As I walked, I tried to imagine what she was doing in this part of town at what I figured was around 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning – work perhaps, a tourist heading for the observation deck on top of the South Tower, a delivery-truck driver, a criminal with a meeting at one of the law firms? Why was she here? I kept asking. If I found the answer, I knew I would be halfway home.
And while it was true I had no idea what I was looking for, I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I found.
Lost in speculation about her movements on that day, it took me a minute to notice the small shrines which had appeared on either side of the pathway. For the thousands of people who had never had the bodies of their loved ones returned, Ground Zero seemed to stand in lieu of a cemetery. In the weeks following the attack they had come and stood in silence – to think, to remember, to try to understand. But as the months rolled by and they visited on anniversaries and birthdays, Thanksgiving and other holidays, it was only natural that they left flowers, cards and small mementos. Those shrines were now dotted along the fences and pathways.
Almost beside me were several soft toys left by three young kids for their dead father. Pinned on the wire was a photo of them, and I stopped and looked – the eldest must have been about seven. In the picture they were letting go of balloons so that, according to their hand-penned note, their dad could catch them in heaven.
I walked on and saw several shrines created by elderly parents for their lost children, I read poems from men whose hearts were breaking and looked at photo-collages assembled by women who could barely contain their anger.
Strangely, though, in the midst of so much sorrow, I wasn’t depressed. Maybe I was wrong, but it seemed to me that something else was shining through – the triumph of the human spirit. All around I saw that shattered families were making a promise to endure, I read about men and women who had risked their lives to save unknown strangers and I saw more photos of dead firefighters than I cared to count.
I stopped at the epicentre, alone among so many home-made memorials, and bowed my head. I wasn’t praying – I’m not a religious man, a person of The Book, as they say – nor was I particularly affected by so much death. I’ve been to Auschwitz and Natzweiler-Struthof and the ossuary at the Battle of Verdun, and death on an industrial scale had long ago ceased to amaze me. But I was humbled by so much raw courage – probably because I am so doubtful of my own.
Pain and suffering were imprinted on me very young – you see, as a kid, I was inside the apartment when my mother was killed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly afraid of dying, but all I have ever asked for was that, when the time came, it was fast and clean. I’ve always had a great fear of being hurt like my mother, of not being able to stop the pain – that was the secret terror which waited for me where the street lights end.
With the bravery of ordinary people memorialized all around me, and reminded once again that when it comes to courage I’m a flawed man, I turned for home. That was when I saw it – a white board hanging on the wire, half hidden by a curve in the path, easily overlooked except for the accident of the rising sun glinting off its surface. There was a larger than usual pile of bouquets lying at its foot, and that was what drew me towards it.
Written on the board, rendered in a careful hand, were the names of eight men and women, all with photos. A caption said that they had been brought out alive from the collapsing North Tower by one man – a New York cop. A teenage girl whose mother was one of those rescued had created the shrine, and it was a loving tribute to the courage of a single man. The girl’s narrative listed the people the cop had saved and they included: a lawyer in her power suit, a bond trader with a picture-perfect family who looked like a real player, a man in a wheelchair …
‘A man in a what?’ I said to myself. My eyes flew down the board and found a photo of the cop who had been responsible for getting them all out. Of course I recognized him – Ben Bradley. As I said, it was the last thing I had expected to find.
When Ben had told me in Paris that he was trapped in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I had assumed he had been inside the building on business, but I was wrong. The teenager had the real story. She said he was on Fulton Street when he saw the plane hit and a huge section of the tower blossom into the sky like a massive exit wound.
With debris raining down and everyone starting to flee, he pinned his shield on his shirt collar, dumped his jacket and sprinted for the tower. Like New York City itself, it was Bradley’s darkest moment and his finest hour.
Five times he made his way in and out of the building, each time climbing an emergency stairway against the sea of people coming down – trying to see how he could help, who he could save. At one stage, standing on an elevator landing on the thirtieth floor – with the first of two hundred jumpers hurtling down the façade – Bradley had to wrap his shirt around his mouth so that he could breathe. In the process he lost his shield, his only form of identity.