It is hard to find words for what it feels like to be a New Yorker at this moment in time. The seven days since the attack have been gut wrenching, painful and awe-inspiring all at the same time. They have given new meaning to the words, "I Love New York," often printed on shopping bags from souvenir stores or on coffee cups. When the airplanes struck the Twin Towers, I was in my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, getting ready to go down to Queens where I was going to be covering the city council election for my journalism class. I was uptown, and was mere miles from ground zero. It was a completely different universe. I didn't know what to do when it first happened. Should I rush to the site like my journalism school professor wanted me to? Should I just stay glued in front of my television screen on my couch? Should I hop on the Long Island Railroad and go home to the safe haven of Great Neck? When would it go be okay to step outside and get a cup of coffee at the bagel store? Did they need me to donate blood at St. Luke's Hospital? Could I donate blood at St. Luke's if I didn't know my blood type? I felt, in a word, helpless.
Later that evening, when I was walking back from a friend's apartment, Manhattan felt eerie. There were none of the familiar yellow cabs zipping up the avenues. Zabar's had closed its doors at 6 p.m. Trying to find a Chinese restaurant that was open and would deliver was a mission impossible. I walked past a church on 79th and Broadway that was overflowing with people looking for comfort and solace at 11 p.m. When I woke up the next morning, I had to get out of my apartment. I rode the subway down to Penn Station, the furthest I could go. Riding the subway felt surreal. How could the train slither so swiftly in the dark tunnels when lower Manhattan was covered in a plume of smoke, debris, and tears? For once, I could actually understand the usually unintelligible announcer as he explained that the train would only be stopping at 34th street and that "there would be no express trains, ladies and gentlemen. All express trains will not be running." I held my breath when the train stopped at 72nd Street for five minutes. It seemed like an eternity. I exchanged anxious glances with the woman sitting across from me as a transit worker rushed through the train shouting into his walkie-talkie. Was there going to be another scare? Thankfully, it was only a brief delay and the train continued on its regular course. I could breathe again.
From Penn Station, I walked down to 23rd Street and 12th Avenue, the site of the Chelsea Piers mega-plex athletic center, where a triage center had been set up the night before. I decided I would write my article for class on the volunteer effort at the triage center. There was an anxious feeling in the air. Everyone wanted to help. So many people in fact, that volunteers were being turned away. Firefighters, paramedics, and police officers stood by the pier like wooden soldiers waiting to be called into action. But there was nothing to be done. Everyone during that long afternoon longed for the familiar and welcome sound of sirens from ambulances carrying victims found in the wreckage to the Piers for medical attention. But they never came. All the volunteers seemed to be able to do was sort through the overflowing donations of clothes and food that kept on streaming in. The roller rink was filled with over 1,500 garbage bags of clothes. A few firefighters came on the scene, taking a break from their work at ground zero. Everyone stopped what they were doing to clap for them as they approached the pier.
On Thursday, I gathered with some of my fellow journalism students in the Joseph Pulitzer room at the Columbia School of Journalism. We were all feeling confused, guilty, unsure of where we fit in as journalists in this city that had been transformed overnight into what felt like Gotham City, of Batman fame. I felt comforted as I learned that my colleagues had been grappling with many of the same issues I had been dealing with. The deans reassured us that it was okay if our first instinct wasn't to rush down to the scene. Not every reporter is a disaster reporter, they explained. One student described how he had talked to a fireman on the subway. When he asked the fireman how he felt, the fireman broke down crying. The student felt terrible and couldn't erase the firefighter's tear streamed face from his mind.
Many of us asked, "were we just simply getting in the way by trying to cover this?" "No," said Dean Klatell. "Remember, you are documenting history." Life slowly chugged back to normal on Thursday. Stores posted "open" signs on their doors and Starbucks employees dusted off their espresso machines. However, the streets were not the same. Signs of missing people dotted the windows of Banana Republic and Chase Bank. A man posted a sign of a woman holding her son in her lap. "Have you seen my mother?" was the caption above the photo. "I'm looking for my niece," he told me. Posters asking people not to use their cell phones were plastered on telephone booths and bus stops.
The smell of smoke from ground zero had wafted its way up Broadway. Volunteers from the Red Cross stood on the street accepting donations from passersby eager to empty five-dollar bills, twenty-dollar bills into the plastic bucket. We wanted to help in any way, no matter how small.
On Friday evening at 7 p.m., the city stood together and mourned from Union Square to the upper reaches of Harlem. In my neck of the woods, the owners of the restaurant Mama Mexico had arranged a candlelight vigil. All night long, throngs of pedestrians stopped by to light candles and take a moment to reflect on what had happened and whom we had lost. A tape deck perched on a table outside the restaurant played every possible version of "America the Beautiful" for hours on end. People sang. They cried.
At Shabbat services, the Orthodox Congregation Ohab Zedek on the Upper West Side prayed together for the 15 people they knew to be missing from the Twin Towers. People stood on their apartment stoops holding candles. A man walked down the street with an American flag draped over his back. The Firefighters Memorial on 100th Street and Riverside Drive had transformed into a miniature oasis of sadness and beauty. Candles dotted every available inch of the marble base below the memorial. In the cool evening air, rainbow candles, tea candles, and Shabbat candles bravely burned. The memorial seemed as if it was pulsing with its own heartbeat, the heartbeat of the 350 firemen that we had lost on Sept. 11, 2001. Little children dropped by to hang up notes thanking the firemen for their effort. People just stood and stared. Speechless.
Alison Damast, LA '01, is currently attending the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.
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