The pride before the fall

A month later it would have made a good Halloween costume—torn, tattered, bloody clothing, a bleeding head wound that later morphed into a blackened eye the size of sub-Saharan Africa on a desk-top globe and then a deep purple bruise with tinges of jaundiced yellow.

I was riding my bike on a clear sunny day— a day with historic resonance. September 11. I was feeling glad, even a little rebellious, not to be in the city on this day. I no longer felt the need to be there. The visceral pull of souls that I had felt in previous years had faded with time, the great wound-healer. Politicians were filling the void at One and Two World Trade Center.

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