Girl at War(24)

“You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there,” said the news voice-over. “That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers.”

“Oh god, which tower is that?” said a girl in the back of the lab.

“What kind of pilot was flying that low over New York City?” a boy beside me said. “Fucking idiot.”

“My brother works in South Tower,” the girl said.

“What if it wasn’t an accident?” I said.

“What do you mean not an accident?” said the boy. “What the f*ck was it then?”

Our professor punched the keypad of his cellphone, but whomever he called didn’t pick up, and he snapped the phone shut.

“I want you to go back to the dorms,” he said. “If you live off campus find someone you can sit with for a while.” We collected our books, except for the ashen girl, who stayed below the television.

“It was the North Tower,” I said, pointing to the ticker text. “I’m sure your brother’s fine.”

“Guys,” Dr. Reid called as we reached the door. He didn’t look up; he was pressing keys on his phone again. “Take the stairs.”

Outside I tried to get a look downtown, but I couldn’t see anything. I wondered where Brian was, and felt around in my backpack for my cellphone. My American parents had given it to me for my birthday the month before, but I still wasn’t used to carrying it around and was constantly misplacing it. When I found it the screen revealed several missed calls. I tried to call Brian, then home, but was met each time with a busy signal I’d never heard before, the sound of millions of people simultaneously on the phone.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran back to my dorm and found Brian pacing the front hall. I was relieved and a little shocked to find him whole and fine and right in front of me. Instinctively, I realized, I’d been expecting the worst.

“You’re okay,” I said, trying not to sound too surprised.

Brian kissed me on the forehead and we went upstairs, where my floor mates were already crowded in the common room. We sat staring at the television, watched the strike on the second tower and its collapse a few hours later. The ticker had changed from “disaster” to “attack.” Eventually I got through to my family, an inexplicably whispered call, as if we were afraid speaking too loudly might send something else toppling. I was fine, I said over and over, trying to placate the woman I’d come to call my mother. And I was fine, I assured myself when I hung up. After all, nothing had happened to me.

Brian wanted to stay, but I feigned a research paper and a string of apologies, and reluctantly he returned to his own dorm. I wanted to be alone. Even after everyone had gone to bed I stayed up watching the towers that were no longer towers, what everyone was now calling Ground Zero. A desire to be close to the wreckage overwhelmed me. I went out and walked south until I got to the fire engine roadblocks, stood there for a while, awash in emergency light. The air was still thick with the smell of burning plastic and molten steel, dry, itchy breaths filled with plaster particulate.

When I returned to the common room the news was replaying the day’s footage—jerky shots of asphalt concealed by a layer of ashes and dead people’s paperwork, documents that had been considered important, maybe even classified, just that morning. The coverage returned to real time, a live helicopter shot of the skyline. A cloud of smoke lingered over the spot, tinged orange from the reflection of the city’s lights. I tried again to quell the solipsistic thought I’d been evading all day—that trouble would follow me wherever I went.

It was now six months since the attacks, and the everyday things were returning to normal, first through an attitude of compulsory courage—fear means letting them win—then in a slow reinstating of routines, until we were again wrapped up in the mundane inconveniences of city life: knocking radiator pipes, subway construction reroutes, and the usual array of vermin. The country was at war, but for most people the war was more an idea than an experience, and I felt something between anger and shame that Americans—that I—could sometimes ignore its impact for days at a time. In Croatia, life in wartime had meant a loss of control, war holding sway over every thought and movement, even while you slept. It did not allow for forgetting. But America’s war did not constrain me; it did not cut my water or shrink my food supply. There was no threat of takeover with tanks or foot soldiers or cluster bombs, not here. What war meant in America was so incongruous with what had happened in Croatia—what must have been happening in Afghanistan—that it almost seemed a misuse of the word.

My phone rang and startled me, and I answered in a shaky voice. It was Sharon.

“Ana? Where’d you go?”

“I just needed some air. Should I meet you in the lobby?” I realized I had wandered farther west than I should have. I jogged back across the avenues and up to the gates of the UN, where a tour group was clogging the entrance portals. I hit Redial on Sharon’s number, but she appeared through the exit moments later with an armful of file folders and my index cards.

“I figured you wouldn’t be able to get back through that mess,” she said. “Do you want these?” She handed me the index cards. “You hungry?”

I wasn’t, but I was eager to get away from the UN and have Sharon to myself.