IN THE LONG AGO
A week to the day before 9/11
we were sitting on the open top deck
of a Lower Manhattan tour bus.
We passed many places to conjure with,
like the New York Criminal Court with its
classical portico supported by
nine Corinthian columns. On its steps
the last scene of TWELVE ANGRY MEN was filmed,
Sidney Lumet’s unmatched movie about
bigotry, justice, and being human.
But, because of the so-called War on Terror,
the most vivid memory of that tour
is the bronze globe turning in the fountain
in the World Trade Centre’s busy plaza.
We were staying with a friend on Long Island –
in Jamaica Estates, Queens. In those days
we got our news from The Guardian, which
was not available in the local
Key Food Store! – so we missed news about
the first World Conference Against Racism
then being held in Durban, South Africa.
Inevitably the Global North
and the Global South fell out about
agenda items regarding reparations
for Atlantic Slavery and whether
Zionism is a racist concept.
9/11 sidelined the outrage, that
act of terror which was used to fortify
the dominion of the North. To be human,
it seems, is to choose: be selfish or just.
David Alexander
June 29, 20259/11
I had arrived in New York on Saturday the 8th of September, with one day off in preparation for a week of meetings in Manhattan and one in Newport, Connecticut. As usual I was staying in Midtown at the Lexington Hotel on 48th Street.
I had two meetings on the Monday and my first meeting on Tuesday was to be with Penguin Books whose offices were then at 375 Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan. My plan had been to head Downtown for an early breakfast and my German friend Klaus Steeg, whom I had seen for dinner the previous day, had recommended the new café in The World Trade Centre where he assured me that they served good European coffee.
Unfortunately, I overslept and as I was getting shaved, I turned on the TV to see what the weather had in store. I didn’t pay much attention at first to the pictures of a plane flying into what looked like the World Trade Centre, thinking it was yet another disaster movie. However it very soon became clear that this was no movie, but a live broadcast and as I was watching, another plane flew into the second tower.
Down in the hotel foyer all the TV screens were showing the same images and hundreds of people stood around in silent disbelief. Together with a couple of other guests I took the short walk east onto Lexington Avenue and looking south, we all watched as the black clouds rose up over Lower Manhattan.
Unlike the silence of the hotel foyer, the noise outside was intense, even by New York standards. NYPD and FDYN sirens filled the air and there were endless ambulances heading uptown against the one way system all with a thick covering of white dust, which soon began to drift through the air around us. I returned to my room, called home and was able to speak to one my daughters who had by then seen all of the images coming out of New York.
I returned to the hotel foyer at midday and as there were fewer people around I decided to walk to a small Italian restaurant that I knew on 50th Street. I settled in at the bar for an early lunch where the conversations were all the same and where the sense of comradeship was palpable.
When I came back onto the street two hours later, the feeling was quite surreal. Not a person in sight, no cabs, no cars, no buses. Absolute silence. And as I looked south down Lexington Avenue, I could still see a wisp of grey smoke rising from what had been The World Trade Centre.
I had anyway already arranged to stay the rest of the week with friends on the Upper Westside but as there was no subway running, and no cabs in evidence the hotel’s VIP driver kindly agreed to take me the 4 1/2 miles from 48th Street all of the way up 5th Avenue and then Broadway to Riverside Drive and 114th Street.
I can only remember passing one other car on the way.
Jeff Teasdale
July 3, 2025A moment – amongst many – on which our world turns David, and by which our species is defined both by acts of heroism or acts of anarchy.
My friend David Nash produced several huge charcoal drawings of the wreckage of those unforgettable girders reaching like smashed hands into the sky, and were far more emotive than any photograph, powerful though many of those were.
Poetry and prose does the same, when the artist has had the time to reflect, absorb, discard, and finally… to create.