September 12, 2001
Paris
Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center. I watched the towers fall in on themselves, I watched the burning Pentagon, and then I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center. From my kitchen, office, and living-room windows, I saw my neighbors watching the same thing, each with a remote in one hand and a telephone in the other. It felt like everyone in the world was in front of the TV. Now it's the next day and still haven't gotten it through my head. The thing that gets me the most are the hijacked planes. I can't imagine what it must have been like to realize you're actually aiming for something. You're not going to land in Afghanistan or be held hostage on some tarmac; you're going to die in three seconds. What's frightening is that it was so ingenious and perfectly orches-trated. Who did this?
Patsy and I met at six o'clock at the café on Saint-Sulpice. She'd been watching CNN and told me that, as Americans abroad, we're supposed to keep a low profile and avoid speaking English on the street. It's a Standard warning the State Department issues whenever there's trouble. French police have blocked off areas of the Marais and are stopping pedestrians to ask for their papers. Flights en route to New York returned to de Gaulle and I'm not sure when they'll resume. All American airports are closed, as are the bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan. I tried calling Amy, but all the lines were clogged. She doesn't get out of bed before noon, so I'm assuming she's OK. Steven called me at midnight to tell me that Rakoff and Sarah are fine, as is Art Spiegelman. On the television Giuliani is saying that as many as ten thousand people might have died. On the radio the event's being compared tot D-day. Bush called it "an attack on freedom itself," while Jacquess Chirac, much more eloquently, called it an attack on civilization.
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