Art Spiegelman said it best: he said New Yorkers turned toward the World Trade Center as though toward Mecca. Did the towers fulfill some spiritual emptiness? They were the legs which supported the American dream. It’s difficult to imagine what the World Trade Center looked like at dusk: two columns of light, and—seen close up—thousands of tiny yellow squares, the lighted windows of little offices, a giant chessboard of polished glass in which thousands of marionettes answered their phones, typed into their word processors, came and went, a cup of decaf always in hand, flourished important pieces of paper, sent urgent emails to the whole world, these thousands of flames in the twilight, this luminous anthill, this atomic reactor from which everything departed, to which everything arrived, the indomitable lighthouse of the world, this sword piercing the clouds of the dying day, which served as a sign to New Yorkers when the sky veered to red and they felt their souls fade.