WEIRTON, WV-

Recently, Nick Belardes wrote, very beautifully, about his experience of 9/11 on the west coast in his post “Thick White Crust” . He then asked about other writers’ 9/11 stories. Mine comes from right inside District of Columbia borders.

Just after 6 a.m. on 9/11, I woke up with a blinding headache in an apartment complex on MacArthur Boulevard, about a mile outside Georgetown. When I sat up, I had no peripheral vision, and even the meager light from the windows hurt my eyes. Objects in my bedroom were outlined in white. I was sick to my stomach. I got these headaches about twice a month, but they never hit me before I woke up. I called in to work, popped my migraine pills, and went back to bed. I didn’t wake up until just before 9 a.m. Feeling somewhat less wretched, I turned the television on.

At first, it was difficult to understand exactly what was happening. I tuned in just before the second plane hit, but when it did, I did not leave the sofa. My phone rang intermittently. I spoke with my family, and then it was entirely silent, apart from the television. There were reports, later found to be erroneous, that car bombs had gone off near the National Archives.

By the time Jim Miklashewski announced a loud crash was heard at the Pentagon, I called into work and told my cube mate to leave. He assured me that everything was fine there, that he had heard a helicopter had simply malfunctioned and hit a helipad. I then heard the other lines ringing. He told me to get well soon and hung up. I mentally totted up what had been hit: an economic symbol, a military symbol. What was left? Well, perhaps a cultural symbol: I worked at the Smithsonian. We were directly in line with the Capitol building, and I thought that did not bode well. 

When I learned there was another plane still in the air, I stuffed my hiking pack with clothes, three cans of beans, two frozen bagels, a gallon of water, a can opener, and a large kitchen knife. I could no longer get in touch with my family, but when there was a glimmer of communication between the city and the outside world, a call came through. I told my father’s secretary to tell my parents not to try to come near the city.I would follow the highways, stay low, and meet them.Still, I stayed in the apartment for reasons I cannot now remember. Part of it was that I remember feeling nauseous when I stood upright. It could also have been because I heard the borders to the city were closed. Military police had been deployed (in fact they directed traffic for the two weeks that followed). And part of me imagined that something would intervene, some force would right the world.

This is not the end, I remember thinking.

Another part of me also said: Maybe this is the end, and I am not taking this seriously enough.

I thought of all the post-apocalyptic novels I had read, and to confirm that life still went on, I looked out onto MacArthur Boulevard. There were no cars and no people. I felt like I might be the last person in the area. And this was no comfort to me.I stayed in the apartment, listening to news. Eventually, there was a sense of abatement. The missing plane had been accounted for—shot down or otherwise arrested in Western Pennsylvania. I began to see people on the sidewalk again in the early evening. And while there was still no traffic to speak of, I did see a young couple carrying tennis rackets, as if they were returning from play. Their gait was easy, relaxed, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. This gave me hope.

And so, while I kept my hiking pack near the door and at the ready, I went to work the next day, as usual. The offices were empty. Only a handful of us came to work. Our segment of the Natural History Building was unusually quiet. Moreover, there were no visitors. Tumbleweed fairly blew through the cafeteria and the gift shops. No children screamed at their mothers in the public restrooms. The custodian never once had to refill the toilet paper dispensers for that week. Of course, visitors stayed out of the city for awhile, but I did not find this a hardship, since it made the bus less crowded. I no longer had to fight like a salmon swimming upstream, flopping between strollers and mothers, to get to the escalators.  

What did die was a different ease of movement. Jersey barriers went up, magnotometers went in. Bag checks were instituted. I could no longer carry my pocket knife, my tiny scissors. A friend of mine, who worked Smithsonian maintenance, had to bury his utility knife in planter soil outside the Ronald Reagan Building because the guards wouldn’t let him in with it, and he couldn’t very well leave it outside unattended. When we came back from lunch, he dug it up and slid it back into his pocket.

In the mornings, I would watch the snipers pace the roof of the Justice Building across Constitution Avenue, disappearing behind the giant, wind-rippling flags, and then reappearing again. There were two that walked the periphery of the roof side that faced Natural History. They were dressed in navy blue, carried their rifles against their shoulders.

Before the anthrax scares, before darts were reportedly blown at passersby around Chinatown and Navy Memorial during lunch hour, and before the sniper (which was, ultimately, the deciding factor in my leaving the city forever), a kind of camaraderie settled in the city. People talked to one another who, under normal circumstances, might never have interacted directly before. The city does this to you over time. I had learned to be entirely alone amid a crush of rush hour commuters. A book or a companion to talk to saved you from the unwanted attention of strangers. South-American women, who usually spoke only to each other—and frequently peppering their conversation with the word ‘trabajo’–smiled and commented on the weather when I passed them. Two African American women, who also seemed deeply engaged in conversation, noticed me and slid over to make room for me in the Priority Seating. People I never met before spoke to me freely about their families, the son they were so proud of, the daughter who didn’t come home often enough. And I didn’t mind a bit. 

All this amid the chaos of traffic jams, caused in part by Bush’s motorcades, moving in and out of the city. At times, I could walk fast than the bus moved, once I reached downtown, and I would get off and walk the rest of the way to the Mall. I read novel after novel on the bus rides home. I enjoyed Granta issues. I corrected proofs of my articles. Life was, for a brief two weeks, very un-city-like, more like a small town.

Of course, things returned to their old ways within less than two weeks. Old stresses came back. Ocassionally, when the wind was right, you could still smell the remanants of the burned segment of the Pentagon. But the worst was over, and people closed themselves off again.

And then, our biggest worry became dirty bombs, anthrax, smallpox….and even more frightening, the unexpected unknown.

To this day, I will still avoid the subway whenever possible.

Tags: 9/11, National Archives, Pentagon, Smithsonian

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 6:46 pm and is filed under History, International Affairs, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.