Ashes to ashes

As the Devil's smoke slowly drifts out of New York, fear and rage and madness walk in.

By Christopher Ketcham

Oct. 4, 2001 | I have a friend who when he snorts too much cocaine reverts to a kind of acute paranoia bordering on psychosis. He gets to the point where he hides in corners of his room, with his shirt off, sweating with a wet towel wrapped tightly around his neck; his arms bunch up against his chest, as if he's cold or about to pray. He has the quiet mad belief that squirrels are going to bite the arteries in his neck, and when I see him like this I say, "There are no squirrels, dude, come on, calm down." "Yo -- yo -- yo," he says, very slowly like a chant, "squirrels -- squirrels?" and that's all he can say for some time: "Squirrels?"

Much of the city has become like my friend, though people don't like to show it. Because the city has been hit with information it cannot process, at least not yet, not for a long time, and surely not if this happens again, which is what everyone expects.

I called a therapist at the New York City Mental Health Association, a calm-voiced man of 42 named Dr. John Draper, who is the director of the association. I called him for two reasons: to find out the symptoms of those who are calling his hotlines for help, and to ask him for help myself.

"Well, first of all, what's going on with you, Christopher?"

No sleep, Doc, but a lot of pacing; hearing voices and chattering; silly songs that repeat until I have to hit my head to get them out, literally give myself a smack like a jukebox; petty details of tomorrow: where fax that, whom call -- enough stamps?; godawful insomnia turning my throat ragged, got the flu now, weak, yet still can't sleep, two, three hours a night, and there are bad dreams:

I'm walking through an abandoned hall of tall white palm trees under an atrium of glass, and there are shadows, and echoes and mumbling, voices I don't understand, and in one place, which was a bakery, there are fat yeasty dough-piles that were being kneaded just hours ago, that still have handprints; and other uncooked loaves lie on trays abandoned; the yeast grew in them, fattened them, and they drooped over the sides of the trays. Neutron bombs took the cooks away.

Or I'm sitting in a Japanese garden cleaning paratrooper boots, I wipe hard but the dried slurry of the ash of the towers won't come off, and in fact as I wipe harder the white residue turns heavy and bluish and soaks into my rag, soaking back into the boot, so as the boot dries the film of white ash seems to grow thicker. "It won't come off," I say, getting desperate, and then a voice, my father's, who comes into the garden where there are wind chimes; he wets a finger with spittle and wipes it across the leather of the steel toe, and where he streaks with his finger the ash goes away ... for a moment.

Or I'm walking down a long hall in apartment rooms where I can hear trucks hauling rubbish at night through the industrial streets, and there's a view over warehouse buildings where the towers once distantly stood: all plume now, glowing like blue dragon breath in the arc-lights of the Zone. I walk down the hall, open a door, there is someone in the bed, I go to her, she awakes, she shouts as I approach, looks right through me, "Nononono," she cries, "this isn't happening, this isn't happening," she beats at the covers, backs up in the bed into the corner and swats at my head. I say "Shhh" twice, slowly, and she rocks back and forth until she sleeps once more. She was never awake.

But this is happening. That was the Wintergarden at ground zero, the palms covered in ash, the galleries of abandoned cafes near the towers. That was real. That was my father's home in Brooklyn. This is my home where my girlfriend sleeps.

That's what's going on with me, Doc.

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