I get off in Times Square. The place is full of police wagons stuffed with officers. The streets are packed, and everyone is looking at the five-story-high TV screen that dominates Broadway and 42nd Street. Every third person is holding their hands over their mouths. I am late, and late on a day when I really should not be late, so I ignore the scene. As I step into the offices of the newspaper where I work, a beat-up van with Rasta flags speeds by, and the passenger yells out: "Babylon is here, you are a target!" I assume it's another pro-life harassment, which is a weekly feature of this job. The suits are crowded around the television set in the VP's office. More hands on mouths.
Finally someone speaks, "So they're saying I have no fucking way to go home?! Unbelievable." Then the first tower collapses, and I hear the two things I am going to hear for the next four hours, over and over again: "This is a war," and "This is just like a movie!"
I decide to head downtown. Transit workers have set up little pedestals where they answer questions in the negative. "Gotta go to the Bronx? Then you gotta start walking. Brooklyn? Well, there's no way to get to Brooklyn."
The eye contact, the human contact, is unbelievable for Midtown. It's also downright weird. An old guy nudges me, laughing, when a radio announcer implores President Clinton to act immediately, and then corrects herself. A man tells me, "This [attack] is the reason that Jamaica is better than America. In Jamaica there are more guns than people. Here there are more journalists than people. What we need now is some guns. This is a war."
People covered with white dust pass through the crowd like ghosts. The crowd parts for them, staring and pointing. One of the ghosts wears a T-shirt that reads "New Millennium--Total Devastation."
A guy with literally a quarter-inch of dust covering parts of what was a three-piece suit is cornered on the steps of a shuttered business on Canal Street. He is bleeding from his ear. His foot is covered in red mud. He is answering questions from reporters. "Exactly when did you know it was a plane," asks a reporter in sweats and a CK shirt, "and how long did it take you to get from the 34th floor?" A cute Asian tourist pushes her way past the reporter. She then poses next to the bleeding guy while her friend takes pictures.
Further up the block a large crowd has assembled outside a basketball court. "They think all we Negroes can do is play basketball," one guy with a basketball says to the crowd, "but this is the day we are going to speak out. This is the greatest day in U.S. history." Two white guys with veins popping out of their necks are screaming something back. The basketball player and his friends start laughing. "[You're] getting what you deserve, always fucking with other people, now they're fucking with you and it has you all upset. This is a war now, in your house." The white crowd members are enraged and start yelling again. The response: "Get a job, businessman, you need one now!" The crowd (the white guys) actually starts laughing.
This is all taking place less than half a mile from the hole that was the World Trade Center. A 50-year-old white guy with a little ponytail runs up to the group. "They need our blood at St. Vincent's, thousands of people need our blood! Follow me, let's go!" The crowd turns from him. "Follow me! Follow me! Let's show them what Americans have got!" No one looks at him. Someone mutters, "Fuck you." He leaves, yelling at no one in particular, "Follow me! Follow ME!"
A plane (most likely a military aircraft) passes overhead and a woman starts screaming. The crowd goes quiet until it passes. It's lunchtime now, and New Yorkers adapt to the crisis like dutiful Americans. Catering vans that were not able to make their deliveries are selling elegant little sandwiches for a dollar.
Nevdon Jamgochian is a writer living in New York City.
