story607.xml

story607.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-15

I had set the alarm for 8 a.m. the morning of September 11th, 2001. I remember waking up to the guy on the radio saying ??Good morning New York, it is a beautiful morning here in the city???? and he was right about the weather, it was terrific. The first things I see when I open my eyes in the mornings are the Twin Towers, which really dominate my view in my boyfriend??s and my apartment. For some reason I felt happy that morning, I remember that clearly. When I got out of bed I did my daily morning routines as always: boil water for my tea, shower while the water is boiling, get dressed and eat breakfast and reading the news online. That morning I wrote an e-mail to my boyfriend, Philippe, who was visiting his parents in Belgium. I remember writing that I was really happy because my favorite band, U2, were going to extend their world tour and come back to the United States and I had just found out which day the tickets were going on sale. As I was typing I heard a strange noise, it??s rather difficult to describe, but since this is one of the noisiest cities in the world, I didn??t really pay much attention to it. Shortly afterwards there was a different kind of loud noise and the entire building shook. I looked up and the clock on the microwave showed 8.48 a.m.

Although I don??t think I have ever heard an explosion before in my life that is the first thing that came to my mind because that it what it sounded like. But then I remembered that there is a construction site right next to our building, so I thought that the noise must have came from there. Perhaps they had dropped something or something broke, which would explain why my building shook. Then came the sirens. As, I said, this is New York City where there is noise and sirens twenty-four seven, but this time it was different. The sirens were so intense and many that I had to go up to the window and look. I am on the sixth floor, right in front of the INS building, in the corner of Broadway and Worth Street. I look down at the people on the street to see their reactions. Some were running north on Broadway, but most of them were looking south. So I looked south as well, thinking that perhaps there was some kind of accident further south on Broadway. That is when I saw the enormous hole in the North Tower. Flames were coming out from all sides of it, which made me again think ?C explosion -. It was the first time, but unfortunately, not the last time I have ever seen something that looked so unreal. It looked like something straight out of a movie. For some reason, seeing the towers in flames looked familiar, as if I had seen it before. I turn on CNN right away and they are of course equally as confused as I am, however, they suspected a plane might have crashed into the tower. Hearing that a plane caused this made very surprised because when the weather is bad, especially foggy, I know that the towers are hard to see. But since the sun was shining and the skies could not have been any bluer I remember wondering: How could the pilots NOT have seen them? This of course led me to believe that it must have been a terrible accident, that there was something wrong with the plane so that somehow the pilots lost control over it. And this is what I believed until I head that exact same noise again.

I had gone back to the kitchen to get some more tea when I head it again. I just froze, I couldn??t move. I realized exactly what had happened and, again, it felt so incredibly unreal. This is when I really got scared. The first plane could have been an accident and even if that was scary too, knowing that this was not an accident but instead an intentional act was terribly frightening. In between the two crashes I had tried calling my family back home in Sweden because I had an incredibly need to talk to someone. But I could not get a hold of anyone, instead all I got was my sister??s answering machine, so I left her a couple of messages. The first message I left was when I was pretty calm; I was more confused than afraid. The last message however, was pretty much the opposite of calm. She is in law school and was in class when the attacks happened. She told me later that it had been awful for her, listening to these messages and hearing me just get more and more scared for every message I left her.

This may sound a little strange, and I know that it is, but since I had class at ten o??clock that morning I actually went to school. Why? Well, I am not too sure myself. I think there were several different factors that made me leave the apartment and go to school that morning. I was going crazy being in the apartment by myself just looking at the whole thing from my window and I needed to talk to someone, but failed to get a hold of anyone on the phone. At school I could at least talk to someone. Also, since I live so close to school, I figured that it wouldn??t hurt if I went to see if there was going be a class or not. Also, in all honesty, I could not imagine that it was going to get any worse than that. I really couldn??t. The towers were on fire and that was awful, but I did not think they were going to collapse since they had not done it already. So, I went to my school, Borough of Manhattan community College, which, of course was closed. I can??t say that that surprised me, but I had at least tried. I ran into my English professor at the time, professor Eggers, on Greenwich Street and we talked a little outside the school, wondering what was going. I remember that he said that he was going to have to walk home, all the way to the Upper West, side since the subways were closed and I said that I was going to go home as well, and so I did.

I was on Harrison Street, between Greenwich and Hudson street when there was a horrifying noise again, but different from the others that morning. This was more of a rumbling kind, almost like thunder but a lot worse and a lot louder. I remember that I had difficulty locating where the noise came from. I thought that a plane perhaps had hit something again, but I didn??t think it came from downtown. The second I head the rumbling I turned around and there was this man behind me. It all happened so incredibly fast but all of a sudden, a woman and I were holding on to this man, who I have never seem before in my life, and each other. We leaned up against the wall of a building. I was covering my head. I remember the wall of that building shaking as well. People were screaming and just running around, complete chaos. I remember saying terrified: Where the f*** did that come from? But no one knew. So, the man, who I had been holding on to, peeked around the corner of the building, looking south on Hudson. The last thing I recall before I ran home as fast as I could was him yelling: ??Shit, I think the whole g-d damn building just collapsed??.

All I could think of while running home was that I had to change shoes. I had to get my sneakers, because the shoes I was wearing were impossible to run fast in. Also, the feeling that this is just too unreal came over me once again. The fear was so real, yet the situation was not. I remember thinking?? what am I doing here? This was not supposed to happen??? When I came home and tried dialing everyone I knew, I finally got a hold of my sister. It was such a relief to talk to her and I was really happy, but I couldn??t stop crying. By then, she had head on the news what had happened here and also listened to my messages and she was, of course, worried sick. We didn??t really talk that much, because I knew I needed to leave soon. I had talked to policemen in my building and they told me that I needed to leave, and I didn??t want to stay either. I have a friend that lives up in Murray Hill and I figured that was where I was going. I managed to get a hold of her and we decided to meet in the corner of 27th street and 7th Avenue. If, for some reason, this was not possible, we decided to simply move our meeting point one avenue to the west, so the next would be 27th and 8th Ave. I have thought about this afterwards and I must say that although things were pretty chaotic here, I think our backup plan was rather good, or even the fact that we thought about having one was good.

After trying to call Philippe in Belgium several times I finally got a hold of him too. I missed him so incredibly much. Although I was glad he wasn??t here to experience this nightmare, I was also sad in a selfish way since he wasn??t here with me. While talking to him, the second tower had not yet collapsed. I remember looking out the window, it was such an incredibly strange sight seeing just one of the towers. Naked in a way and I clearly remember thinking that it was sad since the tower??s twin was gone (just as if the buildings themselves had feelings), incredibly strange. Right after we had said goodbye to each other on the phone, I watched the second tower collapse as well.

With only my wallet, my cell phone and its charger, I ran as fast as I could all the way to Houston Street. I am not in any good physical shape, but this run was the fastest and easiest I??ve ever done, I never became tired. I didn??t dare turn around until I was well above Houston. There were people everywhere, listening to radios, crying, hugging and many were running just like me. As I was passing St. Vincent??s hospital, people were lining up to donate blood and doctors and nurses were waiting outside for ambulances to arrive with injured people. I know now that there were not many people who came. I remember thinking that I was so grateful that didn??t have any children, pets or other family members to worry about.

I stayed with my friend for a week, not because I wanted to but because I wasn??t let back in to the apartment. She lives just a few blocks from the Empire State Building, which had a bomb scare the second night I was staying there. I guess that this was a scary experience as well, but I was rather numb by then and was a lot calmer than my friend was. This is as close as she came to experience some of the fear I had felt during and after 9/11. I know that the attacks affected the entire world in one way or the other, but I don??t think anyone can begin to understand what it was like witnessing it first hand. The days at my friend??s house were the longest and most difficult days so far in my life, I felt so lonely and sad. I missed my family and my boyfriend Philippe so incredibly much. I just wished the airports would open up so that Philippe could fly home and that we could get back to our apartment. I felt very isolated being on Manhattan, I really hated being here. I wished I could take our car out of the garage and just drive to somewhere in the middle of nowhere where I would feel safe. But I couldn??t do that since the garage was below Canal Street, which no one was allowed below, and many of the tunnels and bridges out of the city were closed.

One week later, Philippe finally landed at JFK and we were let back in the same day, which was a great. But there were very mixed feelings when we finally came home. The neighborhood that we call ??home?? was so different from what we are used to. For many weeks we had to show identification who we were and where we lived to get passed Canal Street. There were military and police officers in every corner carrying weapons I have only seen in movies. No regular cars were seen on the streets for weeks, only military tanks and hummers. You hardly ever saw any people around on the streets either, which also was very strange. Although they had cleaned the streets very well they were still dirty and dusty and the smell in the air was sometimes unbearable. The strangest thing of all may have been the view from our apartment. Where the towers once were, was now just an empty space. Had you not known that they were there, you would have never been able to tell that something was missing. Our neighborhood had become a war zone; it was a very creepy feeling.

I spent my days trying to get some sleep since nightmares of buildings on fire, planes crashing and people dying in front of my eyes without being able to help them, kept me awake at night. I was glad in a way that my school was closed for three weeks after it had happened because I doubt I would have been able to concentrate because I had an intense feeling that everything was completely pointless; nothing mattered anymore. School was definitely one of those things I considered pointless. However, once school started I actually liked it because this forced me to get out of bed, to get dressed in the mornings and get back some kind of normal routine, something that I had not had since the attacks. My building had to evacuate at least one more time that fall because the INS building and some of the court buildings, which I also live close to, had bomb threats. This was rather difficult for me, because it brought back so many memories. Even though I knew that it probably wasn??t anything to worry about, that ??what if- feeling?? - still existed in the back of my head. It took months before I stopped looking up to the sky every single time I heard a plane or became alert when I heard sirens. I could sit at my desk doing homework but as soon as I heard something, I just had to go to the window and make sure that everything was all right, even though I knew it almost certainly was.

I still have bad dreams every now and then, but they are becoming less frequent, which is good. I can??t say that I am afraid for my own personal safety, but I spend a lot of time thinking about what will happen in the future. Hopefully, the world won??t experience a day like September 11th, 2001 ever again.