I walked out of my Queens apartment at 8:35 that Tuesday and headed for my car across 31st Avenue. A bold blue canopy covered the gentle late summer New York morning. The bright sun blinded me for a second as it bounced off the shimmering N train rumbling along toward Manhattan on the elevated tracks. Autumn hung in the air - in this of all places that has exiled nature and replaced it with jagged skyscrapers that rise from the ground like gigantic tombstones. I was on my way to work at Pace University in Pleasantville, an hour or so outside the city, where I teach political science. It was the second day of classes and my mind was on the material I was to cover. As I approached the car, however, I paused for a moment to take in the brilliant morning as the smell of warm bread wafted over me from the corner bakery.

Within ten minutes I was on the Triboro Bridge which connects Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. At the apex of the bridge I looked to the south over the expanse of the Manhattan skyline and noticed a thick black smoke rising up over the southern tip of the island. Two minutes later the local announcer on WNYC broke in on the National Public Radio broadcast, stating calmly, "We have word that an explosion has occurred at the World Trade Center. Unconfirmed reports are that a plane has hit one of the towers. We will keep you up to date as information comes in." I looked again in the direction of the rising black cloud, which by now had started to drift eastward over Brooklyn. Another several minutes passed and the announcer broke in again, this time his voice raised: "WNYC has now confirmed that a commercial airliner has in fact hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center."

By now I had exited the Triboro Bridge in utter disbelief and was heading up the Deegan Expressway through the Bronx toward Westchester. The third announcement came a few minutes later in an alarmingly urgent tone: "A second plane has hit the World Trade Center, this time the South Tower. I repeat, a second plane has now hit the World Trade Center. Both towers are engulfed in flames. Both towers of the World Trade Center are engulfed in flames…"

In my rear-view mirror I could see the plume of acrid smoke looming over all of southern Manhattan, black and gray hurled ominously at a canvass of blue sky and white wispy clouds. Events began to move too quickly to keep up with. 9:25: the airspace over New York is "sanitized," and all aircraft are ordered to land immediately or risk being shot down by F-16s now patrolling the skies. 9:45: the Pentagon is hit by another commercial plane. 9:50: an unconfirmed report that Camp David has also been hit. 10:00: the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. 10:20: yet another commercial plane crashes in a Pennsylvania field outside of Pittsburgh.

I listened to all of this on the radio incredulously as I arrived at the gates of the University. Thoughts of Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" raced through my mind. Was any of this real? I was immediately jarred back to reality by a frantic call from my mother in New Orleans. I assured her that I was far away from the mayhem, but that I had friends who worked at the Towers. She told me that my sister too had a friend who worked there and could not get in touch with him. Yes, all of this was real. Too real, in fact, and utterly offensive to the senses.

When I reached the building on campus that houses my office, I immediately rushed to see my secretary. I hastily asked her to cancel my classes for the day and headed right back to the car. 10:30 and I was once again on the road, this time toward New York City. But by then, the NYPD had already locked the city down. "Manhattan and all of New York are sealed off from the rest of the country. New York City officials have issued a total recall of all fireman and policeman," the announcer bellowed. "If there are any New York City firemen or policemen within earshot of my voice, you are to report to your precinct or firehouse for duty immediately. I repeat: a total recall of all fireman and policeman has been issued."

I drove as far south as I could, ending up in the northern part of the Bronx before hitting snarled traffic brought to a standstill. Sirens blared in all directions against the late morning sky. 11:00: the announcer exclaimed, "America is at war." Soon the second tower would collapse. "The Towers are gone," he lamented. "The Twin Towers are no more."

Cell phone service was cut. All bridges and roads leading further into the city were blocked. I turned and headed to City Island, a sleepy village in the northeastern section of the Bronx that rests along the flawless curves of Pelham Bay. Police cruisers and emergency service units raced by me in both directions in Pelham Bay Park. At the bridge crossing into City Island stood 10 NYPD officers donned in flack jackets and armed with machine guns. All of New York was shut off from the rest of the country, her coastlines anxiously preparing for an invasion.

For the next six hours I sat at the water's edge in City Island, listening to news reports on the radio with other New Yorkers who had either been locked out or who merely came to seek a vantage point from which to view the horror in the distance. On the water, boats anchored in the bay bobbed on the gentle waves. Seagulls danced on the breeze. The tender morning had given way to an arrogant noonday sun as it bounced off the water in all directions. New York is nothing without its sky. Down in the city that sky is always closed in on itself, cramped and framed with tall buildings and the blare of car horns, obscuring its grandeur. Out here on City Island, it is naked and immense, gloriously stretched to the four corners of the horizon. But unadorned space and the beating of wings were disturbed that day by the sonic boom of F-16 fighter jets strafing the coastline. And in the distance, the Towers burned, as the smoke and ash blotted out the impeccable September afternoon.

We sat there in silence, listening, watching. We traded stories about friends and family who worked down in the World Trade Center complex. I thought about my own family, most of whom were back in New Orleans undoubtedly glued to their television sets like most Americans, finding it unbearable to watch as thousands of human souls perished by burning or jumping 100 stories to their death. Yet, they had to bear witness to this madness. We all had to in our own way. On City Island, a group of complete strangers searched for solace that afternoon in each other's words. And I could here similar conversations taking place all over the endless avenues of New York City. Eight million New Yorkers, callous and uncaring on any given day, skilled in the art of rudeness on subway platforms and city streets. Today they would stop, if only for a moment, and reach across the solitude one necessarily experiences in this big bustling city." Let me clasp these eight million souls against me, and may it protect me from what is happening."

Dusk. The inexhaustible plume of smoke continued to rise over Manhattan. Its trail now extended for miles along the coast as the jet stream carried it out up and over the Atlantic Ocean. In the orange glow it appeared a harmless pink and gray. In the distance I noticed traffic beginning to move over the Throgs Neck Bridge which connects the Bronx to Queens. I was going to make a run for home. I gave the half dozen other New Yorkers I had befriended hugs, and told them I would pray for the safe return of all their loved ones. I hit the road toward Queens.

By the time I arrived back at my apartment, darkness had gathered like a purple blanket pulled taut around the New York skyline. Police in riot gear were at every corner, and the smell of twisted steel and burnt flesh now stuck in my nostrils. It was everywhere - New Yorkers will remember the smell long after the fires are extinguished and the rubble is removed. From the roof of my five-floor apartment building, I stomached the stench in the air and gazed out over New York the way I had done a hundred times before: to the right the yellow lights of the extensions to the Triboro Bridge appeared exhausted against the night; in midtown the Empire State and Chrysler buildings stood sadly in the dark, their lights extinguished by grief; and far to the left, the omnipresent smoke rising where the Twin Towers used to be, offending the night that had been made eerily quiet, devoid of the roar of jets taking off and landing at LaGuardia and JFK airports.

The streets were emptied of their normal bustle. Solitary and sad, New York had been made a widow by the day's events. That evening one could feel this princess of the provinces searching for solace like the rest of us. I drove on her streets far into the night, all over Queens and Brooklyn, doing what I could to keep her company and wipe away the tears from her cheek.

The next morning America awoke from its stupor to a new and far different world. Our little lost president went on television and declared "war" - vowing that those who perpetrated this heinous act "have chosen their own destruction." On whom we declared war I do not know. I am not convinced that our leaders have a better answer to that question. But right now this is all beside the point: we are told that dark times require us to direct our energy toward the Cause. "Freedom and democracy were under attack yesterday." This may well be the case, but I am also reminded that we invent maxims merely to fill the voids in our own natures. The French writer Albert Camus, who witnessed firsthand the onslaught of Nazi Germany from Paris in World War II, came up with one for his own personal use. "We must put our principles into great things, but mercy is enough for the small ones." Freedom and democracy are noble ideals, as I remind my classes time and again. But talk of imminent war robs us all of imagination, of kindness, and most importantly of the very mercy all of us begged for on September 11th.

Like many New Yorkers, I wanted to play my part well. On Wednesday I set out to give blood for the victims. There was a five-hour wait; come back next week. At the Javitz Center a makeshift donation center had already been put in place. I gathered up all my old t-shirts, socks, towels and blankets and headed to 35th and Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan. The streets were being patrolled by the NYPD and machine gun-carrying national guardsmen. The closest thing we will ever get what Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Sarajevo, and Beirut look like. New Yorkers inhabited the recesses of the siege mentality but stood undaunted. Hundreds of volunteers were sifting through boxes and paper bags, separating donated goods. "Water goes over here! Towels and blankets? Where do they go?" Someone shouted. "Down on the corner!" came the response. As civilians worked like ants making order out of the bundle of goods laid out all across the pavement, police officers from every corner of the country rested on the embankment, eating sandwiches and sipping bottles of water. A group of policeman from Miami huddled and spoke to one another in Spanish; three officers from Hamden, Connecticut conversed with a handful of officers from Hanover, New Jersey. Farther down the street stood the feds - INS and FBI agents staring blankly at the passing cars with exhaustion etched on their faces. Barely thirty hours removed from the destruction at the World Trade Center and citizens mobilized to do anything they could to help.

We must put our principles into great things, but mercy is enough for the small ones.

By nightfall on Wednesday spontaneous vigils had sprouted up all around the city. I headed downtown to Union Square to bear witness to the outpouring of grief and shock. Hundreds of people, mostly young but of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, mingled quietly, stepping carefully over brown paper taped to the pavement disfigured by dried candle wax and deadening flowers. Union Square had become a makeshift palimpsest. "This too shall pass," read one. "Qu'est-ce que le paix? L'entre deux guerres!" read another. "Let's kill the bastards!" read a third. Further along on the same sheet was a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca written in Greek. Messages filled with peace and love, messages filled with hate and venom, most with a sense of disbelief - New York was transformed into a massive tablet onto which the text to this unfolding story was being inscribed. Old ideas were molded to fit the times. One piece of paper announced the end of the world and the Second Coming. In the distance two people could be heard arguing over - what else? - Israel and the Palestinians. Further along a group of young people sang quietly as one longhaired bespectacled male strummed a guitar: "All we are saying is give peace a chance..."

On Thursday I returned to the classroom at Pace with the hope of helping my students put this unfolding narrative into perspective. I was not sure I could be of use in this regard, but the need to talk about it was clearly evident as I arrived on campus. Some of my students had lost friends or knew of people who had lost loved ones. The ripples to this tragedy were being felt well beyond the city's gates. Their initial reactions were what you would expect from a cross-section of Americans: we need to retaliate; we must go after Osama bin Laden; Afghanistan should turn him and his thugs over or face the consequences. Some of the more extreme students suggested that we bomb all of Afghanistan and return if anyone was left standing. Another suggested that we kill all the Palestinian kids who were shown cheering on the evening news the night before. "They're already little terrorists," this student exclaimed. No doubt millions of Americans across the country feel the same way. A very small minority thought the United States were the oppressors in this conflict and urged the other students to try to see how American hegemony across the world had real consequences in the lives of these people. They made their cases valiantly but did not get very far.

The Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt was asked once about her flight from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She responded, "When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond as a Jew." Which is to say simply that often times identity is not of our choosing. For all the differences of opinion on this horrific tragedy, a consensus has emerged that was also not of our choosing, even amongst diverse New Yorkers: we have been attacked as Americans, and we must respond - however we respond - as Americans. Here in New York as elsewhere across the country, American flags have sprouted up seemingly overnight. Soon we will be asked to suffer the consequences of war as Americans. After all, this is really what our leaders are preparing us for. It was reported that Colin Powell told the Islamic world: either you are for us or you are against us. The same Colin Powell that drew a similar line in the sand of the Arabian Desert a decade ago. If you think about this is really no choice at all. To choose with a gun to your head is blackmail. Perhaps we "Americans" are in the same position.

All of this and more will soon be asked of us in the name of justice. How many times in the last several days have we been told that this is a nation that loves justice! And it comes to mind that the fierce demand for justice consumes the love that gave rise to it. What is left is the specter of confronting one injustice with another. The blood and hatred we have witnessed has laid bare our hearts. You see it in the anguished looks on the faces of New Yorkers, searching for the solace that comes amidst a throng of perfect strangers. But to prevent justice from shriveling up like a dried and bitter fruit one must keep a wellspring of joy, love and mercy in tact in the heart.

These are lessons already learned. The billow of pinkish gray smoke rising from the space that those two graceful towers and thousands of human souls used to inhabit hasn't stopped since Tuesday. It is as if it is there to remind us of the descent into hell undertaken by the terrified who perished. But this morning it began to rain. After all of this violence and hardening, New York shed its first tears of liberation. The cloud of smoke over southern Manhattan has slowly started to dissipate. Maybe yet we shall try our hand at tenderness after all...and I am immediately reminded of another lesson I will no doubt have to learn over and over again, which is to say that to come alive again one needs a certain self-forgetfulness. We must let go just enough to make remembrance possible.

There is a quote by Le Courbusier in Battery Park City's esplanade: "A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe." What more fitting place for these words, inscribed on a piece of the city built atop the landfill from the World Trade Center's excavation. On certain afternoons I would walk, there at the water's edge, and gaze out over New York Harbor. Yes, this desert of concrete and iron is also an island. I would look up at the Twin Towers and imagine them the masts of a giant ship. All of New York is ready to set sail! Here at the beginning of everything, we prepare ourselves for the struggles of tomorrow.