9/11 2001

People escaping the hellish inferno of the building--by jumping to their deaths

In honor of the day, I am posting here an e-mail I wrote that evening, after the day that changed something in all of us:

 

(This blog appeared in "Glory: "A Nation’s Spirit Defeats the Attack on America," November 2001)

9/11/01

Dear Everyone Who’s Written to Check On Me Today.
Thanks for your concern.
            We are in complete shock. That is, even those of us who had expected something horrible to happen, something that would be so devastating that it would reach a place beyond our imagination (*)
            At nine in the morning I left my beach house in the Hamptons toward my home in Port Washington--East Egg on your literary map--which is 20 miles outside NYC. My writing group was to meet  that night. I was listening to Books-On-Tape, when, forty-five minutes into my drive, I needed to change a cassette. That’s when I heard the news. Two planes, one after the other crashed into The World Trade Center. “Here we go again,” I thought. “Those small planes. I hate them. They are prone to accidents, flown by amateurs.” But two? The gears engaged in my brain. Sabotage. An act of terror.
            The feeling of deja vu--the events I've witnessed in Israel from close and far—settled on me with some strange remoteness. The wait was over. It had finally happened. I called my husband, Ron, whom I had left behind at the beach house, and told him to turn on the TV. There was an odd utterance of sounds coming out of him as he watched with disbelief.
            “Talk,” I implored.
            Finally he became more coherent and proceeded to describe what he was seeing.
            The a scream. “Oh, my God!”
            “What?” I asked. “What’s happening?”
            “Oh, my God! The Building is falling down.”
            “What do you mean ‘falling down?’ It’s just a small plane—”
            “It’s a jetliner!”
            I raised the sound on the radio. They reported about a fire ball thirty stories high.
            “This is the moment that would change my life, our life, the world’s life,” I thought. Yet I was too calm. Five of our kids work in Manhattan—two daughters and three sons-in-law. I should panic. Something was terribly wrong with me.
            On the cell phone, his voice shaking, Ron insisted I return to the beach house. “They’ll block all the roads in and out of the city,” he said. “You may not be able to return for a long time.”
            “This is the beginning of a war,” I said. I had been driving for an hour. The notion that the Long Island Expressway would be closed due to a terrorist attack was absurd. Yet, that was how things worked in Israel. Nothing was absurd anymore. Not if the World Trade Center tower fell down. Fell down? I still thought that only the top floors had collapsed, from the spot where the plane had hit and upward.
            I pulled onto the next exit, drove the bridge over the highway to the south service road, then stopped on the shoulder. My heart started to beat fast.  There was no one around, all was eerily quiet, the radio turned down again so I could gather myself. I examined the calm with which I handled the news and knew that, as in time of a crisis, the impact would hit me later with force that would leave me reeling for a long time.
            I engaged the gear and began driving back, calling the kids. They had to evacuate all the tall buildings. My youngest daughter was in the street when she answered her cell phone. Her office is located in a basement, and people in her company stayed put. But since her wall borders the 86th Street subway station, which is one of the largest subway intersections, I ordered her to leave. She wanted to go in to inform her staff.
            “Call on your cell phone,” I told her. “Just go home. We haven’t seen the last of the surprises.”
            She started walking. As did my other daughter. Soon after, most phone lines to the city were partly disconnected or overtaxed. Our son-in-law, who lives in Long Island, walked across the bridge to Brooklyn, where he hitchhiked home.
            Ron’s niece, a mother of three children, the youngest only six months old, works in the building across the street from the WTC. She managed to flee when her office was hit hard by debris. In the confusion and black cloud, she found herself on the Staten Island ferry, shoeless and bagless. Ron’s two cousins who work on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center happened to be out of the office. One was away on a business trip, the other took their father to the eye doctor today! The mother called us earlier: Her husband's progressive blindness had saved this son's life...
 
(*)        Now re my remarks about those who expected this disaster: Last year I attended a lecture by Richard Clark, US Counter-Terrorism Coordinator at the National Security Council.  He said that Osama Bin Laden, a Muslim billionaire hiding in Afghanistan, had trained hundreds of militants to attack the West. His operation was very professional. His plan was--still is--to take over the West, the infidels. (He's behind the U.S.S. Cole attack and others.)  Bin Laden had already planted many highly trained people in the US. Some of them were known to the security authorities, some not. The problem was with the INS. Our immigration laws are extremely lax. Coupled with a legal system that grants instant rights to people suspected of trying to penetrate the US for hostile purposes, these men had been allowed to enter and were then told to come back for a hearing "in 8 months." In the meantime they were let loose on the streets of the USA.
            Often, if the FBI or CIA can't show the INS enough evidence about the INTENT of these suspects--only claim that they know from secret sources that these people had been members of terrorist groups in Egypt or Syria or Algeria. Judges then demand TESTIMONIES from these sources (How is the CIA supposed to fly in the sources?) Needless to say, most of these terrorists simply enter the country because of our liberal legal protection. They come in illegally and are instantly being handed the Bill of Rights.
            Once they are here and are legally cleared from any wrong-doing, the law prohibits the FBI to just follow them or tap their phones... . The FBI must show the judge PROOF of these men's conspiracies.
            To our question why didn't the public know about it, Clark said that the media considered these reports to be unnecessary alarmist and simply buried them.
            So here we are. The day that would mark the start of World War III.
            Talia

P.S. Two days later I got a call from a friend: Hundreds of cars at Long Island train stations had been left there, their owners—commuters to New York City--never returned to claim them.

"Strangers No More"

A REVIEW OF A DOCUMENTARY SHORT-LISTED FOR THE ACADEMY AWARD:

It is hard to imagine the challenge facing a school that serves over 800 children from forty-eight countries, children who’ve known wars and strife, who saw their parents killed in front of their eyes, or children who had walked the desert, or who come to school hungry and whose parents live under the radar screen of the authorities as foreign workers fearful of being caught and deported.

Yet Bialik-Rogozin school in Tel-Aviv, Israel not only educates them, but gives them love, compassion, and hope. In the open and accepting environment created by an outstanding principal Karen Tal and a team of exceptional teachers, students support one another, play together and chat in the new common language, Hebrew. Racial and color divides drop completely in a place where each child is “different” yet none is made to feel anything less than unique. Each child learns to put his or her hauntingly traumatic past behind, adjust to the present, and look to the future. Unlike other public schools in the city that close at 1 or 2 PM, Bialik-Rogozin is open late, until these children’s parents are back from work. Furthermore, as in the case of Johannes, a war refugee who speaks only Tigrit, freedom acquires a new meaning when the boy is taken to the doctor where he is fitted with glasses, and his teacher gives him bicycles so he can ride around the neighborhood and connect with his new world. At a home visit, when the teacher learns of the father’s visa problems, the school takes on the task of navigating the bureaucratic maze for the family. It is heart-warming to see that merely a few months after Johannes’s arrival, he is an eager and engaged student who now translates and helps a new Tigrit-speaking child find his way around the school.

And Esther, whose mother was killed in South Africa (yet who still believes that she will return,) is surprised when her new white-skinned friends admire her tightly braided hair, hug her, and seek her friendship. Soon, the articulate girl, now clothed and fed by the school, is helped to accept the finality of her mother’s death, flourishes and becomes a leader.

Nothing testifies to the success of the school as when the charming and determined Mohammed, who arrived from Darfur at age sixteen, not only catches up on a lifetime of lack of schooling, but upon graduation plans to return to his village and open a school there.

The film avoids the underlining political questions about a vulnerable country opening its borders to refugees or a public school that supports illegal immigrants by integrating their children into the new culture. Instead, the film teaches the most humane lesson as it demonstrates how far compassion, goodwill, and enormous patience can help change the life of children from utter despair to a world of possibilities offered by a sense of self, security and education.

It is easy to draw from the cliché of superlatives when describing an environment in which ethnic definitions and cultural differences—that all too often breed hatred—simply melt and fall away. Even the word “tolerance” is too trivial for the place that Lin Arison, the philanthropist who financed the documentary, calls “a miracle.” The tight throat and tear-filled eyes of the audience provide a better sense of the emotional power of the film.

And if “Strangers No More” fails to show Israel’s detractors her true face, then they ought to turn their critical eyes toward themselves.

The 40-minute documentary is short listed for the Academy Award (semi-final 8 for final 4, to be announced on January 24th,) and will be aired on HBO.
More about the film:
http://simongoodmanpictures.com/Strangers_No_More_Press_Kit.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_No_More_(film)