Chapter 1: September Eleven
We’ll never survive!
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.
It took an international act of terror for me to confront the trauma of my childhood. When my father died on May 17, 2001, our relationship was complicated, more painful than positive, and it had been five years since I’d seen him. But when I received the news, I flew to NYC the next day.
— fateful morning —
For months after my father’s death, I stayed in the loft, caught between difficult memories and the addictive energy of New York City. The bedroom of my youth had a direct view of the World Trade Center a mile away. The Twin Towers, with their windows always lit, were a stable element amongst the chaos of my life back then. Now, back in the same loft, I was surrounded by ghosts of my past, yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave. As I was deciding how to move forward, September 11th happened.
On the night of September 10, 2001, I laid in my childhood bed facing the same view that had steadied me in my youth. Earlier that day my right shoulder had become dislocated from riding on the back of a motorcycle through the country roads north of the City. During the hours of the ride, my shoulder, which had been injured years before from a bike fall, slowly pulled out of joint. I didn’t feel the injury until I dismounted and a sharp pain shot down my arm.
As I rested in bed with an ice pack, my shoulder throbbed in sync with the beat of my heart. I adjusted to a semi-comfortable position and tried to zone out the pain. After several hours, I eventually fell asleep. During the deepest of my slumber, the muscles around my shoulder gradually relaxed and the joint miraculously returned to its proper alignment. By the time I awoke, the pain had subsided to a small ache and I was filled with a feeling of relief… pure bliss.
A little before 9 am on September 11th, I opened my eyes to see smoke pouring out of one of the Twin Towers. There’s was a big, dark gash in the top, left side of the building. After staring for several seconds with blurry vision, I still couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. I began to analyze the view. There were always crazy things happening in New York City, so maybe it was some kind of stunt? For a few seconds it seemed plausible in my dreamy state, but as the smoke billowed out in a wide swath, I held up my fingers to measure the gash. That’s when I realized, no, it couldn’t be a stunt, the “wound” was too big. Something awful must have happened.
Fully awake now, I called my mother in Florida. She answered groggily and turned on the news. Nothing was being reported yet. We tried to figure out what was going on. It must be some horrible accident, we concluded. That it could be an intentional act never entered our minds.
While we talked, my eyes remained fixed on the billowing smoke. I observed a plane approaching dangerously close, but before I could react, it made impact. A loud boom reverberated through the atmosphere and more black clouds formed. When the smoke dissipated, a jagged chunk was now missing from the South Tower. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning; the scene was so shocking. I knew now, without a doubt, that this wasn’t a random incident. It was time to end the call and evacuate. We were not a religious family, but on that extraordinary day we exchanged brief prayers and my mother pledged to send guardian angels for protection.
Once I hung up the phone, I forced myself to be calm, almost robotic, in order to suppress my surging feelings of anxiety. As a child, I had grown accustomed to danger — I was only three months old when I was first hospitalized. I received over twenty surgeries on my legs before I turned eighteen. I learned how to keep myself calm. On September 11th, I relied on those same skills.
I didn’t know what was behind the disaster I found myself in, but I knew it was historic. My father had documented my entire childhood. I heard his voice in my head saying “document this!” so I left the loft to buy a disposable camera. As I descended painfully slow, step by step, from the sixth floor, I knew I should be escaping to safety instead of going around the corner drugstore, but my very DNA compelled me to go.
On the street, people were milling about normally. Some were confused about what was happening, but in typical New York stoicism, not overly scared. Alongside my father’s building was Church Street that ran south towards the World Trade Center. When I returned with camera in hand, I took photos of down the street before climbing back up to the sixth floor where I took photos of the view out of my bedroom window. The smoke from the towers passed behind the colored bottles resting on the windowsill which created a defused glow that was eerie as but also beautiful. Transfixed by the disastrous scene, I felt my chest tighten as I remembered how I used to gaze at the towers while I fell asleep and talk to my twin companions like they were friends. I’d wish them a good night and gently scold them that it was time to fall asleep like the rest of the world. They never heeded my advice.
Snapping out of the fog I was under, I called my half-brother Gabe who lived seven miles uptown in Washington Heights. We were raised separately. I grew up in NYC with my father while my brothers were raised in Maine with our mother. Gabe, who was nearly eleven years younger, had been living in New York for a while, but it wasn’t until my father passed that we got close. The phone lines were overloaded, so it took several tries to get through. When he answered, he insisted I leave the loft immediately.
Hastily, we made a rough plan to meet up — I’d walk north on Broadway and he’d walk south. Somewhere along the way, we hoped to find each other. It wouldn’t be an easy task given the distance, and we weren’t sure we’d succeed, but I didn’t let myself think about that. On that day, we were determined to survive.
Shortly after I hung up, the situation escalated. I heard a deafening crash and the air became black and thick. It was like breathing dirty baby powder. It felt like hours passed before the plume dispersed, when it had only been minutes. In its wake was nothingness, a blank space of sky where the South Tower had once been. Suspended, as if in time-lapse, I watched the devastation. I knew I needed to leave, but I couldn’t seem to move. Then, sharp sounds, high-pitched and numerous, began to pinprick me back into awareness. I looked out the window in the direction of where they were coming from and saw people running past my building screaming. Interspersed with the panicked crowd were firefighters and other first responders, covered in ash walking slowly away from the disaster with their heads hung low, downtrodden in defeat, while reinforcements of fresh emergency workers raced in the opposite direction.
I don’t know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.
— Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones
By now, both land and mobile phone lines were completely clogged, all mass transit had shut down, and taxis were sent home. I tried to call my mother back to update her, but I couldn’t get through. I tried Gabe again with the same result — seven miles between us and no way to communicate. I gathered my necessities in a small backpack, and heard another earth-shattering crash which shook my building. The sky darkened again. The North Tower had fallen and once again, the air became filled with dark grey soot. I struggled to breathe. More screams and sirens followed.
I put on my backpack and my most comfortable shoes and left the loft. Slow and steady, I descended, holding onto the railing and trying not to worry that I wasn’t going fast enough. My knees began to ache. I longed to sit down. I put the pain out of my mind and focused on uniting with my brother. I knew I wouldn’t get far if I rushed,.
Early on, I learned to cope with my limitations in mobility. I looked past the stares at my cockeyed walk due to one leg being shorter than the other, ignored the stiffness in my joints when I tried to stand, how my legs ached when I walked, or the feeling that my knees might buckle if I was upright for any length of time, and learned to scan unobtrusively for places to sit. I became adept at hiding my pain.
When I emerged onto the street, the scene was surreal, dramatically different from less than an hour earlier. Now, only a few people calmly went about their day. Everyone else was speed-walking north, away from the disaster. I looked down Church Street and saw that the plume of smoke was still billowing, just more deflated. I turned away and plodded east slowly, praying my legs would take me where I needed to go. After two blocks, I reached Broadway and turned north.
In my mind I didn’t consciously feel anything. I wasn’t present in my body other than an awareness of my frustratingly slow speed. I was somewhere else. I knew that if the danger escalated, I wouldn’t be unable to run; my legs were simply not built that way. All I could do was pray and keep moving. I’ve heard stories of people doing amazing things in times of crisis like lifting cars or jumping from high buildings to save the day, but I knew that wouldn’t be me. I just kept moving one foot after the other.
As I walked north on Broadway, I took in my surroundings. A hush of anxiety hovered over everyone. In addition to the firefighters, I saw ash-laden businessmen and women walking briskly north. Caution tape was stretched across entrances to subway stations, sirens filled the air, and onlookers were stopped in their tracks to press their cellphones anxiously to their ear. When they couldn’t get through, they’d rapidly resume their evacuation. At one point, I saw a yellow-orange flame dart up out of the corner of my eye. I spun my head around, prepared for an imminent threat, when I realized it was only a shish-kabob vendor who had spilled oil on his grill. I relaxed again, trying to letting the clench in my heart release.
After walking about a mile, I saw my brother’s tall frame heading towards me. At six foot six, he was easy to spot from far away as his head bobbed well above the crowd. When he saw me, he smiled broadly and we quickly embraced. We didn’t dare linger in our excitement, the need to get away was too strong. The event that brought us together remained unspoken. Empowered with a surge of hope, we walked together north. My brother slowed his gait so as to not leave me behind.
The danger I was facing on September 11, 2001 didn’t feel greater than what I’d experienced years before. This time, however, I wasn’t isolated in my trauma, everyone around me was experiencing it as well, which in an odd way, gave me comfort. I relaxed a little knowing that I didn’t have to go through this alone, unlike so many other things I’d experienced.
When we reached the West Village, the scene was completely different. The chaos of September 11th hadn’t gotten that far. People were walking north, but with less obvious anxiety. We passed a café near Washington Square that was full with guests dining outside. My eyes paused on a group of fashionably dressed ladies who were drinking white wine and laughing. For them it seemed like an ordinary day. They must have been aware of what was happening since the smoke billowing from the fallen towers was clearly seen from where they sat.
I was a long walk, so we stopped to rest briefly. We weren’t safe yet. It was many miles to my brother’s apartment and there was no public transportation available. While I was catching my breath, Gabe spotted a man getting into his car. He sprinted over and asked if we could get a ride north. Thankfully he said yes. Driving was bumper to bumper, but after about an hour, we were dropped off within blocks of my brother’s apartment.
september eleven
rousing to a sonic boom
i confuse it with the daily rumble
of the traffic on canal
emerging from the holland tunnel
myself, wrapped in bedcovers warm
rolled, regarding window view
twin towers in their testament
of global commerce gone askew
8:45, eyes still blurred
drugged down from dark and dreamful sleep
could not process what i saw
a burning gash five miles deep
i measured it with my mind
mangled steel and depth of flame
smoke blackening bluish sky
the plane had hit with deadly aim
steadily, it conquered me
that my eyes were seeing true
before i could digest it in
came the crash, plane number two
witnessing, i saw the scene
plane flew in, direct impact
bedroom window was the frame
drama of destructive act
all alone i had no choice
terror tried to possess
so i shoved it deep inside
found a mask for my distress
i felt the tension lodge in me
grappling with what to do
bore down upon my shoulders
bruising in the black and blue
the towers were my nightlight
companion to my daily rest
an anchor to the city
a constant in my lonely quest
death summoned me to this place
my father died, left the task
to comprehend a lifetime
and free the demons of the past
now, death comes for many more
their screams too far away to hear
but close enough to breathe the ash
like baby powder in the air
soon came one, then the other
each tower shook and shivered
concrete compressing all inside
panic spread, a flooding river
stunned by the unfolding
crisis that was far too near
some distance from the trauma
i needed to get out of here
my brother calls in tearful voice
end to end we were not close
we made a plan to connect
i’d walk north, he’d walk south
up broadway i trod along
my legs already aching
uncertain of what transpired
and what i’d undertaken
i passed impromptu gatherings
standing by a radio
eager for some scrap of news
full of fear, the unknown
some were wearing gas masks
fleeing from the concrete crush
proof of their survival
bandages and fine white dust
fearing i could not progress
but barely walked far at all
i pause to restore my strength
then i hear my brother’s call
united now we had the will
to make it through this dreadful day
even though we were unclear
of how we’d travel all the way
six mile trek remained ahead
city now could not assist
public transport all shut down
only choice was to persist
we walked the sum of forty blocks
police had speakers blaring
“it is not safe, please go north”
some listened, some uncaring
yellow-orange caught my eye
the glow of flames ascending
panic gripped but fear was false
just sausage cooking unattended
feeling foolish i turned away
yet still there was the tension
phantom perils taunted me
a global apprehension
i saw it in their faces
and felt it in the dusty air
new yorkers had been broken
yet, were not beyond repair
when we finally took a rest
we stopped to call our mother
to let her know we were safe
and we’d found each other
“ask upon your guardian
angels” she told each of us
they will guide you safely home
know in them, place your trust
out of options to explore.
decided to give luck a try
hitch a ride to home uptown
right away someone came by
we thanked our angels deeply
praised the mom we found so wise
because just like she told us
ask, solutions will arise
delivered near my brother’s
home a few blocks away
soon we were sheltered safe
finally could release the day
inside, t.v. insisted
to replay the cradle fall
drilling in the danger
of a time beyond recall
i’ve never felt fear before
breathe moist upon my neck
paralyze me with the world
not know what to expect
i’m grateful that i still exist
i mourn for those who perished
i’ll testify each day i live
is one i’ll always cherish