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49 Ann Street
by Anna Lascari
My curiosity prevailed over my sleepiness after the second thunderous
thump, which made me rush upstairs to the terrace. All the tenants of
the building were already on top of the elevator room. With a mug of
coffee in my hand, I watched the sparkled smoke and heard the crowd's
scream as I reached for a half-burnt invoice floating in the air. I
gazed at the solidity in which silent people marched steadily below
on Ann Street and caught them gaze up at us with a look of shock and
disbelief reflected in their eyes. The east wind delivered another half-burnt
paper of an office floor plan. I ignored it. We were surrounded by so
many blazed papers. The smell and speculations thickened on the roof
as the South Tower began to shake. In blasting shimmers of ash and smoke,
the building growled for a while before it collapsed. On our feet, we
joined the scream of the crowd below and the tower's death roar. The
roar hastened louder and louder as the mass of the tower, free now from
its structure, transformed into a grayish-white cloud of dust rushing
east. I stood mesmerized as I watched the dust plummeting down onto
John Street, turning next onto Nassau Street to then join a massive
cloud of dust approaching Ann Street. The mountain of dust was majestic,
uncontainable, loud and ALIVE. It covered buildings in its path and
rested parts of its mass on terraces, streets, and inside apartments,
transporting papers and credit cards. It was so powerful that I wanted
to join in this frenzied run. During this bizarre moment I extended
my arms imagining myself being lifted and carried away. The calls of
the people from the stairway brought me back to the real experience,
and I began to descend the steep, narrow staircase of the elevator room.
Three steps below, I stepped on my roommate, Maria. She was clenching
the rails, unable to move. Andreas, my other roommate, and I, helped
her inside the loft. The coffee mug, still in my hand, was now filled
with mud. We stood close to one another, speechless, while the phones
began to ring hysterically. "I am fine", is all I could bring
myself to say and that's all what they wanted to know. Suddenly, all
that was audible was the heave of a long sigh. It was a loud and velvety
sound, and before I could finish my thought, the second tower went down
the loft turned pitch black. No light came through the skylights and
thick black smoke covered the windows creating the illusion of a heavy
curtain. It was a dramatic and mysterious moment. I felt completely
disoriented. "I think I am alright," I said this time to my
mother, who was calling for the third time from Greece. At about 11:00
a.m. we walked down onto Ann Street. The police were guarding all intersections.
The streets and buildings were covered with a thick layer of white dust.
The brave people who emerged from their temporary shelters were also
covered in dust, as was the policeman at the intersection of Ann and
Nassau Streets, who told us to go back inside. If one could play with
dust as one plays with snow in the winter that was the moment in which
to do it. But nobody did. We were all too scared to reach out and touch.
My whole body started to itch severely and so I made my way back to
49 Ann Street. A group of people that had sought shelter in my building's
small lobby and stairway, inquired about the conditions outside. Everybody
was covered in dust, dazed and afraid. I offered my bathroom for people
to relieve themselves from the prickly dust. A few did. Inside the loft,
I asked one man, as he was drinking orange juice, whether he had been
inside a tower. He gestured "No". I asked him where he lived.
He made an attempt to answer, but failed. Everyone gradually left quietly,
holding wet paper towels over their faces. At 1:15 p.m. we left the
loft with wet t-shirts wrapped around our mouths and noses, and Vaseline
smeared around our eyes. There were a lot of people on the streets heading
north. We hitched a ride and, in lingering silence, the driver dropped
us off on 23rd Street where we found refuge at a friend's apartment.
It took three showers before the itchiness subsided.
For the following weeks, I managed to continue to work in my studio
in Long Island City, listening eagerly to the radio, while moving around
from apartment to apartment, mistrusting Giuliani's reassurances that, "the
health department tests show there are no airborne chemical agents about
which to worry". |
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