What a Day that Was: Five Years after 9-11

Down come the bolts of lightning/ Now an electrical storm
Starts a chain reaction/Go pull a fire alarm
I'm dreaming of a city/It was my own invention
And I put the wheels in motion/A time for big decisions

(David Byrne, “What A Day That Was”)

“I was there on 9-11.” Is that a boast? What does that prove? Nevertheless, it is true, in the sense that I was across the East River, in Brooklyn, when two airliners hit the World Trade Center, the towers came tumbling down, and then…we who lived in the city of New York went through the experience of living collectively in shock.

I lived in southern Brooklyn. Every working day I would take the D train up to downtown of Brooklyn- the last stop before going under the river to lower Manhattan-, and take the bus from there out to Bushwick, a rather run-down inner city neighbourhood to the east. It was a 75 minute commute.

The morning of Sept. 11 was basically late-summer, at least by Montreal standards. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I left for work- I usually arrived at work at 9:45 or 10:15, depending on the day.

Just as we were arriving at the last stop in Brooklyn, the driver announced that the train would be rerouted due to a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

I thought that this was terrible, of course, but assumed that it was an accident. I went through the station and up to the surface. Once I got there, before I went over to the bus stop, I got out my walkman and switched on the radio. It was then that I heard of the second plane hitting the WTC, and then the reality started to sink in…this was no accident.

I walked down to the bus stop. Although we were about a kilometer or so from the East River, I think we were almost due east from where the Twin Towers were, across the river in Manhattan. In any case, we could see the smoke rising into the otherwise clear blue sky.

I kept listening to the radio. There were announcements from the authorities in reaction to what had happened. The Mayor proclaimed a terror alert and said that the subways were being shut down. The President- later depicted by his partisans as a great leader on 9-11- sort of mumbled something about finding out who the terrorists were and making sure they were brought to justice. He did not sound inspiring. Whatever one thinks of Mayor Giuliani, at least he did show leadership on 9-11- Bush dithered until his courtiers figured out how he and they could exploit the tragedy to bring in their agenda.

So anyway, after a 20 minute bus ride, I got to the library where I worked. Most of the rest of the staff had not arrived. I think those of us who were there waited around for about 15 minutes before we got the word that the public libraries were closed for the day.

So I walked until I got to a bus that could get me near to where I lived. All the time I was listening to the radio. They reported one tower collapsing, then, sometime after that, the other. It was reported that a plane had hit the Pentagon. There were other reports that turned out not to be true- I think one involved some other federal government building. And then there was a plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Was it connected? It wasn’t clear at the time.

There were also further announcements. It was announced that all planes were to leave U.S. airspace. It was reported that the President’s plane was in the air somewhere, that Vice-President Dick Cheney had gone into hiding (possibly in an underground lair- how fitting).

When I looked into the sky, half of it was blue- and half of it was smoke.

When I got back home, I foolishly turned on the TV set. They seemed to be on a tape loop of showing the buildings collapsing and people running in terror- images that were interspersed now and then with footage of a crowd of Palestinians celebrating. That image too was repeated often. They might as well have put a caption underneath reading “Our enemy”.

Later in the day, I began hearing the term “act of war”. It’s as if someone fed this idea into the media and it took off from there. This is an act of war, people said. But by whom? The assumption was that it was probably Osama Bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda. But how do you go to war with an international terrorist group? People made the comparison with Peal Harbour. True, they were both surprising, large-scale attacks on the U.S., but again- making war on a country is one thing- but on a shadowy group of international criminals? That doesn’t call for war, it calls for police work.

But sadly, all these arguments were moot. I was no prophet, and I was still stunned by what had happened, but it was clear to me where U.S. politics were heading after this. This would be used to promote a more aggressive foreign policy than before, which is saying something. That way, the U.S. would show that its power was undiminished- and, in a war situation, the President would be given the benefit of the doubt by almost everyone. It’s no accident that when the stock market re-opened after 9-11, stocks in companies producing armaments skyrocketed.

The disaster did bring out community feeling. There were many moving memorials created around town. And there were some people for whom 9-11 was a taste of what people in other part of the world, caught in war situations, must go through, and this was an occasion to feel solidarity with them. But that was a small minority. For the rest, it was soon a time for conformity in the name of patriotism- rallying together around the flag. How many people would remember the terror they’d felt on 9-11 and use it to understand the terror felt by Afghans when the bombs started dropping on their country? Sadly, very few. And even less noble sentiments emerged. Days after 9-11, I got into a shouting match with people in a subway station who were saying that all the Arabs should be kicked out of the country. My shouting at them wasn’t terribly noble either, though. It did no one any good- and I felt worse afterwards. But everyone was tense at that time.

I was in shock. It seemed like I had nothing to say- like there was nothing to say about what had happened, and there was nothing else to talk about. I began listening to a light classical music radio station. For weeks afterward, I listened to almost no other music- just soothing classical.

Soon, the flags came up- everywhere. There were cutouts from the newspapers. There were flags on cars. Everyone was trying to prove that they too were patriotic, that they were with "us". For now the division between "us" and "them" was being made very clear. Bush was starting to sound "decisive"- that is, he'd finally decided what this event meant and he wasn't budging from that. He declared "You're either with us or with the terrorists." He declared a "War on Terror." Why not a War on War while we were at it? Terror comes in many forms. How do you win a war on terror?

Not long after 9-11 came the Great Anthrax Scare. Remember that? Some congresspeople got suspicious packages in the mail, containing powdered anthrax. As "weapons of mass destruction" they were a joke. I don't think you can kill people by sending them powdered anthrax by mail. But coming so soon after 9-11, it made people think- the next attack could involve biological weapons, or chemical weapons...even nukes. And people started linking Iraq to the whole business, since Iraq supposedly hadn't got rid of its stocks of those kinds of weapons.

Funny how no one talks about that anymore. I suppose that once it served its purpose, there was no point in lingering on it- people might start asking awkward questions. The people behind it were never caught, and as far as I know no one's still investigating it. But then, who would have had both the motive and the means to do something like this? I suspect you already know where I'm going with this one- I suspect elements in the U.S. government.

In October I visited Montreal for a few days, and it felt so good to be in a different mental environment. That really helped. Unfortunately, though, U.S. politics were moving in the direction that I’d foreseen and I soon found it intolerable.

So, less than a year after 9-11, I moved back to Canada. I haven’t been back since.