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The Shiva Call

The debris is the same. The thin sliver of building -- the one on the Sept. 14 cover of The Jewish Journal -- is the same, hovering precariously over the wreckage but somehow not falling.
[additional-authors]
September 27, 2001

The debris is the same. The thin sliver of building — the one on the Sept. 14 cover of The Jewish Journal — is the same, hovering precariously over the wreckage but somehow not falling. Live, Ground Zero seems just as surreal as it does on television, except for the smell of smoke — acrid, tar-like, pervasive, cloying — hours after you leave the World Trade Center bombing site.

More than a week after the terrorist attack, I came to New York. Not as a voyeur, one of those reported to have stolen souvenirs, such as firemen’s boots, but to make it real. Real as it could never be from my sunny new home in Los Angeles, so far away from where I grew up: New York. As the other 49 states move on to talk of war and resuming a normal life — whatever that means — I feel the sorrow, the sadness, the utter helplessness of my city.

I am paying a shiva call to New York. I listen to my friends and family tell me where they were, where they almost were: Leon was caught in the smoke, almost trampled by thousands of people; my father, a Vietnam vet used to sights of war, was on the bridge and is still reeling from watching the buildings collapse. Then there are the two degrees of separation, the people gone, presumed dead: a girl from my college, my principal’s daughter, the wife of a man from shul, a next-door neighbor. Who knows how many I knew, living here for more than 20 years?

Sure, we’ve heard the stories endlessly on television and the radio, but it’s different when you come here. You see that getting on with life, which will never be the same for any American, has a different meaning for New Yorkers.

On the Upper West and East sides, fire stations and police stations, as well as most street corners, teem with candles and flowers. Diners, theaters, restaurants are empty, by New York standards, and people speak in hushed tones. I am happy to be with friends, but on the subway I feel awkward about smiling or shouting across the aisle.

The 1/9, rerouted like most subways, takes us down to Fulton Street, one stop before the World Trade Center. We are just a few of the pilgrims on a journey to the site, which by Sunday will have been visited by more than 6,000 people. Uniforms are everywhere: khaki-camouflaged National Guards, Military Police, security guards and police urging people not to stop.

But you can’t help stopping. No matter how many times you have seen it on the screen, when you walk down Nassau and up Broadway and you see the monstrous mound between the two buildings, you are rooted in your spot. "Keep it moving, keep it moving, don’t block the crosswalk!" a policewoman shouts brusquely.

And we keep moving. On Broadway we see the blackened 50-foot building reduced to seven stories; by Wall Street we see the thin shell of one tower; at the FDR bridge, the massive pile of rubbish and debris.

What makes it different from what I’ve seen from Los Angeles are the dusty shoes in the Easy Spirit store window, the broken glass on the saltwater taffy in a candy store, the FBI pictures of the red "black" box. The crumpled memo on the street from an office on who-knows-what floor, the tattered pictures of lost people on the silver street poles.

And the smoke. It makes me tear, long after I’ve left. It’s not surreal anymore. It’s just real.

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