Escape from the World Trade Center

by Leslie Haskin

  I met a Man many years ago who told me that He loved me. I fell in love with His majesty. I fell in love with His love for me. For me, He created the world and its entire splendor. For His praise and pleasure, His hands molded the earth and filled it with every awesome thing, great and small.

  From my heart, I hear shouts of His praise.

  From every view on earth, His glory reigns.

  From the birds that sing in synchronicity, to winds that whistle a melody—He is a poet.

  From the trees that bathe in the sun to color the mountain’s landscape, to flowers that share His fragrant breath—He is an artist.

  He declares the sun to shine and the moon to glow.

  The oceans still and seas rumble on His word.

  He breathes life with a thought and His whisper conquers death.

  With the wave of His hand, He spins the earth and writes its history—He is an author.

  He delivers and heals, He grieves and gives comfort, He chastens and consoles, He forgives and forgets, loves and loves, and then loves more.

  He is “Our Father.” My father . . . my Beloved.

  Selah

  I got off the ferry at the Hoboken train terminal with a pounding headache and completely absent from my body. I was dizzy, dazed, and exhausted.

  Nancy and I hugged, exchanged numbers, and went our separate ways. I stood in the middle of the station for a while doing nothing, just standing. What I needed was a long nap, and had it not been for the madness in the train station, I could have easily lain down on one of the wooden benches in the waiting area and quietly passed away.

  To think only a few hours before, the train station had been busy with normal commuter insolence in their hurry to “get there.” Newspaper stands had been active and the smell of coffee and cigarettes prominent. Hundreds of commuters had been on their way to work with morning papers tucked neatly under their arms and their briefcases hurriedly flung over their shoulders. Each one had glanced at the clock and hurried toward the PATH trains with the same purpose of getting to work and making the day go by fast, in order to get back home.

  Now, in the moment that I was living, hundreds of disheveled commuters without briefcases were desperately looking for a train out—out of the nightmare—out of the city and out of the loop!

  Security was understandably tight. Police officers, PA announcements, shaken conductors, medics, and crew members told bits of the story as it came through over the radio and TV. Paranoia crept in. Were the commuter trains about to be attacked? Was it safe to ride? Is there a situation in the tunnels? Is it over? Let’s beat up the Muslims in the station store. He looks like a terrorist. What is he carrying? Sir, will you step this way, please?

  It was a mess. As it turned out, trains did not enter or leave the station for hours. Medics checked the injured and took blood pressure readings and we were free to go.

  I walked back and forth for a few minutes trying to regain a sense of direction. Then, exasperated at my own dithering, I finally stood near the arrival/departure board and checked for train and track information. The schedules changed by the minute. A conductor came over to me. He had a puzzled look on his face. He looked me up and down and asked if I was okay. I nodded. “Sure.” It was later that I came to understand why he asked.

  On an average day, it was simply not normal to walk about wearing clothes stained with blood and dust. It wasn’t an everyday thing to wander through train stations with singed facial hair and burns and bruises about the head and hands. Sadly, that day, it probably was the least of what passed through the station.

  He helped me board the correct train. “Just wait here,” he said. “We’ll leave shortly.” I nodded and boarded.

  Different from my usual commuter habit, I sat next to someone, a co-worker named John. I took a deep breath. He was in tears and spouting something about the Pentagon and Camp David and Pennsylvania and this being worse than Pearl Harbor and my goodness he didn’t breathe once. He was understandably livid and cussing like he was insane. He said he wanted to reenlist and find “that black-hearted [expletive] coward.” I smiled politely and thought that maybe the shouting crowd had been right. Maybe this did mean war. But that thought was even scarier than what I was living through. War would kill us all.

  “I saw the second plane hit,” someone yelled. “I was near the window and could have been killed,” someone else said. “Oh, my God, did you see the bodies?” another shouted. Everyone around me was sharing the fear, the rage, or the pain in one language or another. Some were praying. I think it would have been beautiful had it not been for the circumstances . . . the solidarity, I mean.

  Everybody was anxious as the train sat idle. Everybody spent nervous energy that kept them talking about anything and everything—from revenge to solidarity to information on hijackings to peanut butter sandwiches, believe it or not.

  I just sat with my hands tucked under my armpits, rocking back and forth. All the conversations around me blended. What began as audible, distinguishable sentences became nothing more than a barrage of garbled gabble.

  Then came the antidote to all gibberish—a passenger who had been listening to a small radio jumped from his seat, pounded the headrest of the seat in front of him, and wailed, “Tower One just fell . . . Tower One just fell . . . Oh, my God . . . Tower One just fell. Dear God, help us! Oh, help us! Those [expletive] are blowing up New York!”

  “What?” John asked. “Oh, my God . . . no!” He jumped forward in his seat and sobbed angrily. His face was beet red and he almost collapsed to the floor. The news of the second Twin’s demise traveled throughout the train like weeds, almost visibly growing.

  It began as a rumble and a very slow build . . . a wave of emotion . . . a rhythm . . . almost like feet softly stamping in a ballpark and working toward a climax . . . or a reverse echo . . . until finally the angst and the loathing erupted into an enormous roar and swallowed up all remaining life on that train.

  It lasted. . . .

  I was astounded by the commonality brought about by such extreme distress. If only for one day, the weeping, the prayers, and the hand-holding erased all barriers. We were a united people. And, if not for the obvious presence of the snake, the scene on that train could have represented a perfect world.

  I turned to John. “What happened?” I asked calmly. “Our building just fell,” he said. “What?” “It’s down,” he answered. I think I heard impatience in his voice. “Gone, Leslie . . . both towers are gone.”

  I guess I asked the wrong question. What I really wanted was for him to explain to me what we had just gone through. What happened?

  What I got was a moment of clarity. As the haze in my mind began to clear, all of my whats became whys and I stared blankly out the window. It is finished.

  Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.—Pascal

  I think hours passed before that train moved. I lost time.

  Finally, it pulled out of Hoboken Terminal. It rounded the corner at a snail’s pace, and everyone stared out the windows. Some stood in the aisles to see and some even tiptoed over seats. What we saw stopped our hearts.

  There’s a rhythm to life. Things move to a beat and play to inspire our journeys. From the waves in the womb to rock-a-bye baby, from the swinging arms of a mother to the motion of cars, sports, and dance—even death, sleeping, and eating have a beat. Rhythm is life.

  We live by it. We expect the music. Our habits, behaviors, thoughts, and activities are melodic and keep up with the beat. When in harmony, they captivate us and inspire our life stories. We call them our songs.

  Incomparable to any other addiction, source of intoxication, or “fix,” every person on earth is driven by and addicted to the rhythms of life. Skip a beat, miss the melody, lose step, or stop the music, even for a minute, and the heart can go off course forever.

  We rounded that curve, leaving New York City, where it was all about the rhythm of the Big Apple sky
line, and someone stopped the music. There it was. Amidst billowing clouds of smoke, beneath an ocean of uncollected tears and countless personal items, the new and not-so-improved New York skyline . . . with no towers. Both were gone.

  I believe every eye on the train filled with tears and incredulity. Although the rhythm was enough to keep the momentum, it was not enough to define the music, and the heart of all of New York City went off course . . . forever.

  Chapter 13

  Going Home

  No Words

  Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.

  —LAMENTATIONS 3:40 kjv

  A wealthy man had two sons. The younger son asked his father for his inheritance. Shortly after receiving it, the son gathered his things and left for a “far country.” He spent his money on fancy living, enjoying parties, expensive clothes, drugs, and anything that made him feel good. He thought he was living “the good life.” During this time, he forgot about God.

  Soon his money ran out and hard times hit the country. He had no money for food or clothing, so he went to work for a man who sent him into the fields to feed his pigs. By then he was so hungry that he wanted to eat the pigs’ food. He found himself on his hands and knees, humiliated. In extreme anxiety, he remembered that even the servants in his father’s house had more than enough to eat and were well cared for.

  “I will go back to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and you.’” He got up from his place of disgrace and started home to his father’s house.

  I rode the train in complete silence. I didn’t want to open my mouth. I didn’t want to see, taste, hear, or know anything else . . . ever. I kept fidgeting and trying not to think about what had just happened. I wanted not to think about friends that I had left behind.

  Everyone on the train was reaching out to their loved ones, using cell phones and writing e-mails. There we were, survivors, reeling from the shock of our morning; many aware of our need for God but still not calling to Him. Instead, we used our cell phones to call our homes. It’s a perfectly natural right . . . to reach out to our loved ones in times of stress.

  Eventually I tried calling Eliot’s school and then his grandmother. It was difficult recalling phone numbers, and when I did, I couldn’t get a signal. After trying a few times, I gave up and leaned back to relax, but I couldn’t fight back thoughts about what had happened. Was it really an act of terrorism? Why would they attack us? What were they planning? Were they now attacking upstate, burning down schools and wreaking havoc near my home? I started fidgeting again and looking in my laptop bag . . . for nothing.

  John squirmed too. He peered out the windows and babbled to himself from time to time about reenlisting and Pearl Harbor. His anger took control of him. His face became red and he squeezed his fists tighter and tighter when he spoke. I saw his teeth clenched behind his jaws in a nervous mania between action and resolute anger. I was afraid for him. I was afraid of him. I was scared that somehow our government, now faced with war, was so angry, desperate, and afraid that it would allow John and all the “Johns” in the U.S. to go fight.

  “Please, John, try to relax. Okay?” He looked at me as if I had said the most absurd thing he had ever heard. I closed my eyes. I wanted to ignore him and the gigantic headache that was splitting my head into pieces.

  The train rattled along in silence. The conductor didn’t even announce the stops.

  We arrived at John’s stop. Mine was next. He looked at me almost questioningly and said, “Take care, Leslie.” I nodded and we hugged good-bye. My heart skipped a beat. I was afraid, nervous, and didn’t want to be alone. What if something bad happened on the train? I was afraid even to go home.

  God gave me my daughter in 2000. Monai came to live with me when she was sixteen. In my eyes she was a shy and still angry little girl who doubted her worthiness to be loved. She was unsure about life and confused about me.

  She didn’t remember her biological mother and couldn’t understand how a mom could walk away from her child. I watched her get lost searching for meaning in her memories and withdraw. I watched her sometimes move from laughter to anger in minutes. As difficult as it was at times, I made a commitment and I loved her.

  I looked for ways to convince her to trust me. Though it wasn’t easy, after almost a year of finding the balance between long lectures and longer hugs, lots of questions and more answers, I saw the emergence of a beautifully confident young woman. There was light growing inside those dark eyes and I loved it.

  Though legally Monai is still not mine, our matters are now heart matters, and so she calls me her Leslie and lets me call her my daughter. She has embraced the family tradition of Friday nights and pizza, and with the exception of Eliot, she is the only person I know who can watch the same movie three times in one night . . . blissfully.

  I felt panic grow inside me when I realized how scared and lonely Monai must have been feeling. She wouldn’t survive losing another mother. “Dear God, take care of my family. Please let my children be all right. Keep them safe and comfort them.”

  My stop.

  I got off the train and walked toward my car. The air was still thin and crisp—fresh and undaunted by the events in Manhattan. I was miles away and safe. . . .

  The walk through the parking lot was strange. I was hypersensitive. I kept noticing my feet. I could feel every muscle and nerve ending in my soles as they struck the hard cement beneath them. My skin was so sensitive and my senses were overly aware of everything. I even noticed a subtle shift in the wind.

  It was a primal, almost instinctive awareness that made me even more panicky at the sounds of hustling feet and starting cars. I looked around nervously at a few other passengers moving at a fast pace toward their cars. The sound of my own quick breaths startled me. I could hear myself breathe from deep within my chest again. It echoed.

  As I approached the center of the parking lot, which by now was almost empty, my heart beat faster. I had parked in the same place I always did, so I walked toward my car with no clear or cognizant thoughts. Getting home would be the challenge. Okay, okay, I thought. Which way is home? I started my car and drove. I don’t know how fast or how slow, I just drove—feeling the air in my face and inhaling the crisp air that lingered around the mountains. I almost closed my eyes. If I had any presence of mind at all, I would have been wishing that I had stretched that morning’s seventeen-minute drive to twenty-five, at a cruising speed of thirty miles per hour, to miss the morning train and have that hooky day.

  The second is this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:31)

  I moved into my home in March of 1997. I spent the first weekend cleaning, polishing, and congratulating myself on my accomplishment. By the third day, my neighbors Marcia Kissel and her daughter Valerie surprised me with a large plate of homemade coconut cookies and a “welcome to the neighborhood” card. It was love at first sight, with the cookies. Marcia took some getting used to.

  About sixty-five years old, Marcia is full of sincerity, love, and words of wisdom. She has a quiet unassuming presence, but is very deliberate in her actions. Her fine blond hair has soft shades of gray throughout. She wears it neatly combed and pulled back from her round, beautifully aged face. With a slow, intentional grace and ease of civility, Marcia offers advice to every open, or not, ear.

  Not even a month after I had moved in, she was excusing herself and telling me what not to do in my flower garden, and watching my son play in the backyard or swim in the pool. There she was offering a keen eye, a phone call, or just words of wisdom. I thought to myself, Oh, boy, another mother.

  September 11, 2001

  Time Unknown

  I pulled into my driveway and saw Marcia standing in her driveway talking with Valerie. I calmly got out of the car and lifted my hand to wave hello, but “hello” never happened.

  What did happen however, was “that” scream. The scream that
had started deep in my belly hours before and growled in my gut every time I saw a body or body part; the scream that got bigger every time I passed another person too afraid to escape and paralyzed me each time I ignored a cry for help. The scream that had haunted me in the stairs, on the concourse, and through the halls. The scream that had stolen my breath and left me spent and hopeless time after time. The scream that had waited idle until now.

  I felt it reach down deep in my gut, gather to itself every emotion that I had experienced all day, expand beyond my own understanding, and consume every inch of available space outside of me. It robbed me of my knees, stole any remaining sense of place, time, and self, and . . . EXPLODED!

  I WAILED!

  Marcia would have to describe what exactly happened next as I only remember seeing her jump the fence between our homes. I remember a bath, the feel of the water washing away dust and smoke and tears and blood and visions and pain and years of ego, pride, and self-righteousness. I remember the safety of Marcia’s lap and her warm soft hands stroking my face and quietly whispering to me.

  There is something very special about true love. Unfortunately, many of us only recognize it in retrospect.

  Thank God for advice about flowers and for neighbors who care enough to watch your children play safely and offer kind words of wisdom. Thank God for another mother.

  After my bath, I turned the television on to the news. Marcia strongly advised against it, but I had to see it for myself. I needed answers.

  Every station played clips of the attack. Newscasters themselves were emotionally tossed and struggled to put the pieces together. They stumbled over words like “This just in” and “In an apparent terrorist attack” while a traumatized world watched the towers collapse over and over again. How could they convey to a revenge-hungry, even ravenous country, a carnage that they themselves did not understand?