NEW YORK – Ten days after the September 11 attacks, a clown in full regalia appeared at Ground Zero, his red nose and painted smile a jarring attempt to lift the spirits of gas-masked rescue crews and the thousands of visitors circling the smoldering wreckage that entombs nearly 3,000 people.
Tourists snap photos, tambourine-wielding evangelists shout, and survivors grimly survey the jagged, smoking pyre of the World Trade Center. Pundits predict that frivolous pop culture will never regain its hold, but the streets tell a more complex story of grief, commerce, and resilience.
A city of souvenirs and sorrow
Sidewalk vendors hawk memorabilia of the iconic towers – desk ornaments, spoons, refrigerator magnets, keychains – mass-produced before the horror, now transformed into foreboding twin tombstones. Online, sellers offer gruesome shrapnel, including damaged stop signs and charred debris. Near Ground Zero, printers rush out postcards and posters of the towers in flames.
One man holds shards of glass and plaster from the imploded buildings, pondering whether to keep them. Nearby, a woman bends to pick up pieces of sharp concrete from the tangled wreckage. Hundreds jostle for photographs while armed security, police, and firefighters work in the smoky canyon of pulverized skyscrapers.
Troops in gas masks allow the public to stroll within blocks of the obliterated site. Thousands of dazed mourners wander the surrounding streets, as if attending a massive urban funeral. The financial district is largely deserted, its buildings dark without power. Camouflaged soldiers guard emergency workers but also offer prime viewing spots.
“Folks, take a picture and move on, please,” a police officer says, ushering the sidewalk-bound public.
Tourists and residents bathe Ground Zero in a strobe of camera flashes. Some wear newly minted T-shirts depicting the towers and the U.S. flag. A young man sports a shirt with a gun and the words: “Welcome to New York Osama bin Laden. Duck motherfucker.” Another reads: “America Under Attack. I Can’t Believe I Survived.”
Instead of window shopping, people photograph displays of shoes and goods encased in thick white ash, like artifacts in a surreal Pompeii. Fingers trace revenge-filled slogans and victims’ names on ash-caked windows and walls.
The most harrowing view is from Liberty Street, where the World Trade Center’s lattice-like beams stab upward through smoke. Onlookers angle their cameras to capture the wreckage, an American flag, and a line of U.S. Army soldiers. A chatty National Guard trooper, unarmed, unbuttons his shirt to show his body armor. A visitor recounts a reporter’s exchange with a woman wiping ash off a car: “Oh, is this your car?” She pointed to the ash and said, “No. These are my friends.”
Faith, fear, and the road ahead
Amid the solemnity, Black evangelists from New York’s Alive Chapel International bang tambourines, shouting promises of healing and miracles. Nuns from Mother Teresa’s order, in their white saris with blue stripes, hand out prayers for the canonization of the Albanian-born Agnes Bojaxhiu, who died in Calcutta in 1997.
An Irish woman, ignoring the missionaries, points to where the twin towers once stood. “Up there, they were jumping out of the windows. It’s too horrible to even think about.” Asked if she is a tourist, she replies: “Just for the day.”
Wherever people meet, they swap stories of where they were and how they reacted. At a Lower East Side bar, a journalist recalls: “They thought I was dead because I was down there, real close, when the towers collapsed. I just ran for my life, but I couldn’t outrun the cloud of debris. I was scared. You didn’t know how big the pieces would be.”
An optimistic graphic designer sips beer and says: “These things come in cycles. Now it is bad. But it’ll be OK soon. But at a new level. It’s like Japan after World War Two. Japan came back and rebuilt itself.”
Others predict more attacks, possibly chemical. Thousands of New Yorkers buy gas masks at around $85 each. Officials belatedly warn that masks only work if worn constantly, since an attack might only be revealed after a biological agent has spread. Advertisers unfurl U.S. flags above their logos, splashing them across newspapers and street signs.
The streets of New York remain a raw, chaotic memorial – a place where grief, commerce, and defiance intertwine. As the world watches, the city’s resilience is tested, and its people find their own ways to cope, remember, and move forward.
