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Six Days in New York |
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Tuesday, September 11 The cats overdue for the vet, I stand on the corner, waiting for the light to change. A larger than usual crowd of smokers grabbing their last puff is facing south. I turn and see dark smoke. If it's coming from south of Canal, I'll have trouble getting to work later. Someone at the vet's office says a plane hit the WTC. Cell phones don't work. I am beginning to be afraid. For three hours I call, alternately, the wife, sister, and-finally, with much misgiving-the father of my first cousin. I see myself sitting in his corner office on a dizzyingly high floor of Tower 1, looking out over NY Harbor, Lady Liberty and points south, west, and north. The circuits are busy. Then no dial tone. All of a sudden, the phone rings, and I hear my uncle's voice. "He is in Boston." Thank God. I torture myself in front of the TV for the rest of the day and night. Wednesday, September 12 My college-Borough of Manhattan Community College--is in the thick of it. The main building, five blocks from "ground zero" is being used as an emergency site. Our satellite building, once a block from the WTC, is now on hell's doorstep. I am stunned to see the newly renovated north façade covered with debris. I'm told I am lucky I can't see the south side, which has a piece of WTC Building #7 leaning on it. The building will not be used this semester or next…maybe never. Where will our 17,000 students go when we can return? How will we return to this place? Emails from students and faculty tell of bodies aflame falling from windows, rolling smoke engulfing people as they ran, soul-curdling screams filling the air. Members of the nursing faculty are among the last to leave the evacuated buildings because they felt responsible to care for people. Instructors crouched in doorways admonishing fleeing students to "run north" before they did so themselves. A student dragged another onto the Manhattan Bridge. We have only begun to hear of the acts of heroism and kindness to emerge from the wreckage of our semester. All branches of CUNY have re-opened, but we wait for the neighborhood to be restored to us, even temporarily. Meanwhile, college officials and faculty labor to re-create a house of intellect. We must teach our students…but what shall we teach them? Thursday, September 13 "Come in as an emergency, 1 p.m.," the dental surgeon says. The pain is intense, and surface transportation is snarled. Ten blocks on the bus, and this close society is too much. In the back of the bus, a certifiable NY lunatic, the kind you'd shrug off another day, mutters, "Allah is a faggot." We try to ignore him, but his blandishments increase in scope and loudness to include all people of African descent. A young, African American man, with a build like a small continent, picks up the loony by his throat, utters a few choice words of his own--mostly obscene--and "helps" the man out the back door of the bus. Another man invokes "sweet Jesus." I decide to walk the rest of the way to 60th Street. At night, my grown daughter calls from Boston, like she's done everyday since Tuesday. "Mom," she says, sounding like she did when she was five. "Why?" "Why what?" I ask. "Why do people do things like this? How can there be such evil?" What can I tell her? I think of the new NYU and New School freshmen who have just begun to occupy dorms in my neighborhood. How frightened are they? Friday, September 14 I go to synagogue. The Friday evening liturgy is among our most beautiful. The melodies, hypnotic in their loveliness, give structure to grief. The congregation lets the tears flow un-wiped. There is consolation in the words "Arise, go out from the devastation." Devastation. Upside-downess. Yes, the world has turned upside down. The community has lost a member. The rabbi reminds us that on the Sabbath even mourners put away their rent garments and restore themselves for what they will face again when the Sabbath ends. I think about a Hasidic tale of a rabbi who refuses to say the prayers marking the end of the Sabbath because he wants his congregation to live in its peace. Can we do that now? I don't want to go back to real life. Saturday, September 15 I have to get out of here. Gar offers to drive me to the Jersey Shore. My soul needs the ocean. I have to get out of here. I have to escape the TV and my email. Friends from Australia, from England, from Africa, from Israel writ to ask how I am. Israel? A friend says. "Oh, my dear girl, now you know….I am so sorry." My cousin's email is the last I see before I leave: "Thanks for your wishes. No time to write. Working non-stop. Lost a lot of people." One of the secretaries in his Port Authority office is a graduate of BMCC. Sunday, September 16 Union Square Park is ringed and its lanes traversed by an endless roll of paper on which people are writing--in more languages than I can read--messages of support for NY, America, and each other. The messages are as disparate as the people who write them: some suggest we bomb who-ever-the-hell, some say, "Please choose peace," and one says "I love you, America. New York, do not be brought low." Tacked on trees and fences are pictures of missing people, and the pain radiates through the lanes of the park like a tooth ache. Tears are in everyone's eyes...and then, in the indomitable spirit of "they who must make a buck," there's this NY-entrepreneur hawking t-shirts that say "I survived the WTC falling." God bless America. All of a sudden, I think remember the nice young man who sold me a travel bag at the Innovation Luggage in the WTC last Thursday. Did he run from the building in time? And the lady in Hallmark I told I'd come back to buy a snow globe next week. Is she home with her family tonight? And then I think, in this city of lonely souls, who mourns the people without a friends or family to miss them, without someone to post their picture on a telephone kiosk. I do.
Jane Paznik-Bondarin is a university professor and writer who lives in New York City. She can be reached by email: Click Here
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by
Jane Paznik-Bondarin