THE sky isn’t supposed to fall in New York City. But yesterday morning it did just that.
As I watched from my vantage point on the Lower East Side, I witnessed surreal, almost wartime carnage that my generation has never seen firsthand.
My mother called just before 9 a.m. from the Virginia mountains and simply murmured “the World Trade Center. Are you alright?” I looked out my window and all I could see was a massive plume of black smoke engulfing the North tower.
I dropped the phone and ran up to the roof where my building mates were watching in stunned, silent disbelief.
Just as they informed me that a plane had actually flown into the tower, we saw a plane approaching the South Tower from behind.
It appeared small and seemed almost unreal flying in an area with so many tall buildings. I was wondering why they would use a plane – instead of a helicopter – to survey the scene and rescue trapped workers.
I will never forget the next moment – as I watched I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The aircraft looped back around targeting themselves for a direct hit.
A massive fireball exploded from the South tower.
It was absolutely staggering.
I thought it must be an accident. There’s no way I was witnessing an intentional act of kamikaze terrorism.
“We’re in a war zone right now,” I heard one neighbor say, who’d heard the reports of the first hit on CNN.
In my life, the only warfare I’ve seen in real time was against Iraq. That looked like some high-tech computer game transmitted from a land far away.
I’m not supposed to see this. Our fathers and grandfathers saw the war. We’re the lucky, pampered generation. This isn’t supposed to happen in our lifetimes. To Gen Xers, battles and wars are antiquated – and only seen through fuzzy footage on the History Channel.
The areas of impact appeared warped and shredded, and we could see the skeletal infrastructure of metal and concrete as the floors were consumed by flames.
Someone said the scene looked like something out of “Bladerunner” – our point of reference, a Hollywood film.
For twenty minutes we saw small objects falling from the floors. We didn’t know if we were watching debris or bodies.
Many people were on the roofs of the buildings in my neighborhood. The scene was so incredible we were shouting to neighbors on other rooftops “Did that just happen? Did we just see that?”
My next door neighbor was remarking how durable both towers were to withstand such an impact. Moments after she said those words, we watched as the first tower crumbled to the ground and smoke billowed everywhere enveloping the financial district like a mushroom cloud.
“I just came from Canal and Broadway,” said another neighbor as she arrived on the roof, shaking and reaching for her boyfriend. “From the sidewalk, you could see people jumping from the windows.”
Just then, the second tower collapsed and my neighbors and I just stared at each other in mute shock.
Whenever I’ve watched a particularly moving and candid documentary about Vietnam or World War II, I’ve struggled to imagine just what is must have been like to be in fear of your safety, your life, your world – away from home and in another land.
My mother grew up in Berlin during World War II until her family fled for Czechoslovakia in 1943, when she was 9 years old. And her father served in World War I.
I grew up hearing stories about how her building was bombed out – living in basement bomb shelters with a metal pail for a toilet, the struggle of finding food, and, of course, the death of friends and relatives.
There was most definitely a generation gap – the spoiled only child with everything she could ask for from the modern world and the mother who’d suffered and actually knew what starvation was first hand.
My life has changed. Before the attack, I was living in the fast-paced, often glamorous, detached world of the Big Apple – “a place where anything could happen” – without a care in the world.
Nothing could touch me, I had survived 7 years in the largest city in America on my own – and felt damn safe with the reduction in crime and city-wide gentrification.
If the attack had been nuclear, I’d be dead, and so would everyone I know.
I hate the people who did this. True hate. Not the “hate” you feel towards your little apartment or bad haircut.
I feel violated. These things just don’t happen in America – except by kooky militia members in Oklahoma.
How dare these people come to my city, the most advanced city in the world? And especially if they’re fighting some fundamentalist Islamic holy war in a land of beauty, art, commerce, creativity and freedom? A land where many people don’t even care? Someone had brought a radio on the roof. We heard a voice say the Pentagon – the most secured area in perhaps the world – had fallen under attack as well.
“This is a declaration of war,” one onlooker exclaimed.
Well then, it’s time to fight back. It may be ignorant pride to say so, and it doesn’t sound like me, but – you just can’t do this to the U.S.A. We need to strike back, quickly and fiercely – and permanently disable our enemy.
My mother has been trying to get me to visit our summer home in Appalachia for years. There, your next neighbor is several miles down a dirt road. I refused, it was too boring, nothing to do.
But right about now, the middle of nowhere seems perfect.