It
was ten to two, just after lunch on an Autumn day in September. I had parked my
car at the local hospital for an appointment and sat listening to the radio for
a few minutes as I was early. It was then that I heard the first reports that
told of an aircraft crashing into the World Trade Centre in
New York City
. There it was ten to nine in the
morning, a brilliant blue sky over the city as the work day began. I had to
leave the car before the further report came through of a second aircraft
hitting the Towers. While waiting in the hospital, the television was relaying
the first images to go world wide of what has become known simply by the date,
“9/11”
Where
are we thirteen years on? In a very dangerous and uncertain world I would
suggest. In the intervening years many lives have been lost in conflict in
different parts of the world. Not just military combatants but innocent men,
women and children caught up in conflict but with no part in the argument. The
Cold War, for all its risks, was a clearer experience, basically the democracies
of the West confronting the communist states of the East, living in the state
that was called MAD- Mutually Assured Destruction.
Now
it is difficult to know who to negotiate with, who has the ability to make
assurances that might be trusted.
As
I write this posting, there are ceasefires holding in the
Ukraine
and in the
Gaza
strip, uneasy, tentative but ceasefires
none the less.
With
the emergence of the so called Islamic Republic it is a different matter with
many thousands made homeless out of fear whilst others have been killed for
refusing to accept demands to convert or to accept domination by this group.
Both Christian and Muslim communities have suffered grievously in this way.
Peace,
peace will come, let it begin with me.
The
words that follow,
Manhattan
, were written in October 2001,
just days after the 9/11 attack. The clearing of the site was underway, a
process that would take many months.
Mary
Chapin Carpenter’s haunting song “Grand Central Station” written just after the first
anniversary, captures the pain and emotion of those days. It starts with these
words:
Got
my work clothes on for love, sweat and dirt.
All this Holy dust upon my face an' shirt.
Headin' uptown now, just as the shifts are changin',
To Grand Central Station.
I got my lunch box, got my hard hat in my hand.
I ain't no hero, mister, just a workin' man.
An' all these voices keep on askin' me to take them,
To Grand Central Station.
Grand Central Station.
The
song can be heard at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fZG0fa7-nM
Let
us be hopeful in difficult times.
Manhattan
Tears,
white
flecked
fears, peeling paper-shreds, fragments of floors, dust
under a sunlit sky early that Tuesday, this September, on
a mid-Manhattan Morning. Grey,
dusted figures drift, stunned,
under this shattered Autumn-skied space, figures stumble through down-town
streets, in wordless silence.
North
and
then,
carrying early morning coffee cups, greeting friends
with
idle chat from lift doors and lobbies, across a paper
pile,
stacked here and there, still under yesterday’s desk, till howling
siren-scream, as explosion then
implosion, took out
first this floor, then those above and many beneath.
South
where
orange
glow and scattered fragments filled wide windows, open spaces
where, in stunned amazement, people stood. The grey-haired banker, the
brash-young stock broker, the imaginative engineer, the young sharp-eyed
carpenter, staring speechless, unable fully to understand, secure still within
their personal space, beyond an expanding fireball.
Final
impact
on
South,
a faint line of hope gone,
as Mothers of young ones,
the Father of four,
wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, lovers, friends and families, the
casual workers, those city consultants, the
cluster of company directors, their frantic fingers on mobile phones, tapping out numbers and only cold voiced answering machines responding.
Final
call.
Ground
zero.
October
2001,
New York City
Manhattan
9/11
END
---------------
