An OTBKB reader sent this recollection of Blackout ’03. She writes: "This is waaaaay too long, but I wrote it after the Blackout and it
was published in The Cape Argus, my hometown of Cape Town’s daily
newspaper. If I could draw your attention to just one thing, it would be to our cocktail :-). Blackout Coctail: three parts cognac, one part fresh lime juice, a teaspoon of powdered sugar, mint from the pot on the windowsill, stirred, crushed, and topped with soda water and five ice cubes."
The City That Disappeared by Marie Viljoen
The number 6 train to Brooklyn Bridge stops suddenly, shy of the station. Passengers in the new, blue, computerized, air-conditioned subway car glance up and at each other. You don’t hold the gaze. That would register concern, and it is not cool to register concern at the normal jerkings, clickings and idiosyncrasies of the New York subway system. You could care less. On the outside, at any rate. After a minute of no movement I look up from my book again. We’re near the station, because already the walls on the one side of the track are tiled. Tunnels are just dark, with blue lights at intervals. Stations are tiled. The intercom comes to life and we are told to move to the first subway car and exit. In typical subway-intercom fashion the rest of the message sounds like popcorn shooting the lid of a pot. Well, this is different, we think. Instantly we become stoic New Yorkers. Grumble-grumble, but we’re interested now, without showing it, of course. We squeeze through one half of a pried-open door in the first car, the only one to have reached the platform.
The light is weird. Brooklyn Bridge station is a significant subway hub, with local trains meeting express. It is the embarkation point for those from Brooklyn wanting to go uptown in Manhattan, or from Manhattan to Brooklyn, the largest New York borough. Above ground are court houses, a park and the beginning of the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge. The lights in the station are humming and flickering. It is as hot as hell. On several tracks trains are arrested. Tail-lights glow red in the tunnel. After five minutes of waiting for power to be restored I give up and surface.
The day is beautiful and hot, the trees in the park green and cooling over the people beginning to gather. I consider my options. Get a cab and go over the bridge. But I need money, so begin to walk towards a likely place for an ATM. Ah, but the traffic lights are not working. It’s affecting several blocks, this power thing. Ahead of me lies the inviting wide arch of the Brooklyn Bridge. Why not? I think. My feet provide the answer. “ Are you crazy? We are wearing your most expensive pair of little clippity-clop shoes and you know that they will bite us after more than a few blocks.” I have just come from a job interview, dressed sensibly in cargo pants and white top, but the shoes were for my ego. My heavy portfolio and wicker handbag have a short conversation with the feet. “Look, we have no money, just plastic, and we all want to go home. Just do it.” So off we go. It feels like an adventure.
Pedestrians cross the Brooklyn Bridge above the traffic, on a wide central boardwalk of worn-smooth wood. Really smooth. So I take off the expensive clippity-clops and put them into the wicker handbag. And we walk. The sky is blue. The bridge is already packed. The East River lies silver far below and ferries throw up high white wakes. A puff of smoke rises incongruously from the vicinity of the Fourteenth Street substation. “These terrorists,” I’m thinking, “they really are very clever.” In the sunlight, with the whole city on the move together, with the glittering skyline behind us, it is impossible to forget that this is a replay of 9/11, this bridge the conduit for the dazed, ash-obscured faces that left Lower Manhattan in a silent throng. Today there is nothing tumbling down behind us. It is very hot and very quiet. Half way across the sirens start, and all belong to unmarked black SUV’s. Once down on the Brooklyn side, we are packed tight and have to walk carefully. I put my shoes back on. News from the radios in stuck cars reaches us. No power in the city. We don’t know why or how. A Rastafarian offers to carry me. A man missing two teeth says he’s had to abandon his truck in the city because he could not move for humans.
Through the downtown streets of Brooklyn we go, each with our homing instincts steering us. I have never seen so many people. Intersections look like cartoon-clichés of gridlock. Drivers are angry. Inside stores, employees are preparing to close, to erect barricades. Brooklyn has no power. People are gathered around portable radios held to the ear. More news filters into the crowd. Canada, someone said. Impossible. Later, Ohio. The first clutch of fear. Really, really clever, these terrorists.
It takes an hour and a half from my Manhattan subway exit to my front door. The last blocks are long. Large ladies waving Puerto Rican flags are directing traffic. My feet, sore and blistered by now, have been bitten by the shoes, as predicted, but I am home. My head is hot. My arms and neck will be burned and I am very thirsty. Thousands of people continue their trek past my door to their homes.
First chore is to go out again, as soon as I’ve stood under a cold shower, to buy food for my cat. This finds me rooting for change, as the money-thing dawns on me. I still don’t have cash. Also very little food, as I’m a daily shopper. With $3 in quarters I visit the local deli run by two Palestinian brothers who are letting customers in two at a time and guiding them with torches on personalized shopping trips around the small store. Still sunny outside, it is pitch dark in the windowless space. I buy tuna in water for the cat. I come back later for candles but they are sold out. I’ll have to make do with torch and tea lights.
My downstairs neighbour, Constanza, is waiting for me when I get back. Her husband is still missing. So 9/11. My boyfriend is somewhere, but where? My apartment seems dead, with no computer, no TV, no dial tone, no radio. We assess our situation. We still do not know what has happened. No one does. An inventory of fridges and cupboards yields enough liquor to see us through a weekend. But I ate my post 9/11 emergency rations a year ago. I mix up a fortifying Blackout Cocktail: three parts cognac, one part fresh lime juice, a teaspoon of powdered sugar, mint from the pot on the windowsill, stirred, crushed and topped with soda water and five ice cubes. Armed, we sit at her kitchen table and talk. For hours. We light two candles as the twilight turns dark. We get to know each other pretty well, even though we have lived above-below for three years. At 9pm her husband arrives, weary, guilty. Before embarking on his walk to Brooklyn he’d had a little pub-crawl. He then walked for two and a half hours. Outside, in the dark, people still stream past. The whistles of police directing traffic rhythmically split the night. Buses, packed with sitting and standing passengers, stay marooned in the street, going nowhere.
Continue reading Blackout ’03: The City That Disappeared →
