what my 9/11 was like

Here, and in our weekly newsletter, we asked “where were you when 9/11 happened?” Below is one answer.  

     Even 25 years later, writing about 9/11 is easy because I remember the day vividly.

      It being Primary Day, I was waiting to vote in a community room near my Upper West Side apartment when a TV monitor showed a WTC tower burning. Talk quickly turned to whether the plane struck intentionally or by accident. I proclaimed, “You don’t fly an airplane into the World Trade Center by accident.”

      I headed downtown on an IRT express train, intending to exit at Chambers Street and walk the rest of the way to the site. Over the public address system came a loud “Bypass the station; bypass the station.”

      I shouted out loud, to nobody in particular, “No, don’t bypass the station.”

      Sure enough, we bypassed the station, and after cruising through a couple of local stations, the train stopped dead in its tracks (pun intended), the lights still on. Some guy was writing furiously in what seemed to be a reporter’s notepad. I started chatting with him, and he turned out to be journalist George Stephanopolous.

      The train resumed forward motion, we pulled into the Fulton Street Station; and the doors opened. George and I intrepidly headed out together, but split up when we hit the streets. A blizzard of thick particles was falling; the sensation was akin to a warm hailstorm. I realized that the particles were pulverized WTC, including, sadly, organic material.

      I headed north and stumbled upon what is now awkwardly called “New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital Emergency Department” (but was then called “New York Downtown Hospital”). The staff cleaned all the dust particles and organic material off of me.

      I headed west, aiming to walk down the bank of the Hudson River to Battery Park City to check on a friend. Of course, emergency personnel blocked any such foolhardy idea, and I later learned that the friend had been evacuated by ferry to New Jersey.

      I somehow bummed a long, slow, bumpy ride on the floor in the back of a commercial van heading uptown, in the front of which two fellows were talking in a strange tongue. I arrived back in my apartment in perfect sunny weather and spent the rest of the afternoon watching newsreels of the chaos downtown.

      In numerous subsequent conversations, I opined that what the United States should do is ask the world, “Who are you? Why did you do this? What do you want?” Well, it wasn’t the first time that nobody listened to me.

      Given the futility of the wars that followed, I feel vindicated.