The Girl, The City and The Marathon - By Nayana Gadkari

                                                           

“Nayana, I see an airplane flying really low, it is coming close to the towers, where are you? This doesn’t look normal!” My husband, screaming in utter disbelief, was on the phone with me from across the river in Jersey City; I had just stepped off the train at the World Trade Center.

Two years before that terrible day, I had flown into New York City from Mumbai, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, a blushing new bride. The first thing I saw as our airplane gradually descended to what was to be my new home were those gleaming towers. I remember staring at them in wide-eyed wonder, at their sheer size, at the vertical space they occupied as they rose majestically into the New York skyline on a beautiful, brilliant blue August afternoon!

As luck would have it, my first job in my adoptive country was a few blocks from the Twin Towers. I was twenty-five years old, living my best life in New York. The best part of each day was when the train would pull into the World Trade Center. I would step out, several floors underground, ride the escalator up, and everything seemed possible! I was in one of the greatest cities on earth, and each day, it waited with hungry anticipation for me “Carpe Diem” it!

That day began beautifully, as some of the most terrible ones do. I would later think that some days start with no indication of how they end. I chose a pretty blue blouse purchased from a retailer in the World Trade Center. I remember my husband remarking as I dressed that morning that the blue in my blouse matched the gorgeous sky outside, and I remember laughing and telling him that he earned his brownie point for the day and that dinner that night would be special! It’s remarkable the things one recalls on a day as traumatic as that; it is almost as if the mind finds ways to self-preserve, to balance the horror with some beauty. 

The train pulled into the World Trade Center, and I stepped out; the acrid smell of smoke hit me almost immediately. As I rode up the escalator perplexed, I saw people with some degree of concern on their faces around me. I got off the escalator and gingerly started making my way out of the WTC; I passed the retailer with the same blue blouse on one of their mannequins., but they were shuttering their store. I passed a policeman and asked him what had happened. He said, “Miss there is a small fire up on one of the towers, am sure they will put it out but why don’t you vacate the premises quickly if you don’t work here”. I stepped out of the North Tower to a deluge of paper falling from the sky. It is a sight I will never forget, just reams and reams of paper falling from the sky. My immediate instinct was to call my husband. It was a little past 8:46 AM; I knew his office overlooked the World Trade Center. “Abhi, I just got off the train, I am at the World Trade Center and there is something strange going on, I can smell smoke inside and there is a downpour of paper outside, what the hell is going on?”. 

After a few minutes of trying to have a conversation over the howling crescendo of firetrucks, cop cars, and ambulances, he says something that my then pre-9/11 brain struggled to grapple with. A plane was flying low, and looked like it was heading for the towers. “Nayana where are you? Get out of there!!”. Moments later, I heard it, the most deafening boom I have heard. It was the sound of a Boeing 767 crashing mercilessly into the South Tower.

It seemed as though the whole world froze for one moment, and then everyone realized it simultaneously: the City was under attack…

What happened next is a blur. I remember everyone running away from the Towers. I remember seeing my favorite falafel cart and St. Paul’s Chapel as I ran. I didn’t stop running until I came to the office building where I worked. A few colleagues and I huddled together, trying to flip through news channels, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened!! Then came the rumors that the Stock Exchange, which was right next door, was possibly a target and that we needed to vacate the building immediately. We did, and we didn’t know where to go. We started running bewildered towards Battery Park, away from it all. A policeman directed us to the Staten Island Ferry. We all got on, unaware of why and where we were running away. The ferry started speeding away from the madness that had engulfed that beautiful City. There was more horror yet to come…

We were a few minutes out from the ferry terminal when it happened. The South Tower collapsed. Smoke, dust, and debris completely engulfed the entire southern tip of the Island. A collective wail went up in the ferry; we were all holding each other, screaming, crying, railing in utter shock. It was a wail that the whole world reverberated in solidarity. The whole world wept for New York that day. 

Unbeknownst to me then, my husband was making his way to the World Trade Center; he didn’t know where I was. He had seen the plane hit the tower where I was standing and talking to him. He thought I was dead. He was soon near the burning towers and saw what no one should see or experience. He saw people just jumping off the buildings because they had no recourse. That was when the first of the two mighty goliaths…just collapsed... Covered in dust and escaping the debris, he returned the same way he had entered the City. He didn’t know where I was or if I was.

We reached Staten Island, where compassionate strangers opened their hearts and homes to us. In a few hours, we found a kind pickup truck driver who would drop us over the bridge into New Jersey. It was late in the evening when I reached home to a husband who was nearly mad with agony. 

We didn’t sleep that night or for many nights in the coming months. Abhijit would wake up screaming with nightmares of people jumping off the buildings. Loud noises would send me into a state of absolute distress and panic. 

Several years passed, and the debris around the site of the attack was long gone, but the heart remained burdened with the events of the day. Our lives, indeed, the lives of people across the world, have changed irrevocably since that day. The heart remained heavy, carrying painful reminders of people running from the City. 

I didn’t ride the Staten Island Ferry since that fateful day until something happened to change that twenty years later…I got an entry to the New York City Marathon of 2021! 

I would run all five boroughs of one of the greatest cities on earth that had given me so much joy over the years. 9/11, however, always remained over me like a dark cloud. The memory of us running away from that beautiful City haunted me and perhaps many others.  

I trained for that marathon like I had trained for nothing else. I was given a unique opportunity, and I would make the best of it. The City deserved nothing less. I owed it to her. Marathon day arrived, and it was beautiful, just like that fateful day. The NYC marathon is arguably one of the toughest of the World Marathon Majors. I was 47 years old and would probably run it slower than the other marathons I had run thus far.

What happened that day, however, would astonish me more than it did anyone else! Life did come full circle, and Phoenix did, in fact, rise from the ashes…

I will end this article with an excerpt from my social media post that day that says it all!

“Older, stronger, faster...words that I never imagined would cross my mind as I toed the finish line at the NYC Marathon.

The last time I rode the Staten Island Ferry was on 9/11; we were being rushed onto the ferry away from the falling Towers and the burning City...20 years later, I was on the same ferry, this time taking joyous hopeful marathoners to the start line. Closure came unexpectedly and fittingly when we all scaled the Verrazano and ran toward that beautiful City and that gleaming tower. After that, it was a 26.2-mile party in the City.”