A Long Way From Spitalfields
Twenty-five years ago this morning, I woke in an apartment in New York City. It was around eight-thirty when my friend called from outside the bank in Midtown, where he had gone to deposit cheques. He had left early to be there at opening time and, as he was standing in line waiting for a teller, he saw on the television that there was a fire in one of the towers at the World Trade Centre.
I got out of bed and climbed up onto the flat roof of the apartment. It was a beautiful day, clear and bright with a blue sky after days of rain and cloud, and the humidity which overwhelms Manhattan in July and August had cleared. Although most people try to avoid New York in the summer, and residents who have the option seek refuge in beach houses, it is my favourite time of year in the City. The one time when the pace slows, languor prevails, and there is peace in the shadowy air-conditioned buildings where people linger to avoid the baking temperature and blinding light outside in the streets.
Summer was drawing to an end and there would be no more of the trips to Long Island that had punctuated my time in the City. Just a week earlier, on Labor Day, which marks the change in the season, the beaches had closed for the year.
I stood on this same roof on July 4th and watched the fleet line up in the East River, admiring the firework display as I ate dinner with friends. Looking across Manhattan that morning, I could see the distant plume of smoke from the westerly of the towers. It did not mean anything to me then, but I was puzzled how it could have happened, so I went downstairs and switched on the television. The television was reporting a plane had crashed into the tower. It was an extraordinary event for which the news anchor had no explanation, and so I went back to bed and dozed again.
I was awoken by the return of my friend who had cycled back from his errand at the bank. People were getting really excited about this fire, he told me, and he switched on the television again. For the first time, I sensed the panic and helplessness which was to envelop the city that day, as the presenters struggled to find words and keep their cool in the face of inexplicable and unprecedented events.
Then came the strangest moment of television I ever saw. Upon the screen, a plane jetted out of nowhere and disappeared into one the towers. “That’s a re-run, you’re seeing here, of the plane hitting the tower that we reported earlier,” commented the news-anchor, only to swallow her words – almost choking – as she exclaimed, “Oh no! That’s not a re-run, that’s another plane.”
Exactly a week earlier, at eight-thirty in the morning, I visited the World Trade Centre accompanying my friend who was applying to an office there for a street traders’ licence. We came through the subway which opened up into a shopping mall and emerged onto the plaza directly beneath the towers. I recalled the first time I came to New York and stood at the top. Stretching my arms between those external struts and gazing down upon Manhattan from such a height, it was as if looking from the window of an aeroplane. My birthday was in a few days and we vowed to return to the top for a celebration, but we did not go back.
Once the second plane hit the towers, the tenor of events changed. Very quickly, reports came in of hijackings and other planes unaccounted for. I went back up onto the roof of the apartment and looked again to confirm the reality of the television news with my own eyes. Now there were two plumes of smoke in the sky, and sirens erupted through the streets as fire crews and police hurtled down the avenues of Manhattan. I returned to the television and stayed there, compelled. I had a pocket email machine and I was able to write messages to everyone in London to let them know I was alright, before the lines went dead.
A campaign was underway, something I could only comprehend through reference to science fiction such as The War of the Worlds. An attack had commenced that morning without indication how long it would last. As I sat there in shock at the accumulating reports of the plane hitting the Pentagon and the crash of United 93, a dread grew inside me. There was no reason to assume that this would not continue all day and it was impossible to know where and when it would end. It felt like the end of the world – there was no way to grasp the nature of what was happening. When I returned to the roof and looked again, the World Trade Centre had gone completely, replaced by a vast black tower of smoke billowing into the blue.
Twenty-one months earlier, I had been in Los Angeles at the time of the Millennium. Somehow, everybody expected a transformation and a new era to begin then. Nobody wanted to admit it was a non-event. But that morning, I realised that I was witnessing the actual moment when one century ended and a different world was born.
For a couple of years, I had been working with producers in Times Sq who were to present a play of mine on Broadway, opening on September 15th 2001. I loved being in New York in those days, it was a true metropolis of glamour and affluence – a world incarnated in the now over-familiar fiction of Sex & the City. Many times I enjoyed Cosmopolitans at the Bowery Bar, the location where Candice Bushnell’s novel, which was the origin of that series, began.
Walking out onto the street on that September day, several miles from the unfolding catastrophe at the World Trade Centre, the scene was not dissimilar from usual, except – as people went about their business – I knew what everyone was thinking. We were all looking at each other in fear and knowing that we could only enact the semblance of routine. I went to the grocery story and bought food for the next few days. On my way back to the apartment, I saw a postcard of the World Trade Centre on a rack and, without thinking, I took the entire stack in hand, went into the store and paid for them.
Back at the apartment, I addressed postcards to everybody in my address book in England and then I went to the Post Office and mailed them all. I still do not understand why I did this, because I never wrote any messages on the cards, yet I knew everyone would realise who sent them and why. In fact, half arrived within ten days and half arrived four months later, intercepted perhaps as suspicious material in the collective paranoia that ensued.
On the first day J.F.Kennedy Airport reopened, I flew back to London, peering from the window of the jet at the smoke still rising from the foot of Manhattan. At once, I went to see my parents in Devon and found them well, but within a week my father died unexpectedly. My mother had dementia and could no longer live alone, so I chose to move back into the family house to care for her. My play never opened on Broadway and I did not have the American career that I so longed for at that time, but after the events I had witnessed it no longer mattered to me.
We live in lower Manhattan, a little less than two miles from the World Trade Center. We live on a fairly high floor, with a view of the WTC from our terrace (it’s a small apartment, but we love looking out at this magnificent city and we’re very fortunate). We moved here in mid-2008, but the previous owner of our apartment saw the planes hit the towers and she’s always been rather haunted by that memory. We’ve watched the new towers (especially One World Trade Center) being built and we feel a strong sense of relief, but meanwhile our view is a constant reminder of the horrific nightmare that transpired. It’s all very powerful and rather poignant.
The thing I remember the most was how absolutely beautiful the weather had been. We were there the week before for a wedding (and maybe the US Open for my partner) and left on the Monday. On Sunday, we went to the Statue of Liberty and a very kind librarian took a family photo, with the towers in the background across the water. She insisted on getting a good one, exclaiming “this will be a great Christmas card photo”. It is the best photo of my family from that era. The sky is absurdly blue. We were a happy family then. That’s all gone now.
Thank you as always.
So very moving GA. A moment in time remembered in full Technicolour forever. Thank you for sharing.
So many lives altered in an instant, including yours.
Thank you for sharing your experience of this with your audience.
Big hug.
In September 2000, I visited NYC with a friend for the first time . A memorible trip, i remember enjoyiing the excitement of a place which for those who have never visited certainly can harbour resentment.My friend paid to go up the and see the view from the top of the twin towers.I didn’t .
A beautiful city changed forever by a single act on this day all those years ago. Apparently the twin Towers were built in 1966, now also the subject of conspiracy theorists around the cause.
Thanks for the this post.
I was very moved by this piece. I had no idea you were so close to the events of 9/11.
In March 2001 I was in New York with my younger daughter. We were awestruck by everything the fabulous city had to offer. Six months later the world changed, and for what? Let’s be kind to one another. Thank you GA.
Thank you for your beautiful post, which truly captures those terrible days. My experience was almost the inverse of yours. I’m American, grew up near New York and spent the early years of my career living in the city — but after that I moved to Devon (to a small village on Dartmoor), which was where I was on 9/11. I was alerted to the attack by friends; and then, like you, watched the second tower hit and the day unfold via television. The next day, when I woke up, I found the doorstep of my cottage covered with flowers, with messages of support from my Devon neighbours, which I’ll never forget. My mother died shortly after 9/11 (no connection to those events), and so I boarded one of the first flights from Heathrow to New York once the planes were flying again. Being back in New York is those post-9/11 days was a raw, intense experience — bound up in my memories now with the experience of losing my mother, much too young, also raw and intense. I agree with you that 9/11, not the Millenium, was the time when the 20th century ended and the 21st began. Thank you for that insight.
A mind-blowing, historic ‘time lapse’ experience to witness such a monumental event – bearing deeply moving consequences for all world-wide.
Thank you for recounting it GA.
The vivid blue sky that morning is etched in memory. My friend and neighbor Kathryn S. went to work that Tuesday, a little earlier than usual as she had taken off the previous day. We sat with her husband that night waiting for word which never came.
You can’t have lived through that day and not have it seared in memory. Thank you for your memories GA.
Thank you for sharing your memories, G.A. This is a difficult anniversary to observe.
I was a young bride living in Brooklyn–we’d only been married for a little over four months at the time. The most enduring memories I have of that day were first, of going to Long Island College Hospital to see if I could help comfort survivors or their families… and there were none. Second, of sitting in the garden outside our church in Brooklyn Heights while ash swirled in the air like snowflakes. My husband, who worked on lower Fifth Avenue near Washington Park, walked home over the Williamsburg Bridge. He didn’t get back to our apartment until evening.
I drove past a memorial ceremony this morning, on the way back from the supermarket in the little Massachusetts town where we now live. I’m not ashamed to say that I wept–for the lives and the innocence lost.
Thanks for sharing, GA. I totally agree with “I realised that I was witnessing the actual moment when one century ended and a different world was born.”
When I immigrated to the USA, 60 years ago, I found an apartment in the West Village. I had moved to California before the Twin Towers were built, but as a member of the World Trade Association, I felt connected to them.
My insight in 2001 was that we were going to be at war with the Middle East in one way or another for the rest of my life, and that they would use unconventional ways to inflict pain on every day people, not the military. Therefore I should stop wearing high heels or skirts, and got used to taking the stairs and avoiding elevators unless I was carrying big or heavy things. I’ve kept to that ever since.
Dubya’s over-reaction has given us 25 years of hostilities, with no way of healing in sight. He should have immediately bombed the Al Qaeda camps to Kingdom Come; apologized to the Afghans for violating their country and paid them a small fortune in restitution; then tracked and killed Bin Laden and his pals no matter how long it took, and called it a day.
How on earth did we end up at war in Iraq? (I remember the answer: Unelected politicians used tragedy 1 to justify unlinked outrage 2. Thousands of lives and 20 years later, with no dignified ending possible, we abandoned the mess and came home.)
Sadly I don’t think many in power today have learned much from all this; cover ups fragment society and build mistrust in the government. Legally in the US there’s a name for this: It’s the fruit of the poisonous tree.
Retribution is still on its way — it’ll come from Iran next. Ask yourself if you are ready; it could take years to arrive, when their angry children have grown up.
To quote Leroy in the Sharpe series: “Monarchy or Democracy, makes no difference. When money talks, merit walks.”
Can we use today to dedicate ourselves, individually, to merit going forward? Will it change the arc of history? In the long run, yes.
In the meantime, I will continue to wear trousers and take the stairs in my flat shoes.
ONWARDS in merit.
What a shocking thing to experience. A day we shall all remember even if only watched on tv. My late mother lived in an annexe with us and we spent the afternoon flitting back and forth to each other in a state of shock.
I’d never thought about this happening at the start of the millenium and it setting the tone for the next few years. But you are totally correct. A very moving account, thank you for sharing.
I live in a suburb in Maryland, a couple of hours from Washington DC and home to a large military base, where my husband worked at the time.
Our little boy had just started kindergarten the week before. My mother lived in the downstairs apartment of our home—she was getting on in years and that was part of why we’d bought the place a few months earlier. She came upstairs and said “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.” There is another smaller building of that name on the waterfront in Baltimore. I thought she meant that building. I pictured a small private plane, maybe an inexperienced new pilot. She said, “I don’t think it was an accident. Turn on your TV.” We stood and watched the chaos unfold. The second plane made it clear it was no accident because it flew past the second tower then taxied around and plowed right into it. A little later my mother said, “that building is going to fall.” I couldn’t believe her; I almost still don’t believe her.
More reports came in: the Pentagon had been hit and another plane was heading for the White House. Military bases went into high alert and locked down. I couldn’t get through to my husband at the base where he worked. After a while I gave up, I figured he was surrounded by tanks and soldiers and was probably as safe as any of us would be that day.
My mother and I drove down to my son’s school. Parents filled the halls, even the parents of the older children. A older boy and his mom passed me and the boy said “why are we going home so early? Is somebody sick?” “I just wanted to see you,” his mother said and she started to cry and took his hand.
As we waited for our children, one mother turned to me. “I suppose there will be a war now,” she said. And I knew when she said it that she was right and that a new world had begun.
It’s hard to believe a quarter of a century has passed and the war she predicted is really still going on, that so much chaos and violence all over the world has spun out of that beautiful sunny morning in September. It has led to so much rage and division in my own country, that some days I think the terrorists did indeed win.
Today is another blue-sky day in the Metro area, but the sky isn’t as blue as this date twenty-five years ago. The sky that day had a vibrant transparency; I really believe that one could look up and see the varying splendor of each layer of atmosphere. That is what I thought as I drove home from work, so many hours earlier than usual.
The beginning of twenty-five years of blunder. What is our future?
These posts are so sad.
I was watching early morning tv news in Australia when the news started reporting the attack . I’d spoken to my sister that night and she told me she was flying into New York in a few hours with her boss , an Australian industrialist with factories in the USA . I couldn’t contact her by phone and spent an anxious few hours until I heard from her . Their private jet was ordered down and landed somewhere in Virginia . She had been busy trying to get a couple of limousines to ferry her boss , herself and some other staff back to Atlanta where their head office was . Days later her boss offered his newly constructed factory on Statten Island to those in charge of recovery and investigation . It quickly became a morgue ! Weeks later it became a storage area for tonnes of twisted wreckage being forensically investigated . A year later when the building was cleaned and handed back , my sister was awarded a badge by the US Govt to show appreciation in being the go-between for her boss and US officials . It gives her quicker access through Customs and Border Checks to this day in the US . . Her boss now lives permanently in the US and is often seem with President Trump . Her boss and my sister both lost colleagues , business contacts and friends in the 9/11 attacks . It changed my sister forever, as well as her extended family.
The detail about buying an entire stack of World Trade Centre postcards without writing anything on them is incredibly poignant. It captures how people sometimes respond to shock instinctively, before they can really put what they’re feeling into words.