Surrender

9/11 has been on my mind for some time now, well before this fourth anniversary that is upon us. Twice a week, I work in an office building on Wall Street near the East River that essentially has been abandoned by one of the major US banks -- their operations presumably have moved to a safer, less conspicuous locale in the suburbs, and they haven't made up their minds what to do with the property. To their credit, the bank donates some of their space to non-profits who could never dream of affording these kind of digs.

Fewer than a dozen people work on the tenth floor where I am, in a space meant for maybe two hundred. And a sense of loss is palpable every time I need to visit the men's room, which is on the opposite side of the floor -- the dark side that none of us work on. I pass by the empty kitchen and break room, and then dozens of abandoned cubicles, all stripped of anything personal that could reveal something about their former occupants. These workers didn't die, but clearly they're gone for good.

An Eastern European cleaning woman comes by at the end of each day to empty our small collection of garbage cans, and the mail is dropped off/picked up once a day by some nervous guy from the mailroom, but it feels like an afterthought, as so little comes in and goes out. The men's room hardly ever needs cleaning, so much so that the blue-green cleaning solution poured into the toilets makes rings on the porcelain from lack of use. My very own elevator always awaits me in the lobby in the morning, and I never have to wait more that a few seconds when I want to return to the street.

As much as I like working for this non-profit (which promotes education in developing countries), I'm always a little sad working here. The fear from that day in 2001 still hangs in the air. Unlike so many other parts of the city, life here has not made a comeback, but is frozen in time. I can't help but return to September 11, 2001 every time I'm here.