Zero (Monday)
At work, in Romford with ever so slow dial-up internet connection to the BBC News website. That’s where I was on 9/11.
I wasn’t sure about visiting Ground Zero. Others had recommended it with approaching a similar, but thankfully more subtle, fervour as to the latest Broadway sell-out. And I still wasn’t sure. Why would I visit? Voyeuristic curiosity? Respectful pilgrimage? Thankfully none of my New York friends were in or near the World Trade Centre on that day and yet the latter did seem appropriate on some level.
My journey there was typical Paul. Stepped off the Circle Line cruise (from where it was difficult to place where the twin towers stood even with the commentary) and started walking down town. The piers aren’t exactly in the centre and I’d just missed a bus. Half an hour of dipping in and out of the lunchtime sun and past eerily quiet warehouses I found a bus and elected to see Greenwich Village on my air conditioned way.
Such is the great swathe of land so dramatically ripped out of the city the site isn’t exactly easy to get to. It’s a mix of temporary side streets, past decommissioned subway stations and across six lanes of traffic.
Then there’s the ‘Viewing Platform’ itself; not exactly ‘viewing’ apart from boards retelling the story of the day and not so much ‘platform’ as hawkers market. Unless you venture around the side can you see the (literal) depth of work going on, the construction site so immense in scale the great diggers seemed ant-like.
Sadly my abiding memory is not one of solemn reflection. I doubt many of those around me were New York-ers for whom the latest tourist attraction must be a wrench. On one side, the twin towers mini economy with all its inappropriate hassling hawkers sold every souvenir you could possibly imagine. Yes, you too can have a twin towers fridge magnet. Felt very similar to the markets in Shenzhen, China – both in intrusiveness and in nationality.
On the other side were what I could call my fellow visitors. Except they weren’t visitors, they were tourists. Click click, flash flash, ‘stand together, ready?’. Families with children for whom the horror of the location should have been tempered by education and not by holiday frivolity.
No photos. Thanks but I know what a building site looks like, remember those pictures coming over a 56k modem that day. I’d rather these words be my pilgrimage than the few minutes of sadness (for all sorts of reasons) I spent at Ground Zero itself.
