9/11, from the other side of the globe.

Where were you on 9/11?  A question that has been asked globally ever since that day.  And one that I received more than many others, when ten years later, I became a volunteer at the 9/11 Memorial site.  Once the designs of the rebuilding had been approved, it was obvious that the site would become a massive visitor lure. As New York City already received millions of visitors, both domestic and international every year, they knew this would become somewhere that everyone would want to visit.

I discovered that they were recruiting volunteers, who would be willing to take part in this mass visitor exercise, so I signed up straight away, not quite knowing what I was getting myself in to.  An orientation a couple of days later gave about 20 of us an idea of what it would be like. It was going to be a challenge, but having dealt with crowds/lines/questions of all sorts for years in my airline background, I was ready.

Where WERE you on 9/11?  As a New Yorker who doesn’t quite sound like one, it was something I was then asked umpteen times, in very hushed, almost reverential tones and my questioner obviously wanted me to reply that I was right here and escaped by the skin of my teeth. The truth, sadly for them, was that I was on a train in China and about as far away geographically as I could be.  Mega let down for them, but at the same time, even on the other side of the world, we had to deal with it.

Back pedal 10 years.  We were five days in to a posh train trip.  How about ‘Beijing to Moscow by Private Train’?  It came at a steep price and about 80 American had signed up.  It was actually two trains.  For us, going west, first a Chinese one and then a Russian one.  We handed over at a border with the group going the other way.  The two trains were on opposite sides of a broad platform. I thought of it as a mass exchange of political prisoners and dosvedanya , have fun, as we accelerated away from each other.

We had started with a couple of autumnal days in Beijing.  A perfect time of year to visit. The trip was running smoothly and as we glided smoothly out of the Beijing station, to the minute, there was no reason to think it would not continue that way.  As the Chinese train had toilets for each compartment, but no showers, this meant we scheduled a hotel stop every other night, which of course also ensured you had a good night’s sleep.   There is nothing worse than a train trip with everyone not sleeping well and slowly running out of steam.

On our September 11^th, we had had a good day, with a stop to inspect wonderful caves and after a multi course Chinese dinner, everyone was in bed.  At dinner, we had made sure that everyone understood that tomorrow, 9/12 for us, we would be going in to Kazakhstan and this would require passports and immigration forms, which we had to hand.  Only problem was that the forms came printed in Russian.  So, after breakfast you all need to come to the lecture car and we will walk you through what to write on each line.

I am fast asleep at 2am, when there was a pounding on my door.  Groggily I opened it, to find the chief Chinese tour guide, David Wang, there.  David and I went back many years and had a great relationship.  He had absolutely fluent English, to the degree he could do puns and we both played practical jokes on each other.  This time, he looked awful.  He held out his cellphone (only the Chinese ones worked), thrusting it at me.  “New York has been blown up”. Not news I could quite understand, but on the other end of the phone, was my boss, Linda, in Seattle, where it was still 9/11 morning.

Linda was always a direct speaker, so the moment she heard me, she started straight away “This line might go at any minute, as you are almost out of China and then nothing will work, so shut up and listen”.  So I did.  This was only about 2 hours after the attacks, so everything was still very fluid in the US.  The moment I heard it, I signaled to David to wake up the Expedition Leader, Eszter from Hungary, who was a couple of cabins away.  Linda talked a mile a minute and repeated everything they knew at that moment.  I got the basic facts:  4 planes going coast to coast, 2 towers, The Pentagon and a field in PA.  All flights were landing. The country was totally locked down and we don’t know if anything else is going to happen. 

One sensible thing they had done very early in the morning was to check if any of our guests came either from NY or if any of them had given an emergency contact there.  We always had these in case of some en route emergency, so that there was someone for the office to be in contact with.  Fortunately, we had only one NY’er and couple of contacts and they had already been called and confirmed they were okay.  Then the line went dead.  We were totally on our own.

I relayed all this info to Eszter and we sat there in our pyjamas, somewhat numb, knowing we did not have much time to work out how to handle a catastrophic situation on the other side of the globe. We had to have  a plan of when and where and what will we say?  Fortunately the need for everyone to be in the lecture car gave us the perfect opportunity.  We would say absolutely nothing ahead of this, to the degree that we would have breakfast and then walk them through filling in the forms, as if we left this until last, we would have lost them and Kazakhstan was looming at midday. 

We knew there would be the immediate desire for many to go home.  With the sealing of the airspace for an unknown time, this was really an impossibility, so we would have to tell them they were better off sticking with us.  The next place anyone could fly out of would be Alamaty, the now former capital and it would be another day before we arrived there.  I knew that Lufthansa flew from there for sure (as I had once come in on their flight) but of course, by the time they would reach Frankfurt, there would be a 3-4 days backlog of the scheduled passengers and they would be alone on the end of a long line. 

Fortunately, all the staff and lecturers were in the same train car, so we managed to have a meeting with everyone before breakfast, so we were all prepared.  Everyone was calm and sworn to behaving totally normally. This is why you need seasoned professionals when taking tour groups anywhere.  All of us knew people in New York and I lived in Brooklyn, but we had to swallow our own concerns and make sure our group got the support we knew they would need.

So we smiled our way through breakfast and reminded them to come for the form completion and at 10am, they were all there, ready.  It was a very horrible feeling to look at them and know that all our lives had changed so horrifically.  All we had to tell them was what I had heard on the phone at 2am, so we were unable to really answer any questions.  We were ready for this.  

The forms were completed and the questions answered. Eszter bravely stood up and had to do the line “Before you go away, there is something you have to know…..”. We had worked out this was the best way to introduce it and even rehearsed it a couple of times.  She repeated verbatim what I had heard from Linda in Seattle.  It was just awful to see the whole group just dissolve in front of us.  Some just looked shell shocked, many in tears and hanging on to anyone.  I walked them through the option of if you want to go home, then tomorrow is the first time and you will be totally on your own.  I must have done a good job, as none of them wanted to leave us. We were already their mother hens and no one was flying the coop! And in terms of our safety, we were better off on our train and basically the trip would continue as planned.  We really did not have other option.

The Kazakh immigration and customs officials came on the train and were very sympathetic.  Their English was minimal but you could see from their eyes that they were as shocked as we were.  It was a very muted border crossing.

Later we were off the train to complete the sightseeing program and this was the first time we saw any pictures of what had happened.  Until now, we could barely imagine it, but here it was on the front page of the local papers.  We all stared in horror and disbelief.

I shall always remember a little old lady in a market, when she realized where we came from, mimed tears coming down her face and she held my hand and kissed it.  I was in tears too. This kind of thing happened for the rest of the trip, which just showed that if you clear politics out of the way, then 99.99999% of people are kind.

Somehow we got through that day, trying not to think about it.  The local guides at least were able to tell us that nothing else horrific had happened, so there was some comfort in that.

When we reached Almaty next afternoon, we were all taken to the biggest hotel in town, where a mass of telephones was waiting.  All people had to do was pick up the receiver and dial the USA.  It was amazing what our agents had been able to do and such a comfort for our guests to hear their family’s voices.  There was a great deal of crying for sure. We also took over eight office computers and in two hours everyone had talked to someone and they all felt much relieved.  They had televisions in the lobby, which were still on a perpetual loop, so for the first time we actually witnessed the full horror.  Afterwards, I thought, we must have been some of the last people on earth to have seen this footage.

So, we lost no one and the trip continued all the way to Moscow, where most of them would leave.  There was a small group of about 20 who would continue to St Petersburg with me for three more days and then we flew home from there, via Copenhagen.   We did not return to the US until three weeks after the tragedy and descending in to Newark Airport, we were all up against the windows as Manhattan came in to view.  At the southern tip, instead of the Twin Towers which would have been so easy to spot, there was still a plume of smoke coming up.

Getting back to my house in Brooklyn, I found my garden full of miniscule scraps of paper, which had been shredded in the blast and carried in any direction by the wind.  There were little bits of handwriting or numbers – nothing that made any sense, except the sadness of knowing that whoever had written this was probably no longer alive.

Now, ten years later, I have my blue volunteer vest on and stood at the 9/11 Memorial site, where the waterfalls are today and was able to talk to people from all over the world.  We had been through training and had a manual to study and had the numbers memorized, so that anything we said was accurate.   I was not the star when I had to confess I was on the other side of the earth and fortunately did not lose anyone I knew.  The slightly amusing thing was many of the visitors wanted to tell us just where THEY were, when they heard.  I have heard some long and boring stories there, from people in the UK and Australia and everywhere in between, who were just doing the dishes after lunch and someone called and said turn on the television  etc etc etc to a degree that you just wanted to yell SHUT UP.

Most of the visitors were so respectful and we, as volunteers, who stood out there is all weathers, were often thanked by them.  Some wondered why we did it?  Wasn’t it just too depressing to come here?  As New Yorkers, we felt that we SHOULD be there, in order to help the recovery that everyone needed, even ten years after the attack.   The crowd control at the entry was another thing, but up on the Memorial, all was so calm and peaceful, with the sound of the water falling. It was tranquil and healing.