Louise Bagshawe: Remembering September 11th

I thought I would take a break from politics for this column. In the middle of house buying, we are living in the Corby constituency in temporary rented accommodation and I am without the internet, so missed sending this in last week, the anniversary of September 11th, 2001. But the subject is seared on my memory and I still wanted to write about it.

I was living with my American husband in a little village outside New York City. Sep 10th I'd had an appointment with my American publishers, which I forgot about, and so called them up to reschedule. Like most New York autumns, that one was gorgeous. Sep 11th dawned sunny. It was an important day; local election day. The morning papers were full of the coming tussle between Republicans and Democrats.

I picked up a coffee and jumped on the Metro-North into Manhattan. When I got on the train, America was one way; by the time I got off, everything had changed.

As we pulled in to Grand Central, there was an annoucement over the train system. "Folks, for those of you headed downtown there may be some delays. There's been an accident at the World Trade Center. A plane crash." Passengers looked at each other, dismayed. A plane crash! I think everybody assumed it was a small plane, or a glider, not a passenger jet. "Not sure what's going on," the conductor added.

I went out to the taxi rank and groaned. The queue was as long as I've seen it and for rush hour, cabs were very spare. People waiting in line were grumbling, checking their watches. Clearly not yet aware of the full impact. I got in line and tried to be patient; I'd left plenty of time for travel downtown.

A cab finally pulled up. First he refused to take me downtown; there were traffic restrictions below a certain street. But my publishers were in the Flatiron Building on 28th street, above the restricted zone. So he agreed. He was playing a CD on his car system, no radio. He also had no clue what had happened.

Manhattan is laid out in a grid pattern. He drove west, then turned south - and my mouth dropped open; through the canyon of skyscrapers I saw the World Trade Center. It was on fire. Even at this distance, visibly burning with mushroom clouds of smoke pouring from the top. The driver had his eyes on the road. "Look," I said. He looked, cursed. I asked him to switch on the radio. The news now was a terrorist attack. Outside on the street, we both suddenly noticed the roads were emptying - no cars, a few public buses with people fighting each other to get on them. He slowed, asked me if I wanted to go back to Grand Central. I decided to go on. We crawled down to the Flatiron, through a ghost town. Increasingly, I thought I'd made a mistake. Knots of people were standing on the street, looking up at the disaster. I thought of all those poor passengers, prayed it had been quick. No way could I sit through a meeting, but I didn't want to skip out with no notice two days running. We arrived at the Flatiron. Employees were standing outside the front door gaping in horror downtown. I went inside, told the receptionist that I was here but not coming in. "They all left anyway," she said. As I walked out a security guard was manhandling an Arab-looking man out of the door because he didn't have his pass. "I never need one," he protested. "You do today," the guy said.

Outside the people on the streets were sobbing. I asked them what was wrong, as they hadn't been weeping a moment ago. A heavyset woman in floods of tears just pointed. I looked at the WTC. It wasn't there anymore, just a mushroom cloud. I felt dizzy and sick. Those poor people. "Was it bombed?" "It fell down," she replied.

A cop came up the street. "Move on, people. Out of here! Subway's down, you can get on a bus. No cars. MOVE!"

I moved. No point fighting for space on a bus. I turned around, started walking uptown. Parked cars in the street had their windows open, their radios blaring at maximum volume, a sort of bush telegraph. Total strangers were passing on news to each other. Pentagon. Three planes missing. No, eight planes! Eight planes missing and headed for New York. I walked uptown, block after block, sweating, praying, as fast as I could. The attack had knocked out the city's mobile phone masts, and queues twenty deep formed at the usually ignored public payphones.

"Hey." A man stopped me. "What do you hear about more planes?" "They said eight." He gulped. "Coming here?" "If they do, it'll be to attack landmarks." I gestured upwards - we were standing underneath the Empire State Building. He paled and ran off. I kept walking. On the street, person after person said it was like being in a Die Hard film, but this was not Hollywood. Thousands of people were dead. That day, we thought maybe ten thousand. I found an office of a friend and got to a landline, hit redial for twenty minutes to secure a line out, tell my husband I was OK. Then I left the office and just kept walking. When I reached Macy's, I paused, turned around to look at the disaster. And right in front of my eyes, the second tower crumpled to the ground. I knew I was watching people die.

At sixty-eighth street I stopped for food. The restaurant could only make salads, I took what I could get. The diners in there were defiant. Much talk of war - with whoever. It is important to say that for those of us who were there, that day felt full of danger. The rumour about eight more planes was rife. You felt the attack was ongoing and the city was a battleground. All exits sealed off. I wondered if I would be sleeping rough. Luckily a friend worked in the UN (also tall towers; also thought of as a target). He had an apartment on 80th street. I had walked sixty blocks. The most bustling, metropolitan city in the world was as deserted as a film set. The Manhattanites I passed alternated between sorrow and rage. I could not get the image of that huge skyscraper, folding like a concertina, out of my mind.

Last week it was reported that the BBC's flagship news programme for children, Newsround, attributed Al Qaeda's actions to the Americans. I watched September 11th, the second, this time successful, attempt at mass murder in the twin towers. It was unprovoked. It was vile. It was indefensible. So is the BBC's disgusting attempt to poison our nation's children, and make them think the blame for September 11th lies anywhere other than with the terrorists who perpetrated it.

The next day, the flags started to go up. The great city of New York was defiant. I say now what I said then: God bless America.

Comments

[englandism]

Movingly said, Louise.

The BBC attempts a vague clarification following CBBC attributing 911 to America:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/09/appropriate_language.html#c2641222

Equally as vague as the BBC attempting to account for screening an edition of Question Time on September 13th 2001 where America was blamed for the attack two days after the event with the fires still burning. I, like thousands, emailed with fury until the BBC server, mysteriously, crashed.

Email contribution to Question Time was subsequently axed because the BBC and the concept of public service broadcasting have yet to be properly acquainted.

The analogue shutdown happening over the next five years would provide an appropriate time to schedule the shut down of the licence fee.

[Moral minority]

Bin Ladin's team killed 3,000 civilians in the World Trade Centre. Bush's invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of nearly a million civilians. He lied to justified his illegal war and should be tried as a war criminal when he leaves office.

[Simon Denis]

Yes, the attack on the World Trade Centre was an appalling outrage. BUT are we not sick of the endless, loaded and sentimental publicity it receives? Is New York the only city to have endured such an atrocity? Were not plenty of Americans only too happy to fund an ongoing effort to perpetrate the same sort of horrors in London? Hasn't the language of "9/11" (11/9 to us in the UK) been prostituted in the service of a ludicrous, bloody and utopian war? Hasn't that war in fact brought about the precise opposite of its declared intentions? Terrible events take place across the globe more or less every day. Isolating one event in this way is inevitably suspicious. Of course, the rabid Americanophil right, the neo-cons, the utopians, the do-gooders, the blunt war mongers of the world will portray this as some sort of defeatism. It is not. It is old tory realism. It sees the war in Iraq as the other side of the "multiculti" coin. Just as it was wrongly assumed that immigrants to the modern west would adopt its way, so it was equally stupidly imagined that the people of Iraq would jump at the chance to live a western lifestyle. In the view of these miserable philistines, history, culture and identity count for nothing. Life is a question of GDP. And it is this cohort of brutal, ignorant, unfeeling and dunderheaded fanatics which has grotesquely destabilised the already flaky middle east. Their dishonest song is "9/11, 9/11" as though nobody else in the history of world has ever suffered as much.

Anyone with a sense of history must regard this drivel as poisonous, self-serving drool.

[englandism]

Ah, the tin foil hatters are here. We’ll be onto time travelling space lizards and CIA androids shortly.

Hating the USA makes it so much easier to abdicate from basic humanity. Are we hating the UK too? Yes, I thought so, and mass death on London public transport is our own fault and we had it coming.

'Anyone with a sense of history must regard this drivel as poisonous, self-serving drool.'

I blame the crusades, me.

[Jennifer Wells]

A beautiful piece Louise. I'm disgusted by contributions three and four on this thread. I hope I never meet their authors. They sound like people with dark rage burning inside them.

[Simon Denis]

I don't hate the US and I certainly don't hate the UK, nor is there any evidence in my post that I do. Indeed, I am a British patriot, which is why I regard the long American patronage of Irish terrorism as a loathsome affront. As to the emotion which animated my words, it was not "rage" but contempt - contempt for cant, nowadays known as bullsh*t and defined as moralistic posturing. It is typical of the votaries of "bull" that they should ignore arguments and make ad hominem attacks. Is is really so inhumane to object to the way in which a tragedy is prostituted in the service of a blunder? For which read "9/11" and Iraq. Is it such "dark" rage when that blunder has cost so much bloodshed? Clearly, it is not. I should call it righteous anger.

[Dawn Lowen]

I think its so important to never forget about September 11. Kevin Price also wrote a blog about 9/11. Check it out at www.bizplusblog.com