They are the blessed. They are also the burdened.
They are the 17 men and women who walked safely down from the upper reaches of the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. For each of them, every new day is a gift, but one that carries an implicit question: Why me?
Christine Sasser was on the 78th floor of the south tower on Sept. 11, when a wing tip from United Airlines Flight 175 ripped through, killing dozens and leaving many others so injured they could not get out. "The guy lying on the ground next to me, where was he?" she said. "Why him? Why not me?"
The experiences of these 17 -- the only known survivors at or above the floors of impact in the twin towers -- speak to the limbo of all New York even after the completion of the cleanup of Ground Zero. All of them stared into the face of death, and at the desire some people have to inflict it, and they walked away.
That is true, in part, of everyone who was in the city on Sept. 11. But how does one live with such knowledge, or incorporate it into "normal" life?
Of the 17 survivors (an 18th died five days after the attack), Donovan Cowan, Mary Jos and Ling Young most directly confront that question. Jos and Young, both of whom worked for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, and Cowan, an accountant for Fiduciary Trust, have the strange privilege to be alive but in pain, each having been severely burned in the attack. "We are here, we are thankful we are here," said Young, who has had surgery six times since Sept. 11, and who is still in a wheelchair. "But when you look at yourself, at the scars, it is a constant reminder of what happened that day. This will be year after year of God knows what kinds of problems."
Even for those who emerged from the zone miraculously unscathed, or like Sasser, with only modest scars, there remain the searing, almost unbearable images. A bustling 78th-floor elevator sky lobby, a bank office on the 80th and 81st floors, an 84th-story trading floor, all in an instant streaked by shrapnel and enveloped in flame. Overturned desks. Sparking electrical wires. Thick black smoke. Moans from victims. The motionless presence of many others.
"It is fresh in my mind," said one survivor from the 84th floor, who asked that his name not be published. "I went to war and I did not ask to go. I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't trained for it."
And then, he too posed the questions -- the relevant ones for any reflective New Yorker: "Why did I live? Are my colleagues in a better place? What if? What if?"
"What if I took that person with me?" he asked.
There's no answer, really. Consider one group of five colleagues, who stood next to an elevator bank on the 78th floor of the south tower.
Two of the 17 survivors came from this group, which consisted of Richard Gabrielle, Howard Kestenbaum, Vijayashanker Paramsothy, Gigi Singer and Judy Wein, all colleagues from the Aon Corp. There had been no debate about who should stand where, nothing like Howard to the left, Gigi to the right. But in a flash, Kestenbaum was on the ground, motionless. Gabrielle was unable to move, his legs crushed by falling marble. And Singer, Wein and Paramsothy, after being thrown by the impact, were up and about.
Then it would be a matter of who would and could get out in time. "I could have not made it at so many points," said Wein, who, along with Singer, survived. "So many decision points, decisions I made, or that I did not make but just happened, that would have meant I was not here."
Such decisions have, over time, become questions to be asked by the relatives of those who did not make it out. Gabrielle's widow asked a reporter if someone could or should have lifted the marble and carried her husband out. Was Kestenbaum killed at impact, as Wein said she suspects, or was he still alive? And what happened to Paramsothy, who was last seen alive holding Kestenbaum's glasses while moving about the smoke-filled floor?
In a way, these are futile questions. But they are still being asked, and worked through, again and again. And for those few who have come to terms with their survival, there is still a hint of defensiveness.
"I have not had any bad dreams," said Brian Clark, who was on the 84th floor of the south tower when the plane hit, one of three people who survived the impact while 61 of his colleagues from Euro Brokers died. "I don't feel guilty that I am alive. I don't feel guilty that I wasn't injured. I can readily confess, I don't feel bad." But then he added, without any urging, "It is a strange feeling."
What to make of all this? New York City indisputably entered a new phase last week. The wreck that was once the World Trade Center is gone. What bodies -- and body parts -- that could be found have been. But these 17 victims and survivors are still scarred, still vulnerable, still appreciative, still hopeful. They are, in a way, a living memorial to what the city has seen and experienced, and from which it has not yet fully recovered.