Eisenberg

September 11, 2001: Smoke rising from World Trade Center site, seen from Manor Park

(October 9, 2001)

Today is Tuesday, October 9. It's a full month from the Tuesday when everything changed, and it's time to come to terms with the changes for myself. The word "surreal" comes to mind, and like most people, I have trouble finding words to describe the desolation.

As I make my way through the city, I pass the Waldorf Astoria, where I notice a well-dressed couple waiting for the doorman to hail them a cab. They both sport big round "Oregon Loves New York" buttons on their jackets. They must be part of the group of about a thousand Oregonians who braved the fear of post 9/11 flying to come here and support our economy. I stop in front of the woman, look her in the eye, and say, "Thank you for coming to New York." She seems startled, then smiles warmly and returns my thanks. I walk on, feeling good.

Up around 55th Street, there's a nattily dressed old gent standing under an apartment house marquee, singing his heart out in a very loud, very nice baritone. "Onward Christian Soldiers" he sings, his gnarled hands clasped at his breast. He sings to no one and everyone.

At East 65th, my first stop, there are blue NYPD barricades across the side-street. Why the barricade? The cop standing there jerks his head to the left, behind him. "It's a mission to the UN," he says. "Oh? Which one?" I ask. "Can't tell you that," he says, with a combination smirk and apologetic grin.

I have an appointment in the building on the corner, and he asks for a name. Satisfied, he pulls the barricade aside for me.

"Who're your mysterious neighbors?" I ask the receptionist. "The PLO," she sighs. "But at least the street's awfully quiet now."

After my appointment, I meet a friend, but she has changed her mind about coming with me downtown. She lives in Manhattan and was on the Triborough Bridge when she saw the second plane hit. "I just can't deal with all this anymore," she says. She's considering taking her teenaged daughter and moving out of the city.

We hug good-bye, and I hail a cab to take me south.

David Letterman is right: all New York cabbies are foreigners, it seems. Mine is a Sikh, a handsome young man with a green turban, a double-photo frame of an Indian holy man on the dash and an American flag stuck to the windshield. $10 plus tip later, he drops me as far south as the NYPD is letting cabs go: Broadway and Chambers. Delivery trucks with business farther down are being allowed in, but they're being stopped and searched by the National Guard and NYPD.

At that point, lower Manhattan looks almost normal. But below 20th Street, your nose lets you know nothing is normal. The stench is acrid, sharp, smoky, with an organic undertone that conjures unpleasant thoughts. The streets are dusty still, and water trucks continually wet them down. I wonder about toxins in the air, glad I'm not down here every day. How can anyone live here now?

National Guard Humvee, blocking intersection near Ground Zero

To the west, heavy trucks rumble past, and there's a jungle camoflage Humvee blocking a side street off Broadway. There are National Guardsmen at most intersections, talking quietly with NYPD officers, answering questions and checking ID. You have to have a reason to go beyond these points; a need to connect won't get you in.

A large group of people stand at a corner, all looking west. There it is: Ground Zero.Smoke wafts up above the huge red crane, and a jumble of rocky debris spreads below it. A block or so from "the pile," the odor is stronger, almost choking. People are quiet, only a few snapping photos. Most stand silently, hands to mouths, shaking their heads in sorrow and disbelief.

Farther south, from the vantage of a side street, I see a different sliver of the devastation. From here, at ground level, you don't get the horrible panorama visible in aerial photos or from high floors of nearby buildings. From ground level, you see bits of the wreckage, and you see the people who still toil there every day, all day and night.

Another block, and there is another view of the 10-story pile of smoking rubble, a tiny human figure scrambing across the face of it. I hold my breath; surely this is madness, to be on top of that shifting mountain of rubble! But he makes it to the other side, out of view, his yellow hard hat glinting in the sun.

W. Broadway, vendor selling patriotic memorabilia

After another half hour, it's time to go. My eyes are stinging, and if I stay longer, I'll have to buy a mask like many people are wearing.

I stand there, looking at the elegant grace of City Hall and its pristine green park, wondering what it had been like to be there, at Ground Zero, a month ago in the morning. It's hard to imagine. We are all in a kind of hell right now, living in the world's worst dream. We can't seem to wake up.

Down in the subway ticket area, a makeshift memorial has been set up, with poignant drawings by schoolchildren, and many tributes to Mayor Guiliani.

The ride uptown is fast, clean and quiet. People are gentle with each other. Someone even gives his seat to an elderly woman. This is New York? Did it take a monstrous attack to make us all feel human?

Memorials, Grand Central Station

At Grand Central, another memorial, full of missing persons notices, love letters, and several marvelous origami sculptures. One of them must have thousands of tiny folded paper birds, in red, white and blue. I stand there and read the sad, aching words, and tears well up. I'm not the only one; these hard-charging New Yorkers are pausing on their way home, reading and remembering and paying silent tribute to the dead and the heroes.

Comments from some who read this piece in an online forum, where it appeared originally:

I'm so sorry this happened in your city. I can only imagine what it would be like to have this happen in Atlanta- I don't want to imagine it.....

Catherine

Upon reading this, I was finally able to cry over the events of the past month. The enormity of the tragedy had, I suppose, made it too large to grasp. Your narrative of the day finally made the attacks and their aftermath personal enough for me to understand and begin to mourn. (Unfortunately, the floodgates seem to be open now, and I've gotten teary-eyed over positively everything for the past few hours. All in all, though, it's better than needing to cry and being unable.)

Rae

 

Thank you for the account of your day today and the pictures--they made me cry too. I've heard several news reporters say that the pictures and videos we all see on TV don't even begin to show the devastation in NY; that you have to see it for yourself. Your pictures hit me harder than the news stories have because they made the horror more real to me.

... to not see the towers from those lower Manhattan pics.

I spent a few years working down that way. It's funny, none of the pictures I'd seen before were from familiar vantage points until this display. This one really hit home for me.

I still miss NYC. Always have since I've been living here. I knew that it would not be the same for the next trip home. Now I know how it won't be the same.

Thanks for sharing this with us. It moved me on so many different levels.

People seem kinder, humanity and spirituality abounds.....
Isn't it sad that it took such terror and devestation to bring this out in us?

thank you for posting your experience today Paula...

 

(You made me cry.)

The memorial boards got to me the most and the one that just said "Forever My Love" really hit me and I am still crying. So sad.

 

Thank you Paula. Though we approached from different directions, it is so unreal yet in your face - as well as your nostrils - as you approach. The trips I made that day through the subways were quite the same as your pictures show. Though I thought we had seen everything in our subways before - nothing prepared me for this.

Mark— Proud to be an American and a New Yorker

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