Day 3 - An acrid cloud and some quiet
pleas
01/9/13 11:45 AM - No jogging
today. The wind has shifted, and the vaporized ghost cloud of
cement walls, steel girders, documents and incinerated human
beings burns our eyes and noses and throats.
Yesterday afternoon we did finally
get the New York Times. We had to go to the Times offices at
43rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, and get in a line on
the sidewalk behind about 300 other people. Those at the head
of the line had been waiting two hours, but we were lucky. After
only 20 minutes, a fully loaded truck pulled up. By then there
must have been another 100 or so behind us. We all needed the
comfort of our usually reliable source, its familiar typeface,
its clear hierarchical ordering of information. We were allowed
to buy five copies, and have kept two one for us and another
for a friend who, stubbornly, has so far refused to move out
of her apartment below Canal.
In the Times, the engineer's
description of how the buildings were brought down was at last
clear and crucial to understanding the diabolical cleverness
of the operation. Other than that, we didn't learn much we didn't
already know. There was one odd note, though. Clyde Haberman
and others insisted that now, finally, we Americans should be
able to understand how the Israelis feel in the face of suicide
bombers. That seemed to me like quite a stretch. Israelis have
not been hit by aircraft, as we were, and have not had any of
their central administrative or communications structures crippled,
nor have they suffered proportionate casualties -- though of
course any civilian deaths are too many. It seemed to me that
a closer analogy was to the Serbs, bombarded by NATO. Or the
Palestinians, when under air attack by the Israelis. Or maybe
the Cambodians and Vietnamese, bombarded by the US.
Speaking of which, a friend forwarded
a note by William Mandel, long-time Pacifica radio commentator.
It was the "chickens come home to roost" argument,
reminding us of all the bombardments and other havoc that the
US has wreaked on civilian populations from Nagasaki to Iraq.
I have always protested such actions by our government as vigorously
as I could. But Mandel seemed to be saying that the attack on
the World Trade Center and Pentagon serves us right, and I just
lost it.
"No people deserves to be
massacred," I answered my friend."And that includes
Americans.... People's lives are not more or less valuable because
of their nation's history or the actions of their governments.
Scores of thousands of lives of my neighbors have been either
ended or very seriously disrupted." If it was evil to punish
the population of Iraq for the crimes of Sadam Hussein, it is
just as evil for anyone to punish my neighbors for the crimes
of our government.
Last night Susana and I went
out again, bandannas across our mouths against the foul smoke,
to join the vigil in Union Square. This meant crossing police
lines at 14th Street. Susana had left the apartment without her
wallet, and a female NY State trooper told us we could leave
but couldn't get back in without ID. Susana approached a big
black New York cop and asked if she could be allowed back in
if she was with me. He grinned and said, "Sure, as long
as he's got ID and you're still married to him when you come
back."
At the vigil, little knots of
people argued loudly, but mostly the two hundred or so people
were silent or talking quietly in pairs, several of them scrunched
down among the candles to write on strips of heavy paper laid
out on the pavement. Poems, quotations, names of missing friends
or family, slogans. One couple had laid out candles to spell
"New York," but were having trouble getting them all
to stay lit. Mostly the sentiments agreed with the bigger signs
taped to a statue and a post: "No revenge, no war,"
though on one of these somebody had crossed out "No"
and written in "An eye 4 an eye," etc. Someone had
written out the entire, beautiful prayer of St. Francis, in Spanish
la oración de San Franciso. It goes something
like, I ask God not to comprehend me but to enable me to comprehend,
not to be succored but to give succor. Generous, loving sentiments.
And "Susi/Germany" had written, "Nichts kann
es ungeschehen aber unvergessen machen Leider!"
-- Nothing can be undone, but only unforgotten. Unfortunately.
-- We didn't add anything. Susi from Germany and St. Francis
of Assisi had said what I wanted to say.
We walked back to Lafayette and
found the same cop.
"Still married?" Through
his eyes we could watch him remembering the encounter. "Carry
on, then," he said, without even asking for my ID. We were
grateful for his smile.
By now we've tracked down everyone
we can think of who we know and who might have been down there
when the towers toppled, and so far all
are physically safe though one friend, whose apartment
was just behind the South Tower, is nearly hysterical, and all
of us are tense and tired. Friends and relatives have called
from as far as Massachusetts, Arizona, Argentina, Florida, California.
We're grateful for their concern. So far, our immediate neighborhood
and the building are functioning with quasi-normality. We still
have water and electricity and even concierges, in the midst
of an eerie quiet.
Day
1 - The first impact
| Day 2 -
The city stilled |
Day
3 - A cloud and pleas | Day 4 - Back to work | Day 5 -
A final word
_____________________________
P.S.:
Since I wrote that I've learned that one man I did know well
was working on the 82d Floor of the north tower, and has not
been found. This knowledge makes the events even more painful.
See NYT tribute to Charles
Antoine Lesperance.