Disquiet in New York: A Siren's Wail Can Bring Shudders
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
September 24, 2001
The Associated Press
Many New Yorkers said they felt a nagging sense of dread since the attack on the World Trade Center. Some cannot relax, while others find themselves avoiding tourist attractions and stocking up on survival gear.
Even as the days tick steadily by, unmarred by further atrocities, the presentiment lingers. It subsides for stretches of time, subdued by the exigencies and entanglements of life, but it stubbornly reasserts itself when a fresh rumor erupts, when another police car shrieks past.
Throughout the city, an unrelenting fear persists in the recesses of many people's minds that something else bad is going to happen. A car bomb. A chemical attack. More planes. Will it be today? Tomorrow? In the night?
Of course, nothing at all might occur — many people hope that this is the likely outcome — but the disquiet persists. Nonetheless, everyone is urged to carry on, do what they do, muster the courage to quell the simmering anxiety. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday again entreated New Yorkers to show how sturdy they are by resuming their lives.
It is not easy. For some people, it is impossible.
"Every little thing makes you paranoid," said Samia Watt, 31, a manager in a doctor's office from Queens. "My girlfriends and I went to the movies. When the theater started to shake, I lost it until I realized that it was the subway going by."
Ever since the day the planes came and the world went wrong, many people have revisited the equations of their lives and have altered their behavior out of fear of what's next. Some changes are nuanced and seemingly superfluous; others are more meaningful. Whether changes enacted under such extraordinary strain will endure remains unanswerable, but for now, at least, they are palpable. For those who have made them, they are necessary.
Several not normally religious people said they were saying prayers each night before going to bed, a helpful way to ease them into sleep. People who always kept windows open now close them tight. A man, not much of a drinker, said that when he arrives home, his wife has a margarita and he has some bourbon, their new method of calming themselves.
Any number of people like these were hesitant to have their names or addresses published. Fear inhibited their openness. "I guess they wouldn't be targeting individuals, would they?" one man said. "I don't know, anything's possible. Why take a chance?"
Some people are keeping their distance. Chris Ciampa, 24, a trader who works in Midtown, planned to move to Manhattan. He's staying put in Queens.
There is a person who lives on the Upper East Side and walks to work — a building on 42nd Street — passing through the hubbub of Grand Central Terminal as the most expedient route. Since the attacks, this person has kept on the sidewalks bordering the terminal, in case the next thing to happen happens there.
Others are shunning Pennsylvania Station, the Empire State Building, the United Nations, Trump Tower, any structure that seems sufficiently symbolic to invite terrorist scorn. For unclear reasons, one man said he didn't go want to go near Grant's Tomb. "I don't know," he said, "I just have a feeling they might try Grant's Tomb."
There is the businessman being treated by a psychologist for what he won't look at. He worked in the south tower of the World Trade Center, narrowly escaping its collapse. Since the tragedy, he has been unable to even glance in the direction of the ruined site. In fact, he finds he can't walk down one end of his own street in Jersey City because it offers an unimpeded view of the void where the doomed buildings once stood.
Many people, both in New York and elsewhere, have bought things that would never have found their way onto their shopping lists — gas masks, freeze-dried food, bulletproof vests, ammunition, even parachutes, thinking they may help if they need to escape high floors.
Adam Kimowitz, 25, a technology consultant who lives in Kips Bay, bought a gas mask the other day. "I'd rather know that I made a $50 investment than be sorry," he said.
He used to live in Israel, where certain precautions were ingrained into him — eyeing every package and knapsack as a potential harbor for explosives, sizing up everyone he saw in public places to try to gauge if they seemed like the sort who might blow themselves up. He shed such behavior when he came to New York, but in recent days he has been doing those things all over again.
"I find myself asking the same questions I did when I was in Israel," he said.
Monika Caha has found so much of the embroidery of her life undone. Ms. Caha is 47, a food and wine consultant, who has been evacuated from Battery Park City. She is terribly frightened of a subsequent attack, one she feels convinced will be even worse. "If they're capable of doing what they just did, they could do anything," she said.
Overwhelmed by the unknown, she can't seem to relax. "Every noise scares me," she said. "It could be a vacuum cleaner or a car downstairs going over a metal plate. I'm on high alert. It's very unbearable. I act like a refugee. I always carry my passport now. I'm at all times ready for immediate evacuation or running. I'm never at rest."
During the night, she wakes up every hour, consults the clock to see if it's morning yet, finds out it isn't, and tries to get another hour of rest until the sequence repeats itself.
So much seems purposeless to her. "My friends say they'll see me at Christmas or we'll go skiing soon," she said. "On the one hand, I react, sure, we'll go skiing. On the other hand, I think, what are they talking about?"
Feeling so helpless, she finds herself drifting into incongruous thought: "I think, why don't I go to Afghanistan and talk to the people. Maybe I can make things better. You have these dumb thoughts."
She is trying hard to think positively. "I believe in love," she said. "That's what will get us through this. I'm trying every day not to feel hate and to give positive energy."
Tomorrow, she plans to fly to Vienna to visit her mother. She booked a return a month from now. She doesn't know if she will use it.
For many New Yorkers, every subway ride is no longer commonplace. Jessica Dheere, 30, a managing editor of an arts magazine, walked the 60 blocks from her Upper West Side apartment to her office for a week. Only in the last few days has she mustered the courage to take the subway, but it unnerves her.
"There are certain triggers that make me jumpy," she said. "Loud noises. Take sirens. They've always been a part of the city, but now it's like they've taken on new meaning. I can't drown them out."
Bill Damante, 51, a telephone repairman who lives in Staten Island, feels that fate will have its way and isn't personally doing anything differently. But those around him are rattled. His son, a process server, was supposed to be serving papers in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, but had lost his court ID the previous day and so never went. But he was shaken enough that he drove down to Atlanta with some friends to be out of the city for several days.
Then Mr. Damante's wife, an office manager, got an e-mail message on Friday warning of an impending second thrust and urging people to flee at least 20 miles from the East Coast. "She's like a cat on a hot tin roof," he said. "She's very nervous. Very nervous."
The Damantes are insistent on staying in New York, though Mr. Damante's wife is pushing for a second house in the Poconos as a refuge. "She wants someplace to run to," he said.
In a city as resolute as New York, many residents insist they feel no fear of what's next, or they are able to hide it, and have changed nothing.
Many people left the city for several days after the attacks, in part to settle frayed central nervous systems, in part to wait and see if there was going to be a residual burst of terror. Most, though, have returned, resuming their lives.
Not that moving isn't still on some minds.
Conversation in an elevator in a Midtown building, a young man speaking to a young woman:
"So when are you moving out?"
"I didn't know I was."
"I'm definitely thinking about it. Everybody I know who has small children is thinking about it."
"Now you're making me think."
Some people, not many, have done the ultimate. They have already left the city, intending never to return.
A few months ago, Cesar Berretta, 27, moved to the city from Vancouver, British Columbia, and began a new job as a software engineer. He sublet an apartment for the summer while he hunted for something more appropriate for himself and his fiancée. She intended to arrive from Vancouver in the fall.
On Sept. 1, he finally found an appealing place on the Upper West Side. He began decorating it. He bought pots and pans. New York suited him. He was fond of in-line skating in Central Park. At night, he liked to gaze at the stars from his stoop and talk with the neighbors.
But the attack irrevocably shattered his aspirations. "I like my job and I love the city," he said. "But my fiancée is too scared and my family worries about me."
He quit his job. Friday was his last day. On Saturday evening, he left on a flight to Vancouver. That will now be his home. He left feeling wistful, but he knows. "I know I'm never coming back," he said.
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