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Terrorist Attack Response Help

The unprecedented attack on the United States committed on September 11, 2001 has brought tremendous challenges to our country and society.  Among those challenges are the spiritual and religious challenges before us.  Here is a collection of material that may provide some guidance or help in this most difficult time.

Reflections of a New York Resident

Reflections on a week.        by Libba Bray

 (Editor's note: Libba Bray, a rising star in the literary world as an author of novels for young readers, lives in Brooklyn, just across the East River from lower Manhattan, site of the Sept. 11 suicide terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Libba, a lifelong Presbyterian, has agreed to tell her story for the Presbyterian News Service. We are extremely grateful to her for her willingness to do so under difficult circumstances. - Jerry L. Van Marter)

 BROOKLYN, N.Y., Sept. 18 - I cleaned soot off my windowsills today.  I thought I'd gotten all of it yesterday and the day before, but somehow, splotches of black dust keep making it through the windows of my Brooklyn apartment, reminders of a grief that also cannot be contained. This week is being hailed by our mayor as "the worst week in New York City's history." It is a week that has also brought out the best in New York, a city of 8 million strangers who came together as one family for many horrible days and nights.

 Here, then, is one account of the week that was.

 Tuesday, September 11th - The morning starts as most mornings do in my house, which is to say, in a chaotic fashion.  There is the mad scramble to get my son off to preschool complete with lunchbox, stuffed bunny, water cup. At 8:45am, just about the time the first plane hits the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I hug my son goodbye and stroll out into a perfect, blue-skied day. It is 70 degrees and breezy.  I'm anxious to get to my computer and begin work on a new book. First, I  step into my local corner grocery store-bodegas, as we call them here in the  melting pot. It's now 9:10. The radio is on. I put my milk on the counter as the DJ breaks in, sounding confused and breathless. There is a report about a second plane hitting the World Trade Center. The words "second" and "plane" barely register. My first thought is that a small Cessna with an inexperienced pilot has had some very unfortunate accident. Three more words try to make their way in: "deliberate terrorist attacks." The  girl behind the counter stops, her hands dangling in the cash drawer. For a moment, we are frozen. And then she hands me my change, the store comes alive again, and I'm hurrying the two blocks to my apartment building.

 A dark, angry plume of smoke streaks up into the blue sky. And now I am running up four flights of stairs and into my apartment where my husband has the TV on. We see the horrible footage of the towers on fire. It does not seem real. A neighbor rings my doorbell and asks if we have heard the news.  Together, we go up one more flight to the roof of our building where we can see the two towers burning and smoking. Many of my neighbors are there.  Someone passes around binoculars. I take a closer look. The fire is massive, engulfing a good 20 stories or so. It leaps out the broken windows. More unsettling are the millions of pieces of paper falling from office windows and blanketing the city like confetti. Someone gasps. A body has fallen from the windows. I can't look at this, and I pass the binoculars on.

 Thirty minutes later, the unthinkable happens. There is a whooshing sound that becomes a roar as the South Tower, Tower 2, collapses in on itself.  It's hard to tell exactly what's happening. Our minds won't accept what we see. The smoke rushes over lower Manhattan like an avalanche, enveloping the city. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was a special effect, a disaster film about a blinding snowstorm. But I do know better. The smoke pushes out into the Hudson River where the Statue of Liberty watches it all. It's fast, this cloud of dust and ash, and we run downstairs and into the safety of our living room where we huddle around the TV, blinking, unbelieving.

 When Tower 1 falls, we are numb. Images of rubble, screaming people, and burned-out fire trucks assault us. My husband and I call our son's school.  The children are all fine. They're napping, in fact. I resist the urge to run the seven blocks to the Methodist church that houses the school and scoop up my child. Where would we run?

 The call goes out: blood donors are needed. My husband and I head to our local hospital, six blocks away. Out on the street, people are wandering, dazed. A businessman covered in gray ash stands on a corner talking to another man who keeps his hand on the guy's shoulder, as if anchoring him there. Our favorite coffee shop is closed. A hastily penned sign implores us to give blood. A neighbor is home safe from his office only two blocks from "Ground Zero" as it will come to be called. As Manhattan's Assistant D.A., he has put drug dealers behind bars and been blasé about it. Today, he shakes when he tells me about seeing the building nearly come down on his head, turning and running hard and fast, all the way across the Manhattan Bridge. He was halfway through the streets of Brooklyn before he realized he could stop.  There is a two-hour wait at the hospital. People spill out onto the lawn.  They ask us to come back later that night. By 1:00, the wind blows the smoke across the Hudson, directly into our neighborhood. The air is a solid, living thing with a distinctive, charred plastic odor. You can actually taste the air, and the sky has turned a jaundiced color. Breathing is difficult.  Some people wear masks. Others breathe through t-shirts or sweaters.  We collect our son from preschool and try to act "normal," though we know there will have to be a new kind of normal for all of us. We're worried about the air, so we arrange a play date at the home of friends. They are waiting to hear from a sister who works blocks from the World Trade Center.  The phone lines are all down, as is cellular and Internet service. She arrives, dusty and exhausted, an hour later, part of a mass exodus that made its way by foot across the closed Brooklyn Bridge. By 5:00, we know that we can't bear to leave the comfort of each other. We order pizza and stay till 7:30. My son is asleep by 8:00. My husband and I can't stop watching the news. The city that never sleeps has come to a dead stop. There are no subways, no ferries, no buses, no planes. Everything is closed. In just twelve hours, everything has changed.

 Wednesday, September 12th      Sleep proved impossible. I am used to the ceaseless noise of urban life. The comfort of planes, cars, chatter and yelling and music on the streets. There is something deeply disturbing about the silence. It is broken only by emergency sirens and the deafening rumble of low-flying fighter jets that shake my building when they pass overhead.

 7:00am. I turn on the Today show. My three-year-old son looks up from his train set to see the horrifying images of planes bursting into flames.  "Mommy, what happened?" he asks, clearly disturbed.  I take a deep breath and explain that there was an accident and a fire, but that the fire is out now. I hope this will suffice for a curious preschooler. It doesn't. "Mommy," he says, "that scares me."  "It scared us all, honey." It is the truest thing I will say all day.  We turn off the TV.

 The whole neighborhood is at the 3rd Street playground in Prospect Park.  Blank-faced parents, home from work, hover over their children. It's a madhouse. A child playing in the leaves brings a manila file folder to her mom. Its edges are singed. In a collective horrible moment, we know where that folder has been. We can imagine it sitting on a desk under fluorescent lighting 100 stories in the air. No one says a word.  Ferries move silently across the Hudson River. They could be tourist boats, taking travelers to Ellis Island or on a scenic cruise. Instead, they are traveling morgues, ferrying bodies to the shores of Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey.

 It's five o'clock in the afternoon, the time when the kids in our building usually turn our common courtyard into a free-for-all zone. This is "normal" activity on any day, even today. A neighbor comes out yelling about all the noise the kids are making. She's trying to sleep, and they shouldn't be using our common courtyard as a playground, she argues. She's yelling at my husband and other parents and then the truth pours out: she is a medical examiner. She has spent untold hours wading through hell's back acre, cataloging body parts. We see her, six months' pregnant, glassy-eyed, barely standing. We promise to keep the kids quiet.

 "Mommy, play with me," my son giggles. He and his buddies have concocted a game about runaway coal cars on trains. "We're pretending," he says joyfully.  I envy him.

 Thursday, September 13th    Schools are open. The hospitals can take no more blood. They're asking for supplies and clothes. We learn that our local firehouse, Squad 1, was one of the first rescue teams on the scene the day of the attacks. The entire company has been lost. The empty firehouse on Union Street has become a shrine filled with flowers and candles.  People look less numb, more determined. They fly into action. Outside the YMCA, they collect supplies for the rescue workers and offer housing to the displaced. It has become common to pass acquaintances on the streets with "Everyone on your end okay?"

 In line at the grocery store, a man behind me tells of being "there." At 8:40, he stepped out of the World Trade Center to get coffee and a donut, narrowly escaping the plane that crashed into what had been his floor. He can't stop talking to me, and I listen, even though my frozen foods are completely inedible by the time I reach home.

 Friday, September 14th        Rain comes down hard and cold. It turns the rescue site into a slippery, angerous mess.  My Southern Woman Defense System kicks in and I find myself in the kitchen, doubling the recipe for everything. Finally, in the middle of baking approximately ten dozen chocolate chip cookies, I break down. I grip the counter and sob, not caring how loud I am. It feels good to howl.  I take the cookies to the other firehouse in my neighborhood, but they've posted a sign imploring us to stop feeding them. I take the cookies to my son's school where the kids think Christmas has just come early.  For the first time in days, I'm smiling and laughing, taking in their chocolate-smeared faces and ingenious excuses for needing a second and third cookie.

 Saturday, September 15th        My husband is scheduled to work at the New York Public Library in Chinatown, adjacent to lower Manhattan. We don't know if he should report to work-we've had no word since the phone lines are still out. We decide to go in together as a family. There is a wonderful playground only blocks from the library.  The library is closed "due to emergency," the sign reads.  We walk under the huge shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, afraid to look up and see the blank spot where the Twin Towers used to be. Instead, I spot the same flyer stuck to every light pole: Missing, Jennifer Y. Wong, age 22. Jennifer Y. Wong is young, beautiful, shining. She could be running for office or selling us long-distance service. She is not. She never will.  But I will always remember her name.

 Sunday, September 16th        I take my son to church today. I don't want to go alone, and so attend a Catholic mass with my friends who also have young children. I have come seeking comfort, guidance, and answers, though I know there are none. But it is my son who has all the questions: "Who is God?" "What is pray?" "Why you pray?" Through that Tourette's stream of consciousness unique to three-year-olds, he has hit on the essential nature of faith. I can only offer three lame replies, "God is the Mommy and Daddy of us all," "Praying is talking to and listening to God," and "Because."

 There is more black soot on my windowsills. I let it stand.

 Monday, September 17th        I have a meeting in the city. It's tempting to cancel, but I find my desire to be with other people outweighs my fear. Still, taking the F train through darkened subway tunnels by myself makes my heart beat hard against my chest.  When the train rounds a piece of elevated track, I have a clear view of lower Manhattan. The smoke still rises through the remaining buildings. The skyline seems bare. The city is missing its gateposts. I could be looking at any city. For a few seconds, my brain doesn't register this new horizon. It isn't until I find the Empire State Building and follow the line down to the now unfamiliar view that I realize they are truly gone. And then we are moving, the F train dipping back down into blackness.

 In the city, I see the flyers. Every flat surface has become a paper memorial. Handmade posters are taped to bus stops, kiosks, drugstores, apartment buildings, restaurants. Faces smile out at me. A young father holds his baby daughter. A businessman stands in a group of beaming employees. A laughing college grad loops an arm around her best friends. They are tan and happy. Facts stay with me. 5'11". 180 lbs. Wears glasses.  Gall bladder scar. Celtic tattoo on left shoulder. Might be wearing a silver ball on a chain. Blood type 0+. Worked for Cantor-Fitzgerald, 104th floor.  Windows on the World, 106th floor. 81st floor. 95th floor. 101st. 74th. Last seen... last seen... last seen...

 I can't read anymore. I can't carry any more lives with me on this trip. At Sixth Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, I cross against the light, a New Yorker's game of chicken. I try not to look at anything else, but something catches my eye. It's a small yellow sticker, smaller than a postcard, stuck to a rusted out dumpster. It reads simply, I WILL NOT BE TERRORIZED.

 People pass by, their voices and scents linger and trail off, but the yellow sticker remains, small, bold, undeniable.  For a minute, I forget to be afraid.

 Tuesday, September 18th  4:45a.m.        The digital clock confirms the ungodly hour. I am awake. At 5:30, I'm still awake and no longer delusional that I'm going to get any more sleep, so I make coffee. The coffee is strong and good.  The rooftops of Brooklyn pinken and glisten in the early morning light. It's going to be another gorgeous day in New York, except for the persistent burning ash smell.

 Today heralds the Jewish New Year, 5762. We are an interfaith family, a Jewish-Presbyterian-Russian-Irish-Texas-California-Kansas mix. We're much like the city itself, not so much one thing as a blend of flavors, colors, accents, creeds. Later, my husband will most likely attend services. He might take our son and take his turn answering the questions about God and prayer and what makes the water come up through the water fountain and why can't we eat M&M's for breakfast.  I wish my husband luck.

 In one week, I have had so many questions of my own. I have seen devastation and destruction and fear. And I have seen people race into burning buildings to save others. I have seen neighbors embrace each other at mailboxes and in the dry cleaners. I have seen strangers give everything of themselves, even blood.  I have seen that children will look to you for answers, that they will ask you why you pray and the answer, beyond all ideology, is this: We pray because we are human and we need each other. We pray because when something of such a magnitude happens, we must turn to something greater than ourselves and greater than tragedy to sustain us.  We pray because life goes on, and we must always go toward the life-affirming, and, in fact, we have just proved that we do. We pray because we can't seem to stop ourselves. We pray because.  Children's questions, like soot, like grief, like catastrophe, cannot all be measured and contained.  They cannot be answered to satisfaction. This is the best that I can do.  I'm still thinking that it is a new year, and maybe that thought is enough for today.