INDEPTH: SEPTEMBER 11
Ground Zero — two years later
Anne Bayin | September 11, 2003
That morning, two weeks ago, a flutist played Amazing Grace on the sidewalk. He was surprisingly good, setting an appropriate tone for dozens of visitors at the fence looking in, or those just strolling by. Tourists were having their snapshots taken, posing by the scaffolding, uncertain how to look, looking confused.
© Anne Bayin
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When this family group appeared, I noticed the boy in the red shirt. His hand covered his mouth, as if to hide a gasp. At the same time, the mother leaned in to her son's face. Probably it was to do something mundane. Brush a speck of dirt from his eye? As a photographer, I was attracted to her gesture, which suggested a benediction. It said something about how I was feeling, contemplating the void.
I felt like I was in church. This was holy ground. I took the picture.
It was my first trip to New York since 9/11. I had been having a fine time, staying with friends on the Upper East Side, going to theatre, discovering new restaurants. It was almost as if nothing irreparable had happened. Almost.
There was a background track running in my head: 9/11, it said, 9/11. I'd find myself staring up at tall buildings and counting the number of storeys. Forty-five? My God, only 45? Double that and it's still not the height of the north tower.
I'd gaze out my bedroom window with its glimpse of Central Park and catch myself wondering: at what point did smoke and ash become visible up here? When did the lady morning-walking her Shitzus realize the world had changed?
I have two personal associations with the tragedy of the World Trade Center. Both have to do with friends. My friend Kim and my friend Roy. They were in my thoughts as I walked the perimeter, chatted with a construction worker, smiled at the man dressed in patriotic garb, clutching a home-made clock with 8:48 and 9:05 painted on its face. Pretty silly, but there was something poignant about his presence.
Poignant, too, were the scribbled messages on the hoardings, written in chalk and magic marker. Plywood at this construction site served as a giant guestbook, where visitors left heartfelt homages. "We pray for you," said one. Signed, "Adam."
Kim is Kim Phuc, who knows a thing or two about planes and terror. As a nine-year-old girl she was horribly burned by a napalm bomb in Vietnam, and a news photo of her anguish made her a symbol of war. I have known her since 1995, shortly after she fled to the west and a life of freedom. I had taken a photograph of her with her son Thomas on his first birthday, which became part of an international photographic exhibition. It depicts the landscape of her burns against the smooth skin of her infant: the past, the future. It is a picture of hope.
Kim and I were in New York for the launch of that exhibition. It was a joyful occasion.
© Anne Bayin
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Two months later, on the morning of September 11, Kim was on a flight to Washington, D.C., en route to a meeting at the White House. When the second plane struck, Kim's agent and friends began to call. We had no way of knowing what was happening with her. New York wasn't Washington, but close enough.
At 9 a.m. Kim had been at the boarding gate. She and fellow travellers were watching CNN live coverage and the aftermath of the first tower being hit. She was already shaken and tearful when the second plane exploded into the South Tower.
No one knew what was going on, it was like a movie. Kim says she realized right away: that is no accident. Meanwhile, they called her flight. She was remembering another plane, another war, as she strapped herself in, as her plane took off. They would be airborne only a short time before the pilot turned back. A third plane had struck the Pentagon.
It was afternoon before we heard Kim was home safe. As she now says in her speeches, September 11 used to be a happy day. It is, ironically, her wedding anniversary.
When I looked up, I saw only sky. I had inhabited that space once, had dinner on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. Now I was witnessing sheer absence at Ground Zero.
Roy is Roy Andries de Groot, possibly the most famous gourmet of our time. He introduced nouvelle cuisine to North America, wrote many books, and was food critic for Esquire magazine, before his death in 1983. The Robert Morley character in "Who Is Killing The Great Chefs of Europe?" was based on Roy. He was an imposing figure, and he was blind. We met in the mid-1970s when I produced a series of interviews with him for CBC Radio.
When I was in New York in 1976, he invited me to dine at a restaurant he was reviewing. It had just opened and it was called "Windows on the World."
I remember the elevator ride, the view, like being on the moon, the celestial food. A sampling of every appetizer, every dessert, five vintage wines. When Roy visited a restaurant, the kitchen knew in advance and the chef made a personal appearance at the table. There was nothing muted about Roy. Even his Seeing Eye dog got the treatment: a silver water bowl at Roy's feet.
Who knew "Windows" would go on to become a culinary landmark, the highest grossing restaurant in the country, the scene of the worst terrorist attack of our time? Emergency transcripts, released days before the second anniversary of the attacks, reveal the last frantic calls of Christina Glender, assistant manager. Reports vary on the exact number of Windows on the World employees who died, but they were many. Some say 72. Others 76. Others 79.
Recently, I rediscovered a souvenir menu from that lovely, memorable dinner. Roy had insisted on signing it, as had the maitre d', Alan Lewis.
"Nearby Clams and Oysters" were $3.75. The "Baked Iowa Ham in Madeira Cream" was $7.50. The Prix Fixe dinner was $16.50, as was the "Cote de Boeuf Madagascar with Green Peppercorns and Onions."
If you were paying, it was the most expensive ticket in town.
On the ground, below what used to exist, what exists only in memory, I looked for the boy and his family. Perhaps they had left, perhaps they were with others, staring hypnotically through wire at the subterranean construction site. I didn't see them again.
The churchy feeling never left me. The place was more powerful in its absence than in its presence.
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