“’I dream, but I do not call the figures phantoms that come to me in dreams.’

‘What are they then?’

‘They are memories, memories of my waking hours, broken and mingled and altered.’

‘And are they real?’

‘As real, or as little real, as the memories themselves.’”

J.M. Coetzee, Foe

           First, in complete silence, the yellow wall in my room cracks, spreading its spider web threads as fast and as slowly as it is only possible in a dream. Chill is crawling down my spine; hot puffs throb into my head. This is panic, fear, terror--a preverbal pre-Russian sensation that has yet no name. I am regressing into pre-consciousness, into pure physiology: the adrenaline, the serotonin, the chemical reactions in my brain, until I start to discern first colors then words: thin scarlet and gluey yellow--koshmar (horror, literally meaning nightmare), then chestnut brown remont. (Please, not another renovation, not again!)[i]

           From the inside of my Moscow home, shaped as the Russian letter п, I see out the window the other wing of the building blowing up noiselessly into the sky, with tongues of fire streaming through it and a soaring black twister of smoke. From the smoke, in the same unbearable silence, debris and bodies plummet to the ground; white paper sheets slowly swirl down; computer monitors, desks, and chairs crash, bursting out, like in a TV commercial, with the sound off. With horrific recognition, I hear a male voice somewhere in the background distinctly say in English, “My God! Look! Here is another plane!” and I know with prophetic certainty that soon the whole structure, the building, the world will melt down into a familiar pile of apocalyptic gray powder, with the boney skeleton of metal and concrete lonely poking in the thick smoke-filled air.  

            
            I rush out of the classroom as I hear a piercing cry, then a roar, and we spill out in the hallways where TV screens show an incredible scene from a Hollywood dystopia or from Bruce Willis/Will Smith horror science fiction movies: An international gang stealing nuclear weapons? Aliens from Mars destroying human civilization? Luthor Corp a.k.a. the Joker taking over the world? In the smoke enveloping the Twin Towers, The World Trade Center, in the streaming tongues of fire, debris and bodies plummet to the ground in the midst of a white paper snowstorm and of a tornado of computer monitors, desks, and chairs. Is the TV sound off? The second plane hits the second tower, like a toy smashing into cardboard, and the crowds standing around me, together with voices on TV, exhale a long cinematic shriek, Aaah! It is the war, I think to myself and I say out loud to a colleague next to me, and we hold each other, in grief. Yes, it is the war, she says.

            
            Inside, my room is spacious, comfortable, and light, with my French books, French music, and Georges Brassens with his guitar, looking at me with his usual smirk from the poster. On my desk, volumes of Tsvetayeva, Achmatova, and Block; my notebooks and my papers with notes, drafts, and translations. Outside, a familiar, framed by the window snapshot of lives, and I amuse myself to watch those characters go back and forth, eat, smoke, talk (with the sound off) and sometimes look (at me?) out the window.

           From my room, I see it in flames. The building is shaking. Run, run, it will explode any minute now…My chest is burning; my head is spinning; my thoughts are racing in an irrational marathon: I must get out of the house! What do I take? From a shoe rack, I pull out shoes, one pair after another—but none of them fit! I am sweating and hurrying myself with short French vite, vite! but I can’t put them on for the sake of me, as if I just got out of the water. Such aching feet. Arthritis, so early?  

            
            All classes are spontaneously canceled, and crowds of students roam the campus with solemn staggered faces. Groups form sporadically from chunks of overheard conversations, from bits of information, and from the need to connect and to touch. Strangers all of a sudden sharing a home. Individuals joining a collective. Out the windows and from the beautiful campus shore, above the water, a ribbon of black smoke from Manhattan covers our gray, heavy, not anymore blue and peaceful sky.

           I must make sure that my children are safe. I must have them next to me. I call the school; Julia is OK, waiting to be picked up. I have to go outside, beyond the college gates with a familiar American flag which, for some reason, startles me every single day--because it is American or because it is mine? In my experience, flags are incompatible with home.

           Pauline walks into the office and I hug her and pull her close, as close as I can to make us a twosome. Mom, I am O.K., what’s wrong with you? Don’t go away, kotik (kitten), let’s stay together. Please. Ashes on her jacket look like black snow. She woke up late as usual, went outside, and smelled the smoke in the air, then saw the ashes falling from the sky. What is going on? And someone said, Where have you been, young lady? The terrorists hijacked the planes and flew them into the World Trade Center…

            
            I know death is near, horror is coming, but absurdly, I am sitting on my childhood bed covered with an old curtain (starched washed out blue, yellow and orange). I am on the phone with a man, a nice attentive man, probably a dentist, whom I finally found for Julia--what an ordeal, she has a needle phobia. I am anxious to tell him about my disarray, the explosion, the fear, and I realize that am relieved to talk to him. If only I could get through to him, to make him understand! If only we could speak the same language! But something is not right, it must be the connection…How frustrating and yet, how comforting! His voice is my father’s voice, not anymore a dentist’s. I desperately want, I absolutely need to keep this lost connection going, and I ask for his phone number. Surprisingly, I write the numbers down without hearing them: green, aqua, green, aqua again, navy and a colorless blank: 272, 277, 279, and 0, until I realize that these colors translate into my Moscow phone number: 272-20-19. Phone home?

            
            I call my mother—no answer, and then I remember that she had an appointment in the city, but I don’t know where. My stomach is pierced with a sharp sucking pain. She is nowhere to be found. We have to wait.

           At home, all four of us, including my children’s father, who is welcome to be with us today, are glued to the only working TV station showing over and over again the clip with the planes hitting the towers, the plummeting bodies, the swirling down papers, and Mayor Giuliani speaking, crying, reassuring, and commanding. We instantly love him. We weep, hold, and hug each other and we repeat the words, the English words broadcasted from the screen, uttered by reporters, by the mayor, by the president, by Tony Blair, as if language could save us from fear: terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, hijacking, Al Qaeda, Muslim Fundamentalists, solidarity, together we stand.

           Friends and relatives from other cities, from Russia, France, England, and Israel call to make sure we are safe, and everybody worries about my mother. By the evening, she finally calls, out of breath, half-alive, but not too frightened. On her way to Manhattan, the train was stopped, but nobody explained what happened. Cell phones did not work; people started to panic; there was no air. After a long while, they were let go right where they were, in the middle of a tunnel, and they walked to the nearest exit, then all the way to Brooklyn. An older asthmatic Russian woman with aching feet fleeing the chaotic intimidated city—was it a familiar experience, a déjà-vu of her childhood?

           We run to our neighbor, Maya, a young woman from Kiev, a successful computer analyst, who I know works in Lower Manhattan. We find her half-lying on the couch, terrified, ashes covering her face and hands, in torn down clothes. She had to run for her life, hid in a basement, helped an injured colleague, and walked all the way back home in one shoe. At night, Maya and I take the children to our local corner supermarket, where we heard an improvised memorial or “altar” has been created, a street corner filled with candles, flowers, and notes with words of grief, anger, love, and support. We light our candles and we cry our hearts out. I feel, I feel it, Maya says, I am American!

           I concur. For a few weeks, I drive around with an American flag attached to my car antenna--a new version of my childhood’s flazhok…From now on, my “world of ideas” includes a real, not only bookish, outside world, politics, events, and analysis. My Soviet political apathy is gone. I want to know, I want to choose, I want to make a difference. On September 15 or so, I subscribe to a home delivery of New York Times and I read it every single day complementing it by daily PBS and NPR programs.

            
            It takes weeks for the smoke and ashes to leave Brooklyn, my terrace, and the college campus. There is tragic emptiness in the view of Manhattan where the twin towers could be seen even from here on a clear sunny day. One of my Muslim students came to class with a bruise from a hate fight, and we talked about Islam, religions, diversity, and new New York, with new economy, tensions, politics of fear, and the changing American dream.  

            
            In the park across the street, Russian dogs’ and immigrants’ heaven, a corner with a few benches, flower beds, decorative bushes, and a weeping willow in the center is a cozy home for a new memorial for 9/11 victims of Russian descent. There are quite a few names there, mostly Jewish, but who knows anymore? They are engraved in English. These young and successful overachievers who made it to the WTC fulfilled their own and their parents’ American dream and represented American power. Here we are again, paying a price for our inherent and inherited social and professional mobility, for our ambition, for life in the empires, and for the dream inscribed in the Jewish genes.

           No longer at a supermarket or a cemetery, the modest memorial is in harmony with a green community park, where children play, grandmothers sit on the benches, and dogs run after squirrels. Every 9/11 anniversary, families and friends gather here for a solemn commemorating ceremony, light candles, bring flowers, and make short speeches, in both languages. A few orphaned parents regularly come to the park to clean up the granite plaque and the pavement, to plant new bushes and grass, to work on the watering system, to dig the rich American soil--and to be alone with their children. This is a nightmare, the koshmar of their lives, but it is their home.