Issue Three

Two weekends after the terrorist attacks on the U.S., I visited Manhattan. The trip had been planned for months, to attend a girlfriend’s bridal shower and bachelorette fete. And despite the fact that I was going to my former home of four years, I was full of mixed emotions on the week prior to the trip. My new found media obsession didn’t help matters, with its constant revelations of potential new plots, the threat of biological attacks, and the possibility of further acts of war. And the day of a U.S. retaliatory strike still loomed.

Friday Morning:

Despite my week of paranoia, I wake up excited to go. I’ll be staying with my best friend, who I felt blessed to still have–she was an employee of World Trade Center who had escaped harm’s way the morning of 9/11 as she sat in a dentist’s chair. My flight goes off without a hitch, and I feel unexpectedly OK as I arrive in New York. In the elevator up to my friend’s apartment, a woman asks if I’m just returning to the city. I tell her, no, I’m visiting from Buffalo for the weekend. “Good for you,” another woman turns to me and says with surprising gusto. “Coming to New York for the weekend.” An old swell of NYC pride comes back. It feels good to be here. 

Evening:

My friend and I decide to go to Ground Zero–the site of the collapse. She hasn’t been there since she left work Monday, September 10. She wants to see it for herself, and I want to see it, as well–to understand the enormity, to pay tribute to the loss. On the way are photocopies of missing persons plastering the walls of buildings, lampposts, phone booths–everywhere I turn–with the names and faces of those lost in the collapse. In the photographs, all the faces are happy.

When we step out of the subway two blocks away from the site, it is twilight, and light rain falls. It is the overwhelming quiet that is most striking. People surround the area–workers and bypassers alike–but it is eerily quiet. People look at the wreckage without speaking. There are no words to justify this view.

Saturday:

The New York I remember. Brunch with friends in Union Square. Shopping in the Village. Considering what to wear to my friend’s bachelorette that evening. Running uptown to pick up bridesmaids’ dresses for the following month’s wedding. Finally, drinks and dinner for eight at a lively restaurant/bar packed with young people. We re-tell embarrassing college stories and reflect on being newly married. We order the bride-to-be more shots. Blissful distraction.

Sunday Morning:

At the bride’s sister’s apartment, the intimate bridal shower is relaxed and warm. We spend some time reflecting on hardships other than the September tragedies, including the bride’s mother’s recent diagnosis of breast cancer. The bride and the rest of the room become emotional as her mother reads a poem she’s written for her daughter’s day. The world has room for sadness of all kinds.

Afternoon:

It’s time to begin my journey home. I am sad to go, to say goodbye to my friends. But I feel good about New York again, and as I hail a cab to the airport look forward to returning.

I hop in the cab. My cab driver has nut brown skin and jet black hair with a bushy beard. He is most certainly of Middle Eastern descent. I feel a wave of discomfort. But he makes a special point of greeting me brightly, and smiling reassuringly. I begin to imagine his plight, carting passengers around an emotionally charged city the past two weeks. I notice the word “Scum” scrawled on the divider between us.

On the cab ride to LaGuardia, we enter the midtown tunnel. Eight or so cars ahead of us are two emergency vehicles, one in each lane. I notice this immediately, and am comforted. But my reassurance quickly turns to fear. The vehicles are going no more than five miles per hour, and are driving parallel to one another. They don’t speed up, despite the fact that there is no traffic in front of them. The miles-long tunnel fills with cars behind them, and behind us. The cab driver seems as apprehensive as I am. My heart begins to race, and I think the worst–the vehicles are stolen, it’s a plot to trap a tunnel full of commuters. Suddenly the vehicles come to a complete stop. I see a man exit the police car on the left, and I really start to panic. After a few tense seconds, I am relieved to see he is not releasing noxious gasses or setting a bomb or opening fire, as my imagination has told me. He is simply switching cars. The two vehicles proceed to exit the tunnel normally. There’s no explanation for their strange behavior.

I exit the cab at LaGuardia with no further incident. I tip the driver and he turns to me and thanks me profusely. With kind eyes he wishes me a very safe trip.

I feel confused and unsteady. As I wait at the airport, I am sad that I cannot put New York and my weekend as a whole into a mental file marked “safe,” or “life as usual.” In fact, no matter where I am I realize I will continue to experience panicky bouts of “tunnel vision.” I wonder: Are these thoughts irrational? Or could they someday protect me from harm? And how do I stay safe while continuing to respect the dignity of others? Like the bomb shelters of the Cold War, I hope they become post-war folly. But like the World Trade Center towers, they remain steeped in the reality of an event that most people would have called impossible.