World Trade Center Murders

Once again I look out my window to see the lights of the World Trade Center memorial lights probe the sky, pale reminders of the mass murder that took place on that site seven years ago.

Seven years ago, on that brilliant Tuesday morning, I emerged from the Brooklyn Bridge subway station adjacent to City Hall to see that obscene diagonal gash on the north face of the North tower. I was mesmerized. I had to watch these landmarks, these behemoths of the skyline as they ejected smoke, fire, papers and people. Firefighters and other emergency service people and their vehicles flooded the area. I looked at that north tower, and knowing how the building was constructed, I felt there was a real possibility that the building might collapse,and I felt that the last thing that was needed was another pedestrian clogging the street, so I continued to my office, from where I watched the end of an era.

I have worked in the downtown area for more than thirty years and the towers were a constant presence. many times I went to the concourse to visit the Borders bookstore that was there, or to do some banking. Earlier that year I had visited the headquarters of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to interview for a job. I also interviewed for a job at 7 World Trade Center, with the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. As you can tell, my attachment to those buildings was not abstract, but quite concrete. I could have been inside one of those buildings when those airplanes hit. By the grace of god, I wasn't.

Then, with two tremendous roars, the world turned dark. We evacuated the area in a scene that reminded me of those apocalyptic movies that show long lines of refugees. But pain was absent. Color was absent. Everything was absent as a huge hole expanded to include millions of people.

When I returned to work a week later, I bought two miniature New York City flags and dipped them both into the omnipresent grey dust that constituted much of the remains of the towers and which coated the downtown area. I kept one flag and later presented it to the Midwest City, Oklahoma Rotary Club as a sign of the sad bond that New York had with Oklahoma as victims of mass terrorist murder. I sent the other flag to a friend who was an Apache helicopter pilot who was about to be deployed to Afghanistan. He wrote and told me that he placed the flag in his knee board so that he would never forget why he was going into battle.

Seven years later we still mourn. For some, mourning is a quiet and private affair. For some, sadly, mourning has become their profession.

The World Trade Center now looks like any another major government construction site, architecturally banal, delayed and over budget. Is this normality?