1 WTC: North Tower
2 WTC: South Tower
3 WTC: Vista Hotel
4 WTC: Southeast Plaza Bldg:
Commodities Exchange
5 WTC: Northeast Plaza Building
6 WTC: U.S. Custom House
7 WTC: Tishman Center
1 WFC: Dow Jones
2 WFC: Merrill Lynch
3 WFC: American Express
(north of Winter Garden)
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Circumnavigating the frozen zone
Five fortnights walking the perimeter
Fortnight four
23 October to 5 November
Copyright © 2001-2005 Diane Fisher
except photos copyright © 2001-2005 by the respective
photographers.
Wednesday, 24 October: This country lives
by a set of values that allow any generation
presented the challenge to become the greatest
generation--and that then let politicians
pervert the meaning of the ultimate sacrifice.
I do not believe that firefighters, police, and
EMTs ran up those stairs 11 September, and that
all those who've labored selflessly since then at
ground zero have been working to further enrich
the stockholders who drive globalization.
I heard some Arizona congressman on the radio this
morning speaking in opposition to federalizing
airport security, arguing in favor of keeping
security a profit-making enterprise. Now that
will go a long way toward restoring fliers' confidence.
He supported his argument mainly by bashing the civil
service (you know--the public payroll parasites who
taxpayers, e.g., send into burning buildings, or expect
to deliver our mail when they're not in the hospital--or
worse--with job-related anthrax). After the events of the
past six weeks, how dare he? How dare he? ...
"[W]hen a police helicopter circled one of twin towers
Sept. 11, smoke and flames made roof landing impossible, Mayor
Giuliani said yesterday." But that's not the whole story.
Scary piece: "WTC
Roof Doors Locked; Rudy says helicopter rescue too
risky," by Daily News Staff Writers Michele McPhee
and John Marzulli, New York Daily News Online, 24 October 2001.
Thursday, 25 October: Ideology uber alles. Sometime
the day before that Arizona congressman was promoting
continued private airport security by bashing the civil
service, a passenger aboard a plane in flight found that
he'd unintentionally brought aboard a loaded gun. The
private security firm employee who screened his briefcase
at the New Orleans airport had failed to notice the weapon.
The flight's destination? Would you believe?--Phoenix
("Man
boards plane with pistol," by Washington Post
Staff Writer Greg Schneider, washingtonpost.com; page A07,
Thursday, 25 October 2001).
When five Supremes tortuously decided that about the only
right too sacred to be reserved to a state is counting votes
in a close presidential election, they apparently got the
G.O.P. to thinking about other matters that maybe shouldn't
be states' rights. This very same Gingrich Class of '94
Arizona legislator has found a new matter he considers
too momentous to leave to state discretion. He's itching
to grab oversight
of donations to 9/11 charities for the feds--to wit,
for the opportunistic Republican-dominated House, which
since 11 September has outdone its old record for
shamelessness. "U.S. Rep.
J. D.
Hayworth (R-AZ) is seeking congressional oversight
of the distribution of an estimated $1 billion in
charitable contributions collected on behalf of families
of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,"
his Web site announces. Presumably he is concerned that
the Democratic attorney general who has oversight over
New York State charities won't channel the money to
corporations. Hayworth envisions a way to mainline
the donations to businesses so they can create jobs
that widows and orphans can apply for to pay off
the funeral expenses of the lazy civil servants
who so burdened taxpayers during their lifetimes?
Friday, 26 October: Rising above the quaint
low rooftops that form the view from the window
behind my monitor, this morning the very long
black arm of a crane doing some local job reaches
skyward, American flag flying high. W. doesn't have
anthrax and neither do I. A Nassau County cop on
duty on Hudson across the street from my bank tells
me there are no dumb questions, so I ask why Varick
and Hudson are open but Houston and King streets
are blocked bigtime around the federal building
that occupies the entire block--the building that
houses my branch post office. He says that the I.N.S.
entrances are on the side streets. Oh! ... I choose
not to pursue this with him, but I do believe that
that building is where some suspects rounded up
right after the attack are still "detained."
I'm not making that up. And after dark it's lighted
up like a baseball park. I haven't received any mail
in days.
The crowds are long gone from West Street, but I
understand that a small crew have made it their
24/7 job to stand watch, waving Thank You signs, at
what's come to be known as Point Thank You, West and
Christopher streets, and that recovery workers are
grateful for the gesture. Hat's off, folks. But I'll
go up there another day. Now I turn south on West,
staying on the city side. Brilliant sunlight bounces
off whitecaps in the river; I'm not overdressed in a
goosedown parka. Votive candles and messages still adorn
the chintzy strip of sidewalk at the end of Canal Street
that the City assigned the foreign press for the couple
of days when the frozen zone was solid south of Canal.
No voting blocs among their readers. A crane loads debris
onto barges at Pier 25. I pass one other pedestrian on
this side between Houston and Harrison streets. Although
the frozen zone has shrunk again, at Harrison a cop
directs me eastward, and I again pass the point on
Greenwich Street where I reversed my rush southward
that punchdrunk Tuesday morning.
The north boundary of the frozen zone now is staggered
and green mesh fixed to the chainlink deliberately blocks
the street-level view. The City announced weeks ago that
the boundary would drop to Park Place. Now that actually
has happened along part of the northern stairstep.
The mood varies from checkpoint to checkpoint. I'm
momentarily startled to hear cops joking loudly with
each other at Greenwich and Chambers. A high school and
community college are nearby and the cops must feel less
stressed out now that Greenwich south of Chambers is open.
I've happened to witness a few chance encounters lately
between recovery workers some distance from ground zero.
They hug like best friends who haven't seen each other for
years and the cheerful camaraderie suggests enduring bonds.
The farther south and east one walks along the northern
perimeter, the more the mood is the same solemnity of a
month ago. At West Broadway, the uniformed presence is
very alert to cameras and quick with the "This is
a crime scene" baloney. Like shooting a photo from
two blocks away is going to disturb evidence?
Rudy understandably didn't want anybody to get a lucky shot
of victims' families getting emotional during the couple
of days they were being escorted to the pile, or of some
gruesome discovery, and to make a buck off it (on the 'net
of course--he said so). While I can sympathize with that
point of view, I doubt it would stand up to judicial
scrutiny even under "crime scene" cover. Sleaze
and insensitivity are not illegal. Obviously, the site
is being photographed, and extensively, with
permission, for money and on the 'net. It also seems
clear that--for whatever reasons--he doesn't want
unauthorized photogs shooting images of recovery
workers. When rubberneckers were concentrated at
Broadway cross-streets, the ban worked as a valid
crowd-control device but not noticeably better than
the one-shot-and-move-on policy that preceded it, which
seemed fair enough. Now, unsurprisingly, enforcement
is selective. Unless they have a reason, NYPD cops
often don't bother; National Guard troops seem to
operate under strict orders to enforce the ban.
<update,
14 April 2002>
The rights of the affected photographers are a First
Amendment issue that may seem too trivial to join in
the circumstances, but I think that not testing the ban
is a mistake. If these folks can be forbidden to shoot
in the frozen zone, what's to keep authorities from
forbidding me--absent press credentials--to take notes
there ... and then to upload verbal snapshots of what
I've seen to <gasp> the Internet. Stephen pointed
out an artist Monday at Greenwich and Rector streets
sketching the site. Now that must have flummoxed
the Guard. At the least, the ban is the latest entry
on the long ledger of the bad Rudy's contempt for
constitutional guarantees.
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A block south is the corner of Vesey where last
week I stood alone and shaken, then 5WTC,
beyond the hidden pile the torn-up 4WTC wreckage.
5WTC looms stark, dark, disturbing. The site will
be prepared tomorrow to close down for a memorial
service Sunday afternoon for victims' families
in Church Street in front of 5WTC. Oy. I dunno. ...
I'm relieved to turn away from this particular
ruin and to see through a window near Broadway
the shoe repair guy's familiar smile.
I walk a couple of blocks down Broadway on the west
side, open for the first time below Vesey. Murals
have been removed from the Vesey Street side of St.
Paul's Chapel's wrought iron fence and for the first
time I read the messages on Broadway. Church officials
have hung canvas on that fence with markers for new
messages and I watch a man with a backpack write sadly
that his family helped build the WTC. In the next block,
a notice to police, a few weeks old, lists dangerous
buildings. Among those that can't be entered under
any circumstances, in addition to the obvious, are
130 Liberty (the Banker's Trust building draped with
black steel curtain, across Liberty from 4WTC), 90 West
Street (that's between Cedar and Albany), 130 Cedar,
and 30 West Broadway. Those that can be entered with
an escort are the South Bridge (between stairs in a
kiosk on the south side of Liberty and the WFC), 1 to 3
WFC, 140 West Street, and 22 Cortlandt (the Millenium
[sic] Hotel). Crossed off the restricted list and
added to the no-entry list: the Winter Garden.
The air in J&R on Monday was if anything more
contaminated than that in the streets; today big air
purifiers are placed strategically throughout the
outlets and do their job well. Customers are plentiful;
hope they're buying. (A few days after 11 September word
was about that you couldn't find a new notebook in all
New York City. I found out it was no rumor two weeks
after the attack in a chain electronics store on Union
Square: On the counter where tethered cages let shoppers
test laptop keyboards and see the screens were only empty
tethered cages.) My last stop is Computer Book Works.
I'm the only customer, but unlike Weber's at least CBW
still is doing business. Try though I may, since this
began I haven't been able to wrap my mind around
anything having to do with software. Slashdot and
the Register and XP stuff look way beyond meaningless
to me. I leave CBW empty-handed and feeling guilty.
As I walk across Chambers Street it's dark and I realize
that I no longer stick close to the perimeter and no
longer stop at every intersection where I can see the
site. I've spent hours staring down those streets. I
finally am becoming desensitized. I don't know whether
that's a good or a bad thing.
In my absorption with the West Village firehouses, I hadn't
even thought about how close my precinct is to ground
zero till the Daily News a few days ago began listing
a funeral service on Staten Island Saturday for a Sixth
Precinct officer. Now I'm going after the rest of the
bad news. I swing up to West 10th Street. The last time
I was here, a few years ago, the occasion was paperwork
related to an apartment (not mine) burglary in progress
that the Sixth foiled after I called 911. A squad car,
lights flashing, now blocks through vehicular traffic
at the corner of Hudson. I wonder if that has become
standard. In front of the stationhouse, if the shrine is
more modest than the one at the Sixth Avenue firehouse,
feelings are as deep. On a pillar over to the right is a
MISSING notice for the officer, the standard heart-breaking
smiling photo. He was here. Now he's not. He could have
been one of the cops who caught that burglar in a foot
chase a few blocks south on Hudson. A sign in the foliage
and messages in the raised planter:
HEROS FROM
WEST 10TH STREET
NYFD Squad 18
LT Billy McGinn
FF Eric Allen
FF Manny Mojica
FF Andy Fredericks
FF Dave Halderman
FF Larry Virgillio
FF Timmy Haskell
6th Precinct
Police Officer James Leahy
Bomb Squad
Detective Danny Richards
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I wrote a few weeks ago that I knew nobody in any
affected building, not even friends of friends.
That wasn't entirely true. It turns out that 20
men who didn't know me but who were part of my
life perished. As Larry Groce said, we'll never
take anything for granted again.
At the eastern end of the Sixth's block of 10th
Street, at Bleecker, is a gift shop. All the
merchandise is imported from Afghanistan. In the
window hangs an American flag. The firehouse--the one
in the same block as Ed's apartment--is a couple of
blocks east.
Sunday, 28 October: The recovery operation and
the city's mood have been blessed since 11 September
with unusually dry and sometimes unseasonably warm
weather. Today is no exception--another blue sky but
with a crisp north wind. I stay away from the frozen
zone on weekends, and especially would have today
because of the memorial service for victims' families.
But Dick calls early, wants to see ground zero, and
must return to D.C. at 12.30. We view it from the north,
east, and south, and I hope he'll write something about
his first impressions.
I don't notice the chemical stench anymore except where
it's strong. He detects it as soon as we encounter a
trace--upwind. The banner hanging from the building
next to the Sixth Avenue firehouse has come untethered
at the bottom; messages on the walls downtown too were
showing wear and tear and most now are gone except in
front of St. Paul's. Dick asks about something I've been
seeing from the start but that hadn't registered consciously:
What are all the nitrogen tanks for? (The oxygen tanks
raise no questions.) He's the scientist around here,
so I say, I dunno, what is nitrogen usually used
for? Nothing he can think of that would relate to the
recovery operation.
<clarification,
9 June 2002>
South of the site, Guard troops
have vanished, leaving behind handwritten warnings
everywhere not to photograph anything. Everywhere,
people are photographing everything. As we walk up
Broadway, another truckload of nitrogen and oxygen
tanks rolls southward. Dick never saw a bookstore
he didn't want to browse, and we drop into
Computer
Book Works where I buy a remaindered emacs book
I probably could have copped cheaper from a street
vendor. Hope that helps. Dick spots a guy in an
SUV driver's seat, respirator clamped to his face,
flag wrapped around his head, dog on the passenger
side. Looks to me like a recovery volunteer, but
I wonder what he's doing here today. This is
supposed to be the first day of rest at ground
zero since 11 September.
Anthrax anxiety is running high in D.C., the atmosphere
in NYC is noticeably different, Dick observes. I don't
doubt that anthrax anxiety is--legitimately--high in
media circles and among Post Office workers here and
in Jersey, and maybe it is other places in the city
and 'burbs, but it surely is not widespread downtown.
I'm gravely concerned about the city's economic prospects
and what this U.S. administration with its weird wind-up
front man (I do not have anthrax. I can't say whether
I'm taking antibiotics or have been vaccinated. I do not
have anthrax) will do next at home and abroad (way
too many Red Cross hits and civilian casualties). Nothing
else. At brunchtime, restaurants in Tribeca and the
Village are jammed, the mood indoors and out seems
to be almost merry, and I wonder who BBC and some U.K.
print media types talk to before reporting "New
York City paralyzed by fear!" I think the street
churn has a lot to do with the equanimity. As we leave
the Greenwich Village Bistro, Dick learns that what he
mistook for a bumblebee is in fact a gila monster.
The black and yellow-clad little girl and her parents
may be on their way to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's
Halloween party. Where we stand is on the route of the
Village Halloween parade. Leading the march next week
will be a phoenix, quite reflective of the local mood
rather than an attempt to inspire a turnaround.
At ground zero, smoke still rises from the fires,
and as Dick leaves for home families are gathering
for a memorial service where many will be presented
urns of commemorative earth and ash from the pile,
absent identifiable remains.
Monday, 29 October 2001: What's wrong with this
sentence: "[On 26 October,] I walked past Trinity
Church, ghostly in its coating of dust, its wall covered
with flowers and posters with condolences from mourners
who have trekked from London and Bali and Tel Aviv"?
... The church that looked that way that day was
St. Paul's Chapel (if you choose not to quibble
with calling a wrought iron fence a "wall").
San Francisco editor David Talbot can be excused
for writing that in a piece dated today in Salon.
A lot of New Yorkers don't know what Trinity Church
looks like either. (It too has a wrought iron fence,
not a wall, in front.) On no day did Trinity look
like Talbot's description. He got a few other details
wrong too, but never mind. Few New York journalists
get downtown right.
<photos: St. Paul's
and Trinity, 2 June 2002>
Wednesday, 31 October 2001: The East Side matron
who hoarded $7000 worth of anthrax medication must feel
vindicated. The East 64th Street hospital stockroom clerk,
a Bronx resident, who had the nation's first case of
apparently non-media-, non-mail-related pulmonary anthrax
died this morning. Al Qaeda was fingered instantly for
the plane attacks; authorities seem to have no clue
who's behind the anthrax terrorism. The NYPost blames
Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman--in jest, of course.
Nobody else thinks the deaths--this is number four--are
a laughing matter. If sleaze and insensitivity were
illegal, News Corp. principals would be in jail.
Friday, 2 November 2001: The suspect from San
Diego who was just indicted was being held in NYC, and
I wonder if he was in that I.N.S. jail down the street
and was moved. The side streets now are open to traffic
and, except for Jersey barriers still in the parking
lanes, are pretty much back to normal. Broadcasts
on all the usual VHF channels except 13--PBS--are again
reaching downtown Manhattan; only my favorite FM station
is still off the air, and probably will be till next
year, I read in the Daily News. I still haven't cabled
the equipment I bought to compensate.
Something has dawned on me. The horror on the faces of
onlookers in some photos isn't general. It's the expression
of people seeing other people who've just chosen death by
jumping over death by fire. I forget whether any are
in "the show on Prince Street," as it's called
here. Every time I visit, new images have been added.
Some are shocking. Near the front of one of Here Is New
York's two storefronts now is a photo of the partially
burned press shields of one photojournalist, next to a
shot of the program for his funeral service 19 September
at a Village church. An unadorned video of ground zero
in its first hours runs behind a curtain at the rear of
the space. My timing has been lucky. There's never been
a line when I've entered. More typically, as I left
yesterday a line stretched halfway down the block.
Today I visit a different pro/am exhibit, The September 11
Photo Project, on Wooster Street. Photographers have been
encouraged to express themselves in words too, and for
the most part that was a bad idea. The unbroken space
is warehouse-huge, many of the prints are snapshot
small, and that's a worse idea. The exhibit is
worth visiting, but the show on Prince Street is
mounted in a way that itself conveys the chaos of the
events, larger prints crowded to dynamic effect in an
intimate space. For good reason, that show has had a
ton of publicity, and it's the one the pilot's wife from
Las Vegas and her friends leaving 26 Wooster are looking
for. I give them directions and cross Canal Street
heading south.
<photo,
West Broadway at Canal, 22 May 2002>
The retired couple from London sitting on the stools
where Luisa from Chicago and I had sat in the cookie store
on Broadway at Fulton had planned their trip before the
attack and were undeterred. Flew to D.C., then Minneapolis,
rented a car and drove 6000 miles, finally to San Francisco.
He says U.S. airport security still is a joke; I tell
him the House has just voted not to fix it. Although
their bags were singled out for examination, he could
easily have had a bomb packed in one that San Francisco
airport security passed, he says. He's surprised and
impressed by New Yorkers' resilience. "You taught
us how," I answer. I'm thinking blitz. That was
then. He thinks I mean Irish terrorists.
I ask a cop on Broadway what the nitrogen is for.
He thinks it powers the welders' torches.
Also on Broadway, occasional clusters of firemen in
dress uniforms, presumably after memorial services.
Ever since WTC MISSING notices disappeared from the
frozen zone new MISSING notices have been posted here
and there for relatives who had nothing to do with
the WTC. Next to the Brooks Brothers store at 1 Liberty
Plaza a sign can be seen on the temporary structure
above the green mesh'd chainlink fence: OCME DMORT/Field
Mortuary. At West and Rector streets, the southwest
extreme of the site, I draw a map of the WTC buildings
for a young Italian who can't figure out which wreckage
he's seeing.
Beyond green mesh barriers on Greenwich Street north
of Rector, glowing sparks shower from welders' torches.
The welders stand on high platforms and shear overhangs
from beams and girders sitting on flatbed trucks, usually
one per truck, so they can be carried through the streets.
Steam rises when the debris is hosed down at the mandatory
vehicle wash. As the flatbeds pass the closest place
civilians are allowed, steam still is rising from the
massive twists of steel--a mobile exhibit of the most
dramatic sculpures I ever expect to see. I don't have
the poetry in my soul to describe them. One of the men
standing next to me snaps one of these steaming girders
with a digital camera. This is the first time I've
wanted a virtual image of what I'm seeing enough to ask
the photographer to email a jpeg. When he answers, "I
don't speak English," we're at an impasse. I can't
place the accent immediately and the man he's with hurries
him away. I'd already decided to buy a camera and spend
the rest of my life photographing NYC.
Now I decide to buy a camera and spend the rest
of the clean-up photographing this mournful parade
<update:
Job done? 30 May 2002>.
(All wishful thinking--unless somebody wants to front
$800 for the camera I crave and can't hope to buy.
<update>)
At Greenwich and Rector, a man is hefting two nitrogen
tanks. I ask him what the nitrogen is for. The gas is
forced into phone lines to keep water out, he says.
Rector Street is torn up its entire length, giving
an up-close and personal glimpse of NYC infrastructure.
Phone lines? Probably several things. Lots of pipes
in that trench. At the Broadway end a tall man in a
tux is painting an announcement on raw plywood that
his restaurant near Rector on Washington Street is open.
Handwritten cardboard signs that say the same thing have
replaced the National Guard's handwritten cardboard signs
that warned against taking snapshots. The tall man in the
tux has hung ads on Trinity Church's fence as well. The
church is scheduled to hold its first services since 11
September Sunday. The vendor vultures who surfaced as
soon after 11 September as they could obtain patriotic
merchandise now sell NYFD and NYPD baseball caps and
T-shirts too. The sidewalk in front of Trinity has
become that neighborhood's counterpart to Canal Street.
I restrain myself and don't ask one I've seen every
day whether she also sells victim relics.
At Cortlandt I stand on the west side of Broadway
where civilians weren't allowed till recently,
contemplating the way the wreckage has changed since
the first time I looked past the damaged Odd-Job Trading
and Century 21 stores. A man stops next to me and says
in quiet wonder, "It's still smoking. ..."
I've heard that again and again. Sometimes more,
sometimes less, the fires still burn.
Ralph tells me he was at work in his office on
the 27th floor of the Century 21 office building
when he heard the first plane, too loud, too low,
then a massive explosion--the impact--followed
quickly by a second explosion--fuel igniting
inside the tower--explosions that had a quality
unlike any explosion you've ever heard, Ralph
says. He remembers it in slow motion. He and
his co-workers rushed to the windows: a cloudburst
of debris--ash, papers, larger, unidentifiable objects.
Then they rushed to the elevators. While they were in
the lobby debating which of the two exits might be safer,
Dey Street or Cortlandt, the second plane struck. Till
then people had been scared. Now they started screaming.
Crouching, Ralph opened the Cortlandt Street door a crack.
A storm of flaming fuel and debris was raining down from
the south tower. They ran up Dey Street and, like so many
that morning, Ralph headed for home on foot across the
Brooklyn Bridge. When people suddenly started screaming
he thought something had happened to the bridge. The
south tower had collapsed. 4WTC was severed.
This is the first time Ralph's returned to Manhattan.
His office relocated temporarily to Brooklyn, and reopens
Monday on William Street. He's here now because he didn't
want to experience the first shock of this sight Monday
morning. I feel so sorry for this gentle, wounded man.
Ralph says that although the Century 21 building
<photo, 2 June 2002>
has been declared structurally sound and his business
plans to move back there, people who've been in the
basement have seen cracks in the foundation and he
won't go back. For the first time I grasp why all
those businesses want to relocate in midtown because
of the trauma their employees suffered.
I ask another cop on Broadway what the nitrogen is
for. He thinks it powers the welders' torches.
Take your pick--or none of the above.
A volunteer from Philadelphia has been waiting since
11 September for this one-day opportunity to help.
She invites passersby to write messages on the canvases
hanging from St. Paul's fences, offers masks, and helps
in whatever other ways she can. As I'm about to leave
the zone, near the northwest extreme I turn the crude
map of WTC buildings I drew at West and Rector upside
down to try to explain to another perplexed Italian
which wreckage she's seeing. She's flown here to run
the marathon Sunday. Where are the towers, everyone
wants to know. I'm still having a hard time myself
distinguishing between 5WTC and parts of 4WTC.
The last American I talk with today hails me by
name--that's a first--from a hotdog stand in what I
guess realtors now call Tribeca. Steve was the editor
of a Manhattan weekly I once worked for briefly, then
we often saw each other in passing when we worked for
competing city government branches. Wearing a big Green
for Mayor button, he's grabbing dinner to take back to
campaign headquarters. The election--finally--is Tuesday.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, of course.
I learn on the 11 o'clock news that when NYFD survivor
families and firefighters demonstrated at the site this
morning against the City's sharp cut in the size of the
uniformed force at the site, they had a dust-up with
cops. Fists flew, firemen were arrested. One widow says
she doesn't want her husband to become landfill. Oh, my. ...
For want of something better to watch at 11.30
I turn to "Nightline." Arundhati Roy is a
writer who has achieved quick, early critical and popular
acclaim. I've been interested to read her, but hadn't yet.
I hope that I'll come across something before too long
that suggests she has acquired the maturity conspicuously
absent from her public remarks about 11 September thus
far, on ABC and in print. Till then, I won't be reading
her after all. Roy seems to have the same ice water flowing
in her veins as the Silicon Valley software entrepreneur
who was complaining one week after the attack that wounds
were healing too slowly; I wouldn't be able to keep that
out of my mind while reading her.
Consider the poignant cries in this paragraph from
a piece written by Laleh Khalili for the Iranian--a
writer and a 'zine I'd never heard of (link in
Recommended Reading):
"And I fear things I never had felt:
I fear internment, and harassment at the airports,
I fear the looks on the streets, and I feel grim
and I feel dirty, and I feel guilty. Guilty!
For what? For a bunch of zealots doing what I
cannot contemplate, in revenge for some horribly
inhuman treatment that is also beyond human
comprehension? How do we ever rescue our dignity,
fight for a cause, when so much devastation and
havoc is wreaked by other people with whom you
seemingly share this belief in the cause? And
what to do for this wounded injured bloodied
humanity that has lain to ruin in so many places
in so many ways, by so many hands. ... And for
what? And there is the grotesque celebrations
in the West Bank. How can a suffering people
feel no empathy?"
How glibly Roy, to press her political point, dismisses
the lives lost. The losses Ralph (who as it happens is
black) and Khalili (who also lives in Brooklyn) suffered
are nothing to Roy. She no doubt believes she has adequately
answered the anguish of that Indian's How could they
do such a thing; I don't want to think what her
response would be to his pain that he can never bring
his children back to their home next to ground zero.
Roy has positioned herself as the Jane Fonda of today's
peace movement--glamorous, talented in her field, and
a naive spoiled brat eager to trumpet her highly
selective "compassion."
--adpF
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