To me, New York was the wOOOO-wOOOO of sirens contrasting with the French NEE-naw. That dazzling extra light that makes them seem serious, that scares you shitless. New York: a city where they speak eighty languages. The victims of the attack were of sixty-two different nationalities.
First thing I do when I arrive: tell the taxi driver to take me to Ground Zero.
“You mean the World Trade Center site?”
New Yorkers don’t like to say “Ground Zero.” The driver heads down to the end of the city and drops me in front of a fence. At 9.24, New York is a wire fence hung with photos of the missing, candles, wilting bouquets. A black plaque enumerates the names of the “heroes” (the victims). The more exact term would be: the martyrs. In fact, a cross has been planted at the memorial, even though not all the dead were Christians…Flowers strew the snow-covered ground. It’s very cold: fifteen degrees below zero. “Less than zero”: I think briefly of Bret Easton Ellis. Less than Ground Zero. I go into One World Financial Center, the only building in the neighborhood still standing. No search, no security checks, I could be caked with dynamite. In the Winter Garden, under a glass dome inspired by the Crystal Palace in London, I walk toward the picture window that looks directly onto the gaping hole. Ground Zero: a crater filled with bulldozers. Thousands of workers have already begun rebuilding. On the ground floor, the various architectural submissions are displayed. Daniel Libeskind’s proposal won the competition: the tallest tower in the world, four crystals forming a U surrounding a bathtub, like a smashed piece of quartz. No one would want to blow it up: it’s already in pieces. Pity: I really liked the World Cultural Center project submitted by THINK Design. The other side of the World Financial Center overlooks the sea, the wind, the spray, and a branch of Starbucks.
I note the presence of a number of garbage cans. French police clearly haven’t informed local authorities about the modus operandi of Islamic terrorists in Paris: nail bombs in garbage cans, that kind of thing…For some time now in France we’ve learned to live with fear in our bellies. Over here, there are cops with shades and walkie-talkies everywhere, but they still have too much faith in mankind. One hundred feet from Ground Zero, the Pussycat Lounge (96 Greenwich Street) and its naked creatures attest to the fact that life goes on. One vodka tonic later, I walk past the Federal Reserve, where 22,285,376 lb of gold are stored eighty feet below ground. Then I wander into Saint Paul’s Church, which is miraculously unscathed: it dates from 1762. An exhibition pays tribute to the rescue services: photos of the missing, objects found in the rubble are lined up in glass cases, tubes of toothpaste, diapers, bandages, candy, a crucifix, sheets of paper, and hundreds, thousands, of children’s drawings. I bring my hand to my mouth. I no longer feel sorry for myself. Here in the midst of this terribly saccharine suffering stands a cynic in tears.
Later still, a little farther uptown, at the Carousel Cafe, another strip joint, a dancer wearing a thong tells me that in the weeks following the Eleventh the Salvation Army came twice a day to get ice so they could serve cold drinks to the families of the victims at the Armory, and to rescuers working in the oppressive heat of the smoldering site.
“When the club opened again a week after the attack, the girls couldn’t believe it: it was full of blue-collar workers dead on their feet who snapped up the free drinks, and us, too! They wanted to talk. There were ambulances and fire trucks screaming all the time outside the door. Everything was burning, These guys needed something to take their minds off things. I remember when I’d bend down to pick up my clothes, they were caked in white dust.”