September 11, 2001
I arrived in the office just before 9am, between the planes as it turned out. I rode the elevator with a colleague, a �co-worker� as they are called here. �The World Trade Centre is on fire� he told me. I feel guilty now but he is Russian and his English is patchy so I didn�t trust his report. I had come directly from the subway into my building without stepping on to the street, I had no idea of the commotion that was unravelling outside. When we reached our floor the panic was more evident. �A plane has hit the World Trade Centre� someone said. I went with the Russian guy and another co-worker, an Indian, to an office at the south-west corner of our floor, 18 storeys above the street. Through a gap in the buildings across Broadway between us and the World Trade Centre we could see the south-facing side of the south tower. The first plane had hit the north tower but that was blocked from view. We were craning our necks to see smoke when after ten seconds, no more, the second plane flashed across the scrap of sky and disappeared into the building. In a second, a micro-second, it was gone. There was a flash and a bang but we saw nothing of the up-town explosion, or if we did it was so quick. And I can�t remember what was said. A woman outside the office screamed and hugged someone and I think we all ducked expecting the windows to explode. But it was surreal, like TV, really like TV. I remember thinking the plane looked small against the giant building and the blue sky.
�����As we evacuated the building people shouted �You don�t need to leave,� but they hadn�t seen what we�d seen. We stood in the plaza looking up with almost the same view now from street-level. The south tower looked intact though violated. There was a hole and it was smoking, and there were some flames but it looked controllable. �It was a small plane, I�m sure,� I remember saying, unwittingly proving that perspective fools us. We had no idea that it could fall.
�����We knew this could only be terrorism so it was stupid to hang around and spectate. Cell-phones were useless, the networks were wrecked or overloaded, and there were queues at all the payphones, so I went with an English friend and an American co-worker to a pub behind our building. It had telephones and televisions so we could watch CNN while we rang home. Perhaps we were foolish. Perhaps if we had seen more � more than a plane flying into a building! � we would not have gone to the pub but we were desperate to call our wives.
�����There were queues at those phones, too, and the connections were unreliable, so we had a drink while we waited. They had beer, I had Diet Coke (I was playing squash later), and we stood watching the giant screen while we waited. People were calm, at least sort of calm, though I am sure some people were drinking brandy.
�����If I remember correctly the news of the Pentagon strike had just been announced when the first tower fell. The noise was incredible, I thought it was a bomb, and the street outside the pub was dark in a second. Now people were screaming and running inside and out, I saw one or two faces against the window. I am going to die, I thought. I really did, fireballs and smoke inhalation, something like that. In a pub in New York City, drinking Diet Coke. That will be my epitaph. While New York burned, he drank Diet Coke.
�����The pub filled with smoke and what I now know was ash. One of the barmen had the presence of mind to shut the doors and lay damp towels against the gaps. People grabbed napkins and handkerchiefs and covered their mouths. I went with another barman through the kitchen at the back of the pub. �Is there a door back?� I asked, knowing they must get deliveries from the smaller street behind. The kitchen was hot from cooking. There were a couple of corridors leading to the delivery door. As we got closer the smoke was more intense. �This is crazy,� the barman said, and he was right. I was more convinced than ever that my moment had come. It was a rolling metal door and we pulled it up a foot or so. The smoke poured in and we could see ash like snow on the road. Really, like a light dusting of snow or a heavy frost. We could hardly breathe. We pulled the door shut again and went back into the bar. There was an emergency exit but it only opened into another building so people were waiting, panicking. When the smoke cleared a little we could see people on the street again. My friends and I agreed (two to one) that we should leave. We grabbed napkins and wore them like bandanas. I picked up my squash bag and we went back through the kitchen. The street behind was deserted. We walked eastwards to the river and then north to Brooklyn Bridge. I live in Brooklyn beside the bridge so my friend came with me while our colleague went uptown. We were a short way across the bridge when the second tower fell. We looked back. It was incredible, the noise, the power, a city disappearing. The cloud of dust and smoke followed as we turned again towards Brooklyn. It was like the Blitz must have been.
�����My mind was full of nonsense . . . going home to the UK, real estate prices, arcane poetry. People were approaching the bridge from every angle, some running, some screaming, some bleeding. The circular slip-road from the FDR Drive was filled with humans instead of cars. �This is like hell,� I said to my friend, �in Dante, people walking round. So many, I never knew death had undone so many.� He humoured me. Unconnected nonsense.
�����My wife tells me she has never felt emotion quite like when she heard my key in the lock. I still had not called her but she had watched it all on TV and from the car park of our apartment block and she had left messages on my voicemail at work. I hugged her and our boys, our native New Yorkers (what will they ever know of this?) then I opened a can of Diet Pepsi to wash the dust from my throat. I was covered in ash. Diet Pepsi.
�����We spent the rest of the day watching TV. My friend left about five. My wife and I walked with the children in the stroller up to Brooklyn Heights promenade to see what was going on. The smell and smoke were too great for the boys so she turned back while I went to get some Arabic takeaway food. I didn�t play squash. I was called into another office of the company the next day but sent home at lunchtime and told to take the rest of the week off. I took my family out of the city to Long Island for six days. The Wall Street office has now reopened but I have been permanently relocated in midtown. Yesterday I went to pick up my things. My desk calendar was open on 10 September. Time suspended, almost two weeks. I stood again at the window on the south-west corner and looked out. The sky is so empty. Where the World Trade Centre stood now there is only light. Light, space and smoke. I walked to Broadway and stood as close as you can get to �Ground Zero�. The towers may be broken but the wreckage is still massive. The remains of the skeletal steelwork stand over a giant pile of rubble. It is shocking. Not just shocking, but truly sickening. And everywhere there are soldiers, police, firemen, security personnel and construction workers, and the only traffic on Broadway is trucks, fire engines and police cars, and television crews. TV, everywhere TV, this drama has been lived-out on television not just here but all over the world, or so I hear. And I�m sick of it, sick of watching, sick of not being able to turn it off, sick of the film of when the second plane hit.
�����And we all swap stories, over and over. The Russian was closer than me: his wife works nearby and he was almost flattened on the way to her office. The Indian went for a closer look and was knocked to his feet by the blast when the first tower fell. When he opened his eyes he was in darkness under the smoke and ash and a pile of fibreglass insulation. Next to him there was a gigantic slab of concrete that had exploded from the first tower when it fell. He�d lost his spectacles. He found his way from the scene by joining hands with other people. It took two days for his throat to clear.
�����Two weeks have passed now and we�ve had so many phone calls and emails. People were worried or wanted first-hand accounts. We feel like an enormous pair of arms has been put around us. People have asked if I�m scared. Well I was, very, and I still am. We live so close to the financial centre and to Brooklyn Bridge (a likely target?), I feel we�re in the middle of it. I get on the subway and every time it slows in the tunnel I feel my pulse quicken. I frequent too many busy places. But there�s nothing I can do. When I leave for work I say goodbye to my wife and children and shut the door when all I really want to do is stay inside and put my arms around them. Oh yes, and to live somewhere safe.
�����The twin towers cast a great big shadow when they were standing and a bigger one now they�re gone. People on the street look over their shoulder to the space, to the light as if it�s a trick, a dream, and the towers will reappear. Something permanent has gone. Maybe the families feel the same.
�����There is nothing else to say.
Luigi Di Castri
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