Viewing Ground Zero

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
November 4, 2001

You can find people at the end of every amputated street all around the perimeter. People who have been haggling over the cost of a counterfeit FDNY ball cap just moments ago approach the fence cautiously. They’ve come to witness and yet they hesitate, reluctant to confront the reality of this place of hellish TV images. At first, it is a comfort that very little of the destruction can actually be observed; chain link fences covered with green tarps block the sight into the very heart of Ground Zero. And the buildings they came to see, the Twin Towers, are gone of course. To view their remains, you need to stand over near the West Side Highway and watch the trucks carrying the beams of twisted steel and loads of smoldering rubble out of the site headed for the dump on Staten Island.

But yet the people come and gasp at the charred and shredded buildings that remain. There is little sound except the rumble and thump of the cranes moving unseen debris just beyond the fence. For minutes at a time, the only movement from the crowd comes when someone digs into their pocket for a tissue to dab their tears or to blow their nose. Even weeks later, the site has the power to return September 11’s shock and sadness into everyone’s eyes.

A few people hold cameras over their heads to capture the emptiness, and the sudden faint snap of the shutter or the whir of the camcorder motor is oddly loud. The sorrow is so deep it seems to be ancient, and it is jarring to see the same banners that are visible in now familiar photos still hanging from light posts overhead. The events we usually call history either have happened long ago or are only revealed sometime in the future. But here, you can touch a finger to history: many store windows even now are covered with the gritty gray powder of the collapse. The smoke and smell drift up into the air, the incense of the fire that continues to consecrate this newly scared ground.

The people standing at the fence weave their fingers into the chain link mesh and stare at their memories of the towers as long as they can bear it. Then with bowed heads, they turn away and walk silently back through the crowd. There is no pushing and shoving. The crowd flows as one to absorb them, and a new group of people moves forward. Slowly, wary but determined, they approach to look into the face of a ruin they will never understand but need somehow to comprehend.