…Continued from yesterday
I awoke early – about 4am. It didn’t worry me – I wanted to keep UK time as I was only in New York for three days. I was going to be on a plane at 17:00 to get back home today – missing the end of the International Mine Action Standards meeting at UNICEF - and getting back to my baby girl for whom I was yearning. For some of my restless morning I had read over the work we had produced the previous day and written notes to distill my thoughts. As I was leaving the meeting early I’d planned to provide notes if time prevented me from completing my contribution to the document.
Then I had walked the streets of Lower Manhattan – popping in to a coffee shop then a bagel shop and just enjoying the sights and sounds of New York waking up. The sky was a perfect blue, it was cloudless, peaceful, a crisp September morning and my heart felt glad.
We’d been exhorted to be ON TIME for a 09:00 start on day 2 of the meeting as there was much to do and
I was not alone in needing to leave the meeting for the airport. At 0845, I was at the door of the UNICEF offices on East 42nd street and I witnessed Flight 11, the ‘first plane’ flying very low over Manhattan. I went into the UNICEF building to join my colleagues. A few minutes after 0900 and the chair of the meeting was still not there. We all started to look at our watches with some frustration when someone told us that there had been an accident, ‘a light aircraft had crashed into one of the twin towers’ someone said. Some of us found a window facing the right direction up some stairs from the meeting room. We stared out at the smoke and one colleague became tearful. She was shaking her head and with her hand over her mouth mumbled that this smoke was not caused by a light aircraft. I turned away and returned to the meeting room. It must have been round about then that the second plane hit. For about 15 minutes we sat around – waiting, talking quietly. The chair of the meeting finally came in, asked us to be calm and that that we were to evacuate the building. We were to walk to and assemble in the hotel where most of us were staying and the meeting would reconvene there in a couple of hours.
Our hotel was between 42nd East and Lower Manhattan. Once in the hotel the 40 of us squashed into two or three bedrooms to watch the unfolding drama on the TV.
Once the seriousness of the incident starting to become clear, my thoughts turned to home. Was this the beginning of something and, if so, the beginning of what? I know that I would not be going home today. It felt like a large rope that connected my heart to my baby’s heart was being given some very serious and hefty yanks many times a minute and I now had now idea when or how I was going to get out of New York and back to her. My family needed to know I was OK. Sadly the local news media was hysterical and anticipating further attacks. I prayed that the British response would be more measured and spare my family anxiety.
I could not have asked for better companions to be with at this time. Most of them lived in war zones and there was a level of calm and good humour about the group that was helpful and satisfying. We soon tired of the no new news media and the gruesome pictures of the jumpers being played over and over again. Our Afghan colleagues told us that the interviews with commentators in Afghanistan were not being translated correctly.
Because of the strange and disparate nature of our group, the FBI soon confined us to our hotel and it was not until officers had checked our passports and conducted mini-interviews with each of us that our meeting reconvened with break out groups on the roof of the hotel with the smoke of New York's crushed iconic buildings billowing behind us. It was not until late in the evening that I finally spoke to my people at home.
I left New York a week later – much of my time had been spent worrying and wondering when the airports would open which they did and then closed, then opened and closed and then opened again. I was on the first plane out to London. Back to my baby girl.
The week between still feels a bit of a blur….phone calls home to get the real news. News that baby Beatrice took her first steps. The crumpled faces of people pacing the streets holding photos of their missing. Being one of five people that went up the Empire State on the morning of the 13th – the first day it re-opened and a tearful lift attendant thanking us for coming. A bomb scare in Macey’s department store where I got caught in the crush. Moving as a circular group to have supper together with our Afghan colleagues in the middle of the group for their own protection. A night time vigil in Union square with much affection among strangers, the sounds of buglers, 60’s peace songs, crying, laughter. A place where a stranger – a young girl – handed me a huge candle in a glass which still sits on my fireplace…. and above all, much friendship and camaraderie among the group of people I ‘d been gathered together with to work with on the International Mine Action Standards…a document which we hoped would be a source of support and guidance for those striving to make our world a safer place.
Today my thoughts turn to the many stricken families most profoundly affected by the attacks on 9/11 but also to those amazing colleagues who supported me so completely in my small suffering that week - and for their work for peace.
In the coming week I reflect one more time on this special time focusing on the legacy of 9/11 for me.
Our hotel was between 42nd East and Lower Manhattan. Once in the hotel the 40 of us squashed into two or three bedrooms to watch the unfolding drama on the TV.
Once the seriousness of the incident starting to become clear, my thoughts turned to home. Was this the beginning of something and, if so, the beginning of what? I know that I would not be going home today. It felt like a large rope that connected my heart to my baby’s heart was being given some very serious and hefty yanks many times a minute and I now had now idea when or how I was going to get out of New York and back to her. My family needed to know I was OK. Sadly the local news media was hysterical and anticipating further attacks. I prayed that the British response would be more measured and spare my family anxiety.
I could not have asked for better companions to be with at this time. Most of them lived in war zones and there was a level of calm and good humour about the group that was helpful and satisfying. We soon tired of the no new news media and the gruesome pictures of the jumpers being played over and over again. Our Afghan colleagues told us that the interviews with commentators in Afghanistan were not being translated correctly.
Because of the strange and disparate nature of our group, the FBI soon confined us to our hotel and it was not until officers had checked our passports and conducted mini-interviews with each of us that our meeting reconvened with break out groups on the roof of the hotel with the smoke of New York's crushed iconic buildings billowing behind us. It was not until late in the evening that I finally spoke to my people at home.
I left New York a week later – much of my time had been spent worrying and wondering when the airports would open which they did and then closed, then opened and closed and then opened again. I was on the first plane out to London. Back to my baby girl.
The week between still feels a bit of a blur….phone calls home to get the real news. News that baby Beatrice took her first steps. The crumpled faces of people pacing the streets holding photos of their missing. Being one of five people that went up the Empire State on the morning of the 13th – the first day it re-opened and a tearful lift attendant thanking us for coming. A bomb scare in Macey’s department store where I got caught in the crush. Moving as a circular group to have supper together with our Afghan colleagues in the middle of the group for their own protection. A night time vigil in Union square with much affection among strangers, the sounds of buglers, 60’s peace songs, crying, laughter. A place where a stranger – a young girl – handed me a huge candle in a glass which still sits on my fireplace…. and above all, much friendship and camaraderie among the group of people I ‘d been gathered together with to work with on the International Mine Action Standards…a document which we hoped would be a source of support and guidance for those striving to make our world a safer place.
Today my thoughts turn to the many stricken families most profoundly affected by the attacks on 9/11 but also to those amazing colleagues who supported me so completely in my small suffering that week - and for their work for peace.
In the coming week I reflect one more time on this special time focusing on the legacy of 9/11 for me.
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