“The winds have turned uptown”

Every year on September 11, I repost without edits an email I originally wrote in the days following the 9/11 attacks.

*****

Hello friends,

I have been, like many of you, glued to the nearest television set for the past forty hours eager to hear the latest developments on the situation at what used to be the World Trade Center. Unfortunately I also have the ability to leave my front door or look out my window and see the effects of the attack with my own eyes.

As many of you might know I am currently a senior at the Gallatin School of Individualized study at New York University. (I am fine, and appreciative of all the people who have written or called wondering how I was doing.)

While CNN has labeled their coverage "AMERICA Under Attack," I feel compelled to call it something else. You see the assault, to me, was before all else an attack on my HOME.

I can not convey to you what it means to walk around this city and no longer see the Twin Towers standing proudly to the south. These were Towers of Babel, genuine testaments to man's lofty ambition and even greater testimony to his ability to make his dreams come true. They were seemingly, as the sun and the moon, permanent fixtures in the sky that, when lost, you could look to and find your way back home. And now they are gone.

At approximately 8:45 am Tuesday, I was getting ready to go off to class when I received a call from my best friend, B***. She works as the press secretary for the District 1 Councilwoman, Kathryn Freed. She called and asked me to turn on the TV, hearing through the grapevine that a plane had just crashed into the one of the towers of WTC. I scanned the networks looking for any coverage and there was none. Of course I told her this must be a joke. She decided she was going to go up to the roof to take a look for herself. Sure enough, ninety seconds later Channel 2 had breaking coverage as well as footage we will all never forget.

Meanwhile B*** screamed to me through the phone that the hole in the tower looked to be twelve stories high. Shaken, I told her I had to get to class and I'd call when I got home.

I stepped out, got on the elevator and realized I'd forgotten my notebook. I ran out, back to my room. There my three other suitemates were gathered around a TV. "There's been another explosion," Rob said. Immediately the nightmare scenarios exploded in my mind each informed by the question: What's the next target? First, I didn't know exactly where B*** was. Second, I knew I had relatives working near the WTC.

Each of us reached for our phones and cells. Nothing. The phones were dead. I, absolutely dumbfounded now, decided that with nothing else to do I might as well go to class.

At the corner of Mercer and Washington Pl., on NYU's main campus, dozens had gathered looking down the street to the south. I knew what they were looking at. I reached the corner, turned my head and there it was: the North Tower with a gaping hole, smoke billowing out of it. I rushed past, I realize now in hindsight, in denial of what had happened.

The class I was about to take was on Buddhism from a Pshycoanalytical perspective. The professor was a psychoanalyst well versed in Buddhism. She was talking to a student when I arrived. He was franticly trying to explain to my professor that he needed to leave and find out what had happened. She meanwhile hadn't a clue what was going on, having been on trains for the past half-hour getting to class. I turned on the TV. She sat back, stunned. Every word out of her mouth had to do with the human toll: the loss of life from the crashes, the people still trapped, the unfolding drama of their rescue. The tremendous loss of life, the loss of life, the loss, she kept saying, finally burying her face in her hands looking as if she were about the puke. A few others in the class began crying.

As the minutes passed we heard more and more: the Pentagon had been hit as well; a shaken president had addressed the nation and then flown off to safe harbor in the Midwest; every building in Washington was being evacuated. And the half dozen of us who had awoken that morning with no other concern than being able to get to class on time were now gripped by utter helplessness. New York City, our home, was under attack, its symbols of might and prosperity in flames.

Then, Aaron Brown, the CNN anchor at the time, cried out and interrupted a report from the Pentagon. Immediately the shot was of the Trade Center. The South Tower was engulfed in smoke. I thought to myself that it had collapsed. The Tower had collapsed. The thing you think can only happen in movies--no that's not true because if you had actually written this in a movie some producer would say it was a ridiculous scenario capable of being done only by aliens--that thing had happened. I ran out of class trying to find the first phone I could to call B*** and make sure she was alright, images of city hall blanketed by soot, her on the roof, in my mind. Almost immediately I knew it would be useless. If the phones didn't work before, no way would they work now. I returned to class, just as the remainder of the students filed out, some blankly staring, muttering: "There's no class, the tower's collapsed." We held each other and wept.

I headed toward the Office of Student Activities where I knew would be friends and phones. A dozen or so students and administrators were in the lobby watching the coverage on a plasma screen. When the second tower collapsed it was no longer a shock, it was almost as if we were in some new nightmare universe where these things just happened.

Around 11:00, classes were cancelled and I headed back to my apartment ten blocks away, knowing my roommates would be there to provide comfort. I passed the corner of Washington and Mercer. Where a few hours before I looked south and saw gleaming glass and steel, I saw sky, nothing but sky.

Back home, I found out my relatives were safe. B*** called and stayed with me. One of the first things she said to me was "I saw them jump...I saw people jump."

We kept the door open so others could just step in if they wanted. This wasn't the time for closed doors.

*****

Most of NYU's downtown dorms were evacuated, their students forced to room with friends and relatives. Many, many were forced into our Athletic Center with nothing to sleep on but gymnastic mats. I went there in the afternoon to see what I could do. Several hundred were already there, many in chairs gathered around a radio, a few curled up on the mats trying to sleep away the waking nightmare. The caterers of NYU began setting up a full buffet. The Housing office had provided blankets. It was going to be a long night.

*****

Mayor Guiliani ordered the city virtually shutdown today from 14th St. on south which meant that my particular dorm was the cut-off point for the city. At the ends of my block at the corners, local and state police had set up roadblocks and checked ID's of anyone who wanted to go further downtown. Meanwhile all the tunnels and most of the bridges were closed. F-16's and helicopters circled the island. It like I was living within Fortress Manhattan.

*****

We haven't had school since the attacks and probably won't have any for the rest of the week. Meanwhile, students trying to figure out what to do with themselves filled the streets, now empty of traffic. Many attended the candlelight vigil at Washington Square at the heart of NYU's campus. Many couldn't go due to the blockade and thus set up their own vigil at Union Square virtually outside my door.

Grenwhich Village has this mystique of sorts. Its supposed to be home to the last vestiges of Bohemian urban life: idealist writers, artists and intellectuals. They came out to Union Square, wielding the full might of their powers and talents. One strund a luandry line from one light pole to anoither and then taped hung his art up. A few sat on the steps and played guitars, doing song as varied as "Imagine" to "Secret-Agent-Man." Dozens upon dozens formed a dense halo around them, transfixed, wanting to hear something vibrant, something that didn't come from the mouths of just another grim faced news anchor. The place was buzzing and alive, desperately alive.

Someone had erected a paper-mache candle at the heart of the Square's front plaza, fashioning some fencing into the shape of a flickering flame and putting it on top. Over the hours, people would come by and place their own candles at its base, touching it as if by doing so they could claim some comfort.

Paper was taped down, covering nearly every inch of the plaza's stonework. Words of reflection, of anger, of peace--words in Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian--words written by little kids with crayons--words like tears and flowers were laid down on these sheets and transformed the Square into a living document of grief. I treaded carefully between the sheets, trying not to step on a single stroke or drawing.

I came to some posterboard. On it was a crude drawing of the towers rendered in blue magic marker. Above them were two open hands. Below, some words: "Now to the sky, you are welcomed." I walked away and cried.

*****

I returned home, stepped into the elevator and hit 7. On the back wall was a sign: "Winds have Turned Uptown. Close All Windows." The ashes of the World Trade Center were being blown across the city.

Katie Day Weisberger