We’ll never survive!
Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.

― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

It took an international act of terror for me to come to terms with my relationship with my father. My childhood bedroom window had a direct view of the World Trade Center a mile away. The Twin Towers in inexhaustible with activity with windows that were always lit, became a familiar view. Their stoic consistency was a stable element in an otherwise chaotic life with my father.

— fateful morning —

I received the news that my father died on May 17, 2001 and I flew out as soon as I heard the news of his death. My relationship with my father was complicated, one that was more painful than positive, so for many years I had stayed away. When I got the news, it had been five years since I had seen him. Being his only heir had brought me back to my father’s loft on Canal Street.

I stayed in the loft for months trying to come to terms with how to proceed. Returning had stirred emotions from the memories of my life back then. I felt caught between the trauma of all that I had transpired and the excitement of being back in the addictive energy of New York City. I didn’t want to be surrounded by the ghosts of my past, but I also couldn’t bring myself to leave. As I was deciding how to move forward, September 11th happened.

On the night of September 10, 2001, I lay in my childhood bed facing the same view that had steadied me in my youth. Earlier that day my right shoulder had become dislocated and was throbbing in pain. I had spent the day riding on the back of a motorcycle through the country roads north of New York City with a guy I was dating. During the ride, my shoulder, which had been injured years before from a bike fall, slowly pulled out of joint from hours of holding on. I couldn’t feel the injury until I went to dismount and a sharp pain shot down my arm. All I could think about going bed with an ice pack.

I lay in bed, feeling my shoulder throb in sync with the beat of my heart. I adjusted unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position and tried to zone out the pain. This was not my first experience with intense physical pain. I was first hospitalized as an infant and had over twenty operations on my legs before I reached the age of eighteen. Pain had been a consistent companion throughout my life. I used my experience that night to mute the pain until I eventually fell asleep.

During my slumber, the muscles around my shoulder slowly relaxed and the joint miraculously returned to its proper alignment. I felt its return during the deepest of my sleep. Gradually the pain subsided to a small ache by morning. When I awoke, I was filled with a feeling of relief… pure bliss.

A little before 9 am on September 11th, I opened my eyes to a very different. With blurred vision, I saw smoke was pouring out of one of the Twin Towers. There was a big, dark gash in the top, left side of the building. After several seconds of staring, I still couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. I began to analyze the view. Maybe it could be some kind of stunt for a movie or the acrobatics of an attention-seeking performance artist. There were always crazy things happening in New York City, so it seemed plausible in my dreamy state. As the smoke continued to billow out in a wide swath, I held up my fingers to measure the size of the gash compared to the size of the buildings and realized, no, it could not be a stunt, the “wound” was too big. Something awful must have happened.

Fully awake now, I got out of bed and called my mother in Florida. She answered groggily. I asked if she had heard about what had happened at the World Trade Center. She turned on the news but nothing was being reported yet. We spoke in worried tones for a few minutes trying to figure out what was going on. It must be some horrible accident we thought. The idea that it could be intentional never entered our minds.

While we continued to talk, my eyes were fixed on the North Tower billowing with smoke. I saw a plane approaching. For a split second, I wondered why the plane was so close. Before I could react, it made impact with the South Tower, and loud boom reverberated in the atmosphere. A cloud of black smoke poured out of the South Tower. When the smoke dissipated, a jagged chunk was missing from the once stable structure. The shock of what I saw traveled like a lightning bolt through me. I knew now without a doubt, that this was not a random incident. My mother and I spoke for another minute, stunned by what had transpired. While we weren’t a religious family, we exchanged brief prayers before we ended the call. My mother said she would send guardian angels for my protection. I told her I loved her, and got off the phone.

I forced myself to be calm, becoming almost robotic, to suppress my surging feelings of anxiety. I switched to survival mode and focused to the apocalyptic scene before me. As a child, I grew accustomed to danger. I was first hospitalized when I was only three months old and had many subsequent surgeries. No matter how many I had, whenever the time approached for me to be put under, I’d experience feelings of panic. I had to learn how to keep myself calm. On this day, I used the same skills. Something dangerous was happening and I needed to stay sane.

I did not know what was behind this disaster, but I knew it was historic. I heard my father’s voice in my head saying “document this!” I left the loft to buy a disposable camera at the corner drugstore. I had joint deformities in both knees and one leg was shorter than the other. Speed was not in my physical vocabulary as I descended step by step from the sixth floor. I knew I should be escaping to safety instead of buying a camera, but I couldn’t worry that I might be risking my life. My father had documented my entire childhood. My DNA compelled me to record this event.

On the street, people were milling about normally. Some seemed confused about what was happening, but in typical New York stoicism, not overly scared. Alongside my father’s building ran Church Street south towards the WTC. I took photos of the view before climbing back up the six flights at a maddeningly slow pace. I took pictures of the view out of my bedroom window. It was eerie, but also beautiful as the smoke from the towers passed behind colored bottles that were resting on the windowsill to create a disused glow. I felt my chest tighten a little as I watched, transfixed on the disastrous scene. I used to gaze at my twin companions as I fell asleep, talking to them like they were my friends, wishing good night while gently scolding for the myriad of lights that were still on. I would tell them it was time to fall asleep like the rest of the world. They never heeded my advice.

— exodus to safety  —

Snapping out of the fog I was under, I called my brother who lived seven miles uptown in Washington Heights. The phone lines were becoming overloaded, so it took several tries to get through. He answered breathlessly. He was distressed I was still in the loft. I was far too close to the disaster, he said, and insisted I leave immediately. We were half-siblings, sharing only our mother, and nearly eleven years apart, but we always cared for each other. We hadn’t spent much time together until I had come to New York because we were raised separately. I grew up in NYC with my father while my brothers, Jacob and Gabriel, were raised in Maine with our mother. Gabriel, or Gabe as he preferred to be called, had moved to New York several years ago, but it wasn’t until I had returned when my father that we got close. Now we were bonded by this unfolding drama, by what we shared versus what we did not., and we knew were trying to survive something much bigger than us. We were united on this day.

Hastily, we made a rough plan to meet up — I would walk north on Broadway and he would walk south. Somewhere along the way, we hoped to find each other. It would not be an easy task given the distance. We weren’t sure we would succeed, but we had to try. I didn’t let myself think about what would happen if we didn’t.

Shortly after I hung up with Gabe, the situation escalated. I heard a deafening crash and the air became black and thick. It was like breathing dirty baby powder. It seemed like hours passed before the plume dispersed, when in fact it had only been minutes. In its wake was nothingness, a blank space of sky where the South Tower had once been. I knew I needed to leave, but I couldn’t seem to move; I felt suspended, as if in time-lapse, watching the devastation. Sharp sounds began to pinprick me into awareness from my frozen state. They were high-pitched and numerous. I shook myself back to the present moment and looked out the window in the direction of where they were coming from. I saw people running past my building from the disaster. They were screaming. Interspersed with the panicked crowd were firefighters and other first responders, covered in ash walking slowly with their heads hung low, downtrodden as if in defeat, while reinforcements of fresh emergency workers raced in the opposite direction towards the disaster.

I don’t know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.

— Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones

By now both land and mobile phone lines were completely clogged, all mass transit was shutting down, and taxis had been sent home. I tried to call my mother back to update her that I had talked to Gabe but I couldn’t get through. I tried Gabe again with the same result — seven miles between us and no way to communicate. I gathered a few things to leave, torn between being hypnotized by the devastation unfold and escaping as I must. While I was gathering my necessities in a small backpack, I heard another earth-shattering crash and the sky darkened again. The North Tower had now fallen. The crash shook my building and the air once again became filled with dark grey soot. I struggled to breathe. More screams and sirens followed.

I put on my backpack and my most comfortable shoes and left the loft. Slow and steady, I walked down, step by step, holding onto the railing and trying not to worry that I wasn’t going fast enough. I knew I wouldn’t get far if I rushed, my knees had already begun to ache. I put the pain out of my mind and tried to stay calm. I longed to sit down, but instead focused on the goal of being united with my brother.

I had learned to cope early on with the limitations in my mobility. I ignored the stares at my cockeyed walk because one leg was shorter than the other. I stopped noticing how stiff I felt when I tried to stand, how my legs ached when I walked, or the feeling that my knees would give out when I had to stand for any length of time. I learned to favor my right leg, the worse of the two, and developed a high pain tolerance. I became adept at hiding how much pain I was experiencing. I learned to scan unobtrusively for places to sit at all times.

When I emerged from my building onto the street, the scene was surreal, so very different from the one I had witnessed less than an hour earlier. Now, only a few people calmly went about their day, while most were speed-walking north, away from the disaster. I looked down Church Street and saw the plume of smoke still billowing, but now somewhat deflated. I turned away and began to plod along slowly, praying my legs would take me where I needed to go. Two blocks east, I reached Broadway and then turned north.

In my mind I didn’t consciously feel fear; I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even present in my body other than an awareness of my frustratingly slow speed. I was somewhere else. I knew that if the danger escalated, I was unable to run; my legs were not built that way. All I could do was pray and keep moving. I had heard stories of people doing amazing things in times of crisis like lifting cars or jumping from high buildings to save the day, but that could not be me. Calm and detached, I moved my feet forward one at a time.

As I walked north on Broadway, I took in my surroundings. Now, in addition to the ash-laden firefighters, I saw businessmen and women coated with ash walking briskly north. Caution tape had been stretched across entrances to subway stations, sirens filled the air, and onlookers stood stopped in their tracks to dial their cellphones. They’d press them to their ear only to find they couldn’t get through and rapidly resume their evacuation. A hush of anxiety hovered over everyone. I saw a yellow-orange flame dart up out of the corner of my eye. Fear gripped me as I spun my head around to see what it was, preparing for an imminent threat. When I saw the cause of the flame, I felt silly. It was only a shish-kabob vendor who had spilled oil on his grill, causing the flames to shoot up. I relaxed again, letting the clench in my heart release.

As I walked away from my childhood home, the danger I was facing on September 11, 2001 did not feel scarier than what I had already experienced as a child. The difference was that instead of being isolated in my trauma, everyone around me was experiencing it as well. This event was bigger than just one person’s experience, which in an odd way gave me comfort.

After walking about a mile, I saw my brother’s tall frame above the crowd heading towards me. At six foot six, he was easy to spot from far away. He smiled broadly when he saw me. We quickly embraced in our excitement of finding each other, but didn’t dare linger. The event that brought us together remained unspoken; there would be time for that later. Right now, we just needed to get away. With a surge of hope that we were finally reunited, we walked north together. My brother slowed his gait to not leave me behind.

When we reached the West Village, the scene was completely different. The chaos had barely gotten that far. Some people were walking north, but with less obvious anxiety. Businesses remained open to customers. When we passed a café near Washington Square all the outdoor seats were full of dining guests. My eyes paused on a group of fashionably dressed ladies drinking white wine and laughing as if it was an ordinary day. I wondered if they knew what was happening. Did they not care or were they simply unaware? It was hard to imagine that they were clueless considering the smoke billowing from the fallen towers could be easily seen from where they sat.

I felt myself relax a little. I had help now, I would not have to go through this on my own like so many other things I had experienced, but weren’t safe yet. We still had to figure out how to travel the many miles to his apartment. There was no public transportation. We stopped to let me to rest and my brother spotted a man getting into his car. He sprinted over to him and asked if he was heading north, would be willing to give us a ride? Thankfully he said yes. Traffic was a slow crawl, bumper to bumper heading north. After more than an hour, we were dropped off within blocks of my brother’s apartment.

september eleven

rousing to a sonic boom
i confuse it with the daily rumble
of the traffic on canal
emerging from the holland tunnel

myself, wrapped in bedcovers warm
rolled, regarding window view
twin towers in their testament
of global commerce gone askew

8:45, eyes still blurred
drugged down from dark and dreamful sleep
could not process what i saw
a burning gash five miles deep

i measured it with my mind
mangled steel and depth of flame
smoke blackening bluish sky
the plane had hit with deadly aim

steadily, it conquered me
that my eyes were seeing true
before i could digest it in
came the crash, plane number two

witnessing, i saw the scene
plane flew in, direct impact
bedroom window was the frame
drama of destructive act

all alone i had no choice
terror tried to possess
so i shoved it deep inside
found a mask for my distress

i felt the tension lodge in me
grappling with what to do
bore down upon my shoulders
bruising in the black and blue

the towers were my nightlight
companion to my daily rest
an anchor to the city
a constant in my lonely quest

death summoned me to this place
my father died, left the task
to comprehend a lifetime
and free the demons of the past

now, death comes for many more
their screams too far away to hear
but close enough to breathe the ash
like baby powder in the air

soon came one, then the other
each tower shook and shivered
concrete compressing all inside
panic spread, a flooding river

stunned by the unfolding
crisis that was far too near
some distance from the trauma
i needed to get out of here

my brother calls in tearful voice
end to end we were not close
we made a plan to connect
i’d walk north, he’d walk south

up broadway i trod along
my legs already aching
uncertain of what transpired
and what i’d undertaken

i passed impromptu gatherings
standing by a radio
eager for some scrap of news
full of fear, the unknown

some were wearing gas masks
fleeing from the concrete crush
proof of their survival
bandages and fine white dust

fearing i could not progress
but barely walked far at all
i pause to restore my strength
then i hear my brother’s call

united now we had the will
to make it through this dreadful day
even though we were unclear
of how we’d travel all the way

six mile trek remained ahead
city now could not assist
public transport all shut down
only choice was to persist

we walked the sum of forty blocks
police had speakers blaring
“it is not safe, please go north”
some listened, some uncaring

yellow-orange caught my eye
the glow of flames ascending
panic gripped but fear was false
just sausage cooking unattended

feeling foolish i turned away
yet still there was the tension
phantom perils taunted me
a global apprehension

i saw it in their faces
and felt it in the dusty air
new yorkers had been broken
yet, were not beyond repair

when we finally took a rest
we stopped to call our mother
to let her know we were safe
and we’d found each other

“ask upon your guardian
angels” she told each of us
they will guide you safely home
know in them, place your trust

out of options to explore.
decided to give luck a try
hitch a ride to home uptown
right away someone came by

we thanked our angels deeply
praised the mom we found so wise
because just like she told us
ask, solutions will arise

delivered near my brother’s
home a few blocks away
soon we were sheltered safe
finally could release the day

inside, t.v. insisted
to replay the cradle fall
drilling in the danger
of a time beyond recall

i’ve never felt fear before
breathe moist upon my neck
paralyze me with the world
not know what to expect

i’m grateful that i still exist
i mourn for those who perished
i’ll testify each day i live
is one i’ll always cherish