NINEELEVEN

What I saw

It has been just over a month since that moment, still hard to fathom, when our lives were changed completely by an hour of terror and tragedy.

That morning, morning of a clear and beautiful day, a typical end of Summer New York day, which, like the day in which President Kennedy was shot, will remain forever encrusted in our memories. Where were we, what were we doing, what were we thinking, on that morning of September 11?

That morning, I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment, and my cell phone rang at 8:50. It was my son Carly, who had just gotten to work at American Express, in Tower 3 of the World Financial Center, just across the street from the twin towers. Carly told me there had been an accident at the WTC, that he could see a lot of fire and smoke from his window, and in case “I heard anything on the radio”, he wanted me to know that he was ok. As usual, his call ended with an “I love you”. I turned on the radio and heard that a plane had crashed into the tower, and, God forgive me, I thought: “it’s only a plane”, and continued to drive to my appointment. I called Carly, and left him a message telling him what I heard on the radio, ending my own message with the usual “I love you”.

Leaving the doctor’s office a half hour later, I realized the catastrophe that was developing, and returned home, possibly driving like the argentine that I am. I planted myself in front of the TV set, my eyes not believing what I was seeing. That was the place where I had spent most of my career! Those were the buildings where I used to buy presents for the kids, my bagels and coffee in the morning, where I used to go to the 80th floor to the Estee Lauder factory store, with my mom and her friends, where I used to attend courses on the 80th floor, and have breakfast in the most beautiful restaurant in the world! Seeing those towers come down, one after the other, my soul told me that no one could have survived! And , Carly was incommunicado, had not called me back, and no phones were working! I spent the hardest three hours of my life, waiting for the phone to ring, fielding calls from friends who wanted to know if we were ok, and praying to God to please return my son. God, who knew what it was like to see a son suffer, God, who for our salvation looked down from heaven, and with the greatest sorrow in the world, gave us his son. I prayed to my God for over three hours. I cried alone at home, unable to call on anyone, as most phones were not working, until 11:30, when I heard the most beautiful voice in the world, Carly’s voice, saying: mami, I’m ok, I got out, I love you”. On my knees, I thanked God for sparing my son’s life. But at that moment I realized how many mothers were in the same situation, many sons and daughters, many wives, sisters, friends, and my heart to this day remains broken in a million pieces, thinking about those moms who never again heard their son’s voices, and those children who never again heard the voices of their moms and dads.

What Carly saw cannot be described. What does a 22-year old think, when he sees people who, trying to escape fire, jump hand in hand from the 100th floor of a building? What does a young person feel at seeing, like pieces of mannequins, parts of human bodies fall from the sky, loved ones who are no longer?

The day continued as yours probably did: stuck to the TV set, incredulous, but waiting for Carly to return. Carly came back that night, tired, sad, confused, and grateful to be home. My embrace cannot be described, nor what I felt when he arrived, tired, confused, sad, angry, devastated.

Life has changed since then. I don’t take the train without thinking about what could happen. I don’t cross a bridge without considering the terrible possibilities. I don’t feel like traveling, I don’t feel like talking about anything, and that’s why I write. I worry about my kids more than ever, and I have never been a careless mom. Not one second goes by when we are not in “high alert”. The simplest thing, like a subway ride, becomes the possibility of terror. The most inoffensive smell, a cold or a sore throat, the possibility of anthrax. Since the week of September 17th, the New York Times continues with its obituaries, and it does not stop. Each day, I read about six or seven, and look with sadness and trepidation to see if there were people we knew, or people we saw on the train, in the building, in the subway. And, sometimes we see a face we know, and we cry for their families.

On September 17 I began to work at the American Bible Society, a non for profit which has a mission to distribute God’s word around the world. My first act as CFO was to approve the expense of producing leaflets to hand out; called God is Our Shelter and Strength. Since then, we have distributed over a million of these: to churches, to firemen and policemen, to Jewish temples, to Muslims and Christians, to people in the street and in train stations. And the distribution continues. As for myself, I stood at the Port Washington train station one day for two hours, and handed out leaflets and American flags to people with indescribable faces, people who told me their story and cried with me. They told me they had lost a brother, a sister, a friend. The leaflets went fast, and they helped me connect with the mission of my new job, and who knows if this was not the way in which God started to communicate to me the reason for the complete career change that I was undergoing at this stage in my life!

On the week of September 23, I went to Ground Zero , with two cases of leaflets. I was only allowed in due to my position with the American Bible Society, by the grace of God. Ten blocks from our destination, we had to stop to get a pass. Looking for the first time towards the place where the towers once stood, three blocks away, seeing the smoke and the emptiness, a voice told me: “it’s ok, it’s ok”. .

My reaction surprised me and even angered me, because I expected something else; I expected to be angry, sad, furious, I don’t know what. But God’s voice game me peace. We went into Ground Zero, first by the Hudson River side, where the American Express Building is. In spite of the sunshine and perfectly clear day, you can neither see the sky nor breathe. Smoke is everywhere. In the small marina on the Hudson, where Patti recently celebrated her Sweet Sixteen in a luxurious yacht, there is only one yacht remaining, which has been converted into a free restaurant for firemen and policemen. Inside the yacht, food, water, beverages, and many firemen, with dark circles under their eyes, eating without enthusiasm, anxious to get back to their sad task. In this yacht, no one feels like doing anything. You can feel death nearby, you can breathe the horror of the moment. In the yacht’s upper level, volunteers giving massages to whose who need it: firemen, policemen and others who work 12 hours non stop, and whose backs and shoulders need much more than a massage. Leaving the yacht, I find a corner where they have written down the names of those firemen who perished (hundreds!) they have created a small memorial, and firemen go in and pray, and leave with tears, no, they leave crying. Respecting their privacy, I don’t go in, but I observe, and cry with them. I walk to the street where a while back there was life, flowers, trees and happiness. I stop next to a tree, eerily decorated with white papers – covered from top to bottom. I pick up a small piece of paper: it says something about health benefits for some person or other. I wonder what this paper was on September 10th, and how bosses might have been angry at the loss of such an important document. Today, it has no meaning at all. Today, it’s just a piece of paper.

I meet a man who works for OSHA, which is in charge of clean up. I tell him about the tree. He looks at me and tells me that what he learned is that we are all the same. That in death, there is no executive and secretary, no black and white, no Christian and Jew. In death, we are all the same. And he laments: “ I wonder why we can’t always be like that.” I hug him, and tell him I love him. Today, everyone is a philosopher.

We reach the Salvation Army tent to deliver a case of leaflets. This tent was set up on day one, to pray, offer peace and a place of rest for those who need it. Next to this tent, another tent has water, drinks and all kinds of snacks, all free of course. We stop with the head of the salvation army tent, an elderly guy, covered in “gray”, we hold hands and we pray together -- strangers up to now but brothers and sisters in Christ.

The streets are covered in a white and gray dust. It’s like a Schwarzenneger movie. The gray dust will forever remain encrusted in my soul. The dust of other souls: dads, moms, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and friends. The dust of other souls. I wore brown shoes that day, now gray, a gray dust that I could not bring myself to clean, a pair of shoes that I left on my front stoop until I had the courage to throw out.

Returning towards the American Express building, we are told that they have just recovered the remains of a fireman, and we approach the morgue, to see if we can offer solace to the firemen. The morgue is in the place I used to have lunch. This, too, does not make me angry, and I continue to feel peace, realizing that we are on holy ground. Going back to West Street, where the towers were, we meet hundreds of firemen, and we continue to distribute leaflets. With each fireman, I ask: how are you? And they answer: “OK”, but when I insist: “how are you, really?, they tell me horrific stories of lost friends, sons without fathers, and hopeless rescues. I ask a fireman if he still has hope to find someone in there. His blue eyes, on a face darkened by sadness and dust, reply that there is always hope, but that the temperature in there tops 200 degrees…. I give him a hug and leave him there, crying.

I reach a group of four firemen with only three leaflets left. I give out three, and I am asked if I have another one for the last fireman. I reply that I have none left, but that I have tons of hugs and kisses. The fireman, tall, young and a sad face, tells me: “I’ll take a hug”. And I give him one of those argentine hugs, not worrying about the contamination on his suit, his face, his gloves. This hug makes me cry, because he does not want to let go. We break the hug and I step back, because, he, so tall, and I, so short, I cannot see him. And he says: “and the kisses that you promised?”. And I get closer and plant two argentine kisses on each cheek. And stepping back again, he says to me: “look what you made me do now!” I can’t understand, and I think I must have done something wrong. But I see that he is grabbing his face with his hands, rather his smile, and he says “you made me smile, you made me smile”, and I realize that it must be his first smile in two weeks. And he looks at me with his sad eyes and says: “now, I’m ready to dig. Let’s go dig”. And I leave, crying, thanking God for this moment.

Looking around me, there are hundreds and hundreds of people working non-stop. No one sits, no one rests, no one just chats. Everyone is standing up. The view of the towers, from north to south, is a pile about eight stories high, of rubble and garbage, of twisted metal, as if it were simple paper. Lots of smoke. On a window of the American Express building, on the 22nd floor, at the office which used to be my boss’, next to mine! You can see an enormous “arrow” made of steel, which has stabbed at the heart of this building, cutting across three stories. A solitary arrow. At this moment, a young man asks for help to unload ice off of a truck. We go with him. We return with ice for the Red Cross.

And flags everywhere. Over the rubble, the famous flag that we have all seen in the photos. At the windows of many buildings, enormous flags. On peoples’ shirts, on the fireman’s caps, the cars, all over, flags.

We go back to the car that brought us here, and decide to go to the other side of the towers, to find the firehouse which was closest to ground zero; the firehouse which lost so many.

We arrive on Broadway, now at the other side, looking west. When the towers fell, all the rubble fell east for some reason. With our special ID, we are able to get into St Paul;s cathedral. It miraculously sits undamaged, despite being steps away from Ground Zero. We go in. on the doors and walls of the cathedral, letters and cards sent in to the firemen by children all over the country. Some show people falling from the towers, fire, the horrors that those kids saw on TV. We go in. Inside the small church, and extraordinary quiet and peace. On the pews, very neatly, blankets and pillows placed there for firemen and other volunteers seeking rest, when they can go no longer. On the side, cots, all neatly made, with impeccable sheets and blankets. Waiting for the exhausted firemen, and offering an incredible oasis of peace, love and tranquility. We spend a few moments praying, and we continue our sad and inevitable trip to the heart of Ground Zero. To enter, you practically need a presidential decree! But a young man who came with us, a young minister who drove from Michigan “to help”, convinces a policeman of our need to enter.. The cop has to come with us, and take us to a specific destination: the firehouse. He looks at me and tells me to prepare myself, because the scene is “ugly, very ugly”. Passing by Greenwich Street, in front of the towers (steps away!) I don’t recognize anything. I feel lost, I don’t know where I am. The first thing I see is the flag on top of twisted metal, smoke, dust, and I don’t know what else. That tower of ruins is so high that I have to crane my neck to see it all: could it be eight stories high? The façade of the towers look like an ancient cathedral, a place of God, a cemetery, and that is what I am looking at: a cemetery of thousands of souls. And I remember the words of the rabbi who spoke at a memorial: it’s not about the death of six thousand people, but the death of one person six thousand times. I think about the families, and I remember what it’s like to know we will never again see the person we love. In spite of all this, God tells me “it’s ok, it’s ok”. I continue to feel an incredible peace, surprisingly, but also a deep anguish and sadness from way inside of me, as if it were what God is feeling right now. Such a basic and raw sadness, nothing that I have ever felt before. A sadness from deep inside of me, which tears cannot resolve – which maybe will never be resolved.

We are delivered to the firehouse. Many firemen, standing in front of Ground Zero, taking pictures, like those who take photos of the dead. In front of the firehouse, a book placed there by the firemen, for people to sign. I can’t write anything, except: “I love you, and God bless you”. Words don’t come out of me. We go into the firehouse. Sad, but determined faces. Eyes, reddened by dust, but determined. Feet that can’t take it anymore, but determined. Hands, almost conquered by the metal that they have been gathering, but determined. We hug firemen. We thank them. Outside, one of my colleagues prays with people who asked for prayer. The young minister is hungry – only the young can be hungry at a time such as this! We go next door, a makeshift restaurant that Pierre Boulez has put together as well he could, and is feeding everyone, free of charge. And not just any food: salmon, incredible desserts, gourmet food. The firemen eat, only because they have to. They eat without hunger, without enthusiasm. You don’t hear the usual restaurant noises. From far away, I see some firemen reading our leaflets. When the firemen have finished their meals, a young waitress comes over and cleans the tables with incredible attention and love. Everything is impeccable, as if it were the finest restaurant in the world. And, a few steps away, the smoke, the ruins, death, misery, futility, emptiness, terror.

But right here and now, peace, love, generosity, calm, souls that are alive with the desire to serve others. And that is what will always remain in my heart: first, the firemen and policemen who risked their lives to save others. And they do it with love, without fear. Secondly, the thousands and thousands of volunteers who do the same: not because it’s a job, but because it’s a pleasure…

God was there in that place the day I visited. He was in my heart, and in the hearts of the firemen and all the others. God was there.

.

Today, Manhattan is still sad. Everywhere, photos. EVERYWHERE. At Penn Station, a corner memorial, photos, candles, prayers and flowers. Each day, some more fresh flowers. Walking on Broadway, a firehouse. Inside, trucks. Outside, walls covered with photos and mementos, notes and cards from all over the country. On the main door, photos of the six, seven or eight who were lost. Eight! Eight fathers, eight sons, brothers, friends, heroes. The firemen inside, anesthetized, allow themselves to be photographed by tourists, to be kissed and hugged. Everyone says thank you, we love you. They can’t hide the circle under their eyes, these guys work from 12 to 14 hours a day or more as needed. Nor have they had the time to feel the sadness, the anger, the fear, the death of their friends.

The churches are full.

On the train, instead of the young and proud men, those arrogant Wall Street guys, with their own swagger and walk, you don’t see them like that anymore. They are the same faces, but not the same hearts.

I’m afraid of getting on a plane. I’m afraid of bridges and tunnels. If I hear a strange sound at night, I get scared. WE get scared. And the kids? Carly does not speak about the subject; with time and love and patience everything will come to the surface. Patti was the first to feel the parallel between September 11 and the death of her dad. It could not be otherwise, with everyone speaking about the “poor children who lost their dads” ? For the first time as an adult, Patti was able to feel the pain of Fernando’s death. It was hard to sleep, do homework, take exams. She cried, but thank God she was able to speak about it. Later, John Peter started. He wanted a dad, why didn’t he have a dad? Life is cruel, and, when we least expect it, we get slapped on the face, and we are reminded of that moment in the past, when, we too, felt the frustration, the sadness and the impotence of a premature and unexpected death.

Now, we are better. Not well, better. We don’t feel like talking about it. I have not returned to Ground Zero since those days, nor do I feel like returning. I don’t think I will ever be able to feel the range of emotion that I felt that day. It is a memory that will never leave me. I am glad I went, I am glad I embraced a sad fireman. I am glad that I felt the presence of God amidst human misery.

If I learned something, it is not to forget to say I love you, to our parents, our children, uncles, cousins, friends and brothers and sisters. To appreciate what we have, not to worry about the past, live for today, and let God, who knows all, to take care of our future. When I see someone in the street, I smile and say hello, even if just with my eyes. We will never again think that we are so special that “this can’t happen to us”. My heart, broken by New York’s tragedy, breaks in a thousand pieces for the innocent people of Afghanistan, who, like our brothers and sisters in the twin towers, have nothing to do with politics.

I am glad I embraced a sad fireman.