By Elaine S., New Yorker and Fellow Fighter for Justice

(Posted with permission from Elaine)

I was there that morning, in midtown Manhattan, and watched the towers
collapse from the window of my office building. I stood there
with the International Division of my company, speechless, not
knowing the degree of the catastrophe at first, but aware that I
was watching the towers on fire and people burning. And
then one by one they collapsed. A colleague had a television on
another floor, I ran back and forth from the tv room to the corner
office window, comparing the broadcast with the reality. Curiously,
no one talked. We just stood there murmuring nonsense like "oh God,"
because in fact soon all we could see were billows of smoke. Then I
could hear that one of the men's voices was tight like he was about to
cry and I cried, just watching the smoke. We couldn't see the
jumpers, but knew about them from the TV, and then one of the men,
from the Dutch division said something to a colleague about
"Pentagon", so we knew it was larger than just New York. I called
Angelique, who works farther north (Museum of Nat. Hist.) in
Manhattan. She told me to leave the building
since she had heard that people were running and was afraid the
smoke would come up to my building (it didn't) and in a few
minutes my company supervisor came around
telling us to go home if we could. I stood around awhile, unsure
because I lived outside of Manhattan and the whole borough had been
blockaded. Then my boss, who has an apartment in Manhattan offered
a place for Angelique and me to stay with him. Finally we all
evacuated the building, and walked uptown.

We walked northward, through Central Park and it seemed surreal.
EVERYBODY was stunned, and on this beautiful sunny day, there were
masses of people walking slowly, numbly uptown, as if hypnotized. I
think by then most of us were less afraid of more attacks than that
we might have to go to war over it. Then it struck me, all the
rescue workers were dead. I said to my boss, "The firemen. They
were underneath it. They're all dead."

We picked up Angelique at the Museum and went to a corner grocery
store to buy water. Everyone was quiet. That was the extraordinary
thing. Quiet New Yorkers. People were unusually friendly and
polite. There was no panic, but rather an immediate sense of
cooperation, even kindness. No increase in the price of water,
although the store was packed, and no one objected to the crowd or the
long line.

We got to the apt. and finally got through to Angelique's mother in
Brussels who works for Belgian radio. By then it was on the news
worldwide and she had seen it on tv and she had been unable to
reach either of us and so was frantic. We gave her the apt.
telephone number and she called again and again, every hour. My
boss's family called from Germany too and he reassured them.

The three of us sat riveted to the tv for the rest of the
afternoon, seeing what the rest of the world saw, hearing the
sound of the military planes that had finally begun to circle around
Manhattan.

Some time very late in the day, we heard that the president had
fled in Airforce One but had finally landed some place and was
going to make a statement. We remarked on the embarrassment of the
president of the United States running away from New York instead
of standing by us, and then sending messages from hiding. We
wondered what took him so long.

About that time word came that the bridges had opened up again, but
we were too emotionally exhausted and spooked to make the trip back to
our house. My boss was just as happy to have company, so we stayed
in Manhattan but just dozed with the tv on all night. The next day,
most non-essential companies in New York were closed, so we went home.

Then the casualty count began, and the waiting-- for information,
for names, for explanation, for something that would make sense of
the whole thing.