Legal Alien: Optical Illusion

A stroll through Greenwich Village brings back memories of an encounter in the Twin Towers just weeks before the tragedy—and the moment I began to rethink my American dream. An excerpt from my book Legal Alien: New York and Back on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

< BACK TO THE BOOK | DEUTSCHE FASSUNG >

SHADOWS IN THE SUNSHINE

I’ve just picked up my weekly mail, checks, and contributor copies from my mail drop in the West Village and am strolling up Bleecker Street toward Midtown. The sun is timidly trying to show what it’s capable of when it wants to. A gentle breeze ruffles my hair.

At Grove Street, a woman wearing a coat and a wool hat on this unusually warm day suddenly passes me on the right. She breezes past every pedestrian ahead of me without breaking stride. Her pace is relentless; the red fabric swishes in the wind. She skillfully dodges oncoming foot traffic, looking like everyone else in New York: she’s got somewhere to be, and not enough time to get there.

Several years earlier, I had been racing through the city in much the same way. My destination was the World Trade Center, where I had an appointment with a law firm regarding my online legal journal, a venture I had launched as an attempt at a second professional foothold. On my way to the southern tip of Manhattan, I was running so late that I had to sprint like mad, block after block, through stifling humidity. To make matters worse, a light drizzle had set in, adding to the chaos of the jam-packed streets.

I think of him often
haunted by the question of whether
he was sitting at his desk
three months later
on the morning of the attacks.

I must have been a pitiful sight when a guy with a mustache, horn-rimmed glasses, and a wide grin pointed me toward his building. He wore a plaid shirt and carried a briefcase with his suit jacket draped over it. I don’t even know why I remember him so vividly—we exchanged only a few words for less than thirty seconds. It was a fleeting, chance encounter. Yet I think of him often, haunted by the question of whether he was sitting at his desk three months later on the morning of the attacks.

VERTIGO ON THE FORTIETH FLOOR

Inside the South Tower, I was funneled into a long line in the lobby, photographed like a petty convict, and handed a clip-on visitor’s pass. I’d dressed up for the meeting, wearing a pink dress shirt under an anthracite blazer. Both were, of course, completely soaked with rain and sweat.

“Your shirt is buttoned wrong,” the man facing me pointed out as I stepped, practically steaming, into the elevator. No sooner had the doors slid shut than the cab rocketed upward at an uncanny speed. It felt as though my feet were still anchored on the ground floor while my hair part was already forty stories up. Flush-faced, I frantically unbuttoned and rebuttoned my shirt in seconds, barely choking out a thank-you before the doors opened.

The sensation that you could fall out
at any second was omnipresent.
There was nothing to hold onto.

At the red light on Christopher Street, the woman in the red coat is forced to stop, allowing me to catch up effortlessly despite my leisurely pace. Like two Egyptian sarcophagi, we stand side by side without making eye contact. Only the clenched fist of her left hand gives away her tension. The moment the signal flips to “Walk,” she takes off again, leaving me in the dust.

Dripping wet from the summer heat back then, I felt dizzy standing on the fortieth floor while the German attorney showed me around. The view was breathtaking enough to make your head spin—you could pick out the tiny dots of pedestrians on the street below or let your gaze drift across the Hudson toward New Jersey. Yet the tower stretched another seventy stories into the sky. I distinctly remember the floor-to-ceiling, frameless windows that rattled me: the sensation that you could fall out at any second was omnipresent. There was nothing to hold onto.

The icy hum of the air conditioning dried the sweat on my forehead. The massive steel colossus seemed to sway first to the left, then to the right. In the conference rooms, I met two lawyers who shared my first name. “Every Oliver I’ve ever known is in this room right now,” one said with a wink, while the other polished off a sandwich with his tie casually slung over his shoulder. We discussed a potential collaboration and exchanged business cards at the end. I do know what became of the law firm’s staff, at least: they all survived.

FADING DREAMS
AND FRACTURED TRUTHS

Exactly three months after my visit, United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into World Trade Center 2. On floors 77 through 85, the impact tore out ceiling panels and blew walls apart. Following the attack on the North Tower seventeen minutes earlier, occupants had initially been instructed to stay in their offices—an announcement with catastrophic consequences.

It’s close, but by the curb on 10th Street, the woman in the red coat is already waiting beside a cornelian cherry tree. Despite the wool hat, not a single bead of sweat glistens on her forehead, as if sprinting were simply her default mode of transit. Perhaps she has an appointment and is already late? Her eyes remain fixed straight ahead, giving nothing away.

George W. Bush’s ill-fated “Either you are with us,
or you are with the terrorists”
drew a stark black-and-white divide,
instantly branding anyone with a dissenting
view as an enemy of the state.

For the first anniversary of the attacks, I reached out to Ed Koch to write an op-ed. The former mayor of New York was an institution, seemingly showing up at every event in town. He’d earned a reputation as a passionate film critic, played the judge on a reality TV court show, and made cameo appearances as himself in countless movies, including The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Since he had an email address but no scanner, Koch sent me a striking portrait via overnight FedEx to Munich. With solemn weight, he penned a patriotic piece of the sort only a true-blue American can pull off without batting an eye, managing the incredible feat of invoking Godzilla and Dante’s Inferno in the very same breath.

As if he’d been bingeing Fox News back when it was still a fledgling propaganda machine, he quoted George W. Bush’s ill-fated declaration: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”—a line that drew a stark black-and-white divide, instantly branding anyone with a dissenting view as an enemy of the state. “On September 11, 2001, not just New Yorkers but the entire nation had been put to the test,” Koch wrote, concluding with the solemn proclamation: “We passed the test.”

A heavy veil of silence hangs over the woman’s frantic dash. Yet I barely have time to ponder, because every time the light turns green, she drives me breathlessly from one intersection to the next: at Charles Street, she’s out front again, but I close the gap without effort the moment the light turns red. Nervously, she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear as a police siren wails down Hudson Street. For a split second, our eyes meet, and a faint, barely perceptible smile flits across her face before she fixes her gaze back on the pavement.

A QUIET MOMENT IN THE RUSH

While Koch celebrated passing “the test,” the first hairline fractures were already spiderwebbing across my American dream. “Falling out of love” is the phrase for what I’d only recognize years later as a gradual parting of ways. Had opened my eyes wide enough, I might have seen just how drastically America was about to shift; maybe I wouldn’t have applied for a Green Card in the first place. Or maybe I just refused to admit that the memory of my golden year in California had long since developed an unshakeable patina, closing my eyes to the present so I wouldn’t have to watch my own memories age.

That a future US president would one day outdo
George W. Bush in sheer ideological simplicity
was something no one could have imagined back then.

What followed 9/11 was a cascade of disastrous missteps. There was an Iraq War built on lies like a skyscraper on quicksand, followed by the rise of ISIS and an endless war in Afghanistan that ended with the Taliban reclaiming the exact same strongholds from which they’d been driven decades earlier. At home, the rule of law was dismantled piece by piece, as if civil liberties were a duty-free luxury item no longer affordable in tough times. America began pulling pages straight out of the authoritarian playbook. From now on, you were guilty until proven innocent. The NSA made sure nothing was ever forgotten.

It was only a short leap from the knee-jerk paranoia of 9/11 to today’s “alternative facts,” which would eventually send the country’s political system into a tailspin. Back then, Donald Trump was still just a shady real estate developer hungry for headlines, a local laughingstock no one took seriously. Years later, he made it a staple of his campaign to claim he’d watched thousands of people in New Jersey frantically cheering as the towers collapsed across the Hudson. Naturally, he was the sole eyewitness to this fictitious spectacle.

That a future U.S. president would one day outdo George W. Bush in sheer ideological simplicity was something no one could have imagined back then. was something no one could have imagined back then. “Dubya” seemed not to know any better, while his successor acted out of a malicious arbitrariness unburdened by facts. He turned truth into a matter of opinion, specifically, his own. His rise is a chilling reminder: in a world order that has forgotten how to think, whoever lies most shamelessly wins.

At the Perry Street crossing, the woman darts ahead like a wind-up race car, leaving me behind in seconds. Her wool hat bobs to the rhythm of her stride. With a sharp swerve, she swings her coat around a group of pedestrians blocking her path. An oncoming, chubby dachshund barely manages to scramble out of the way in time.

Just as I catch up to her again at 11th Street, she cuts a sharp right and vanishes in a stride or two into the shop with a purple awning. Down a chute in the sidewalk, sacks of flour are being unloaded. A mother and her young daughter sit on a green bench outside, devouring cupcakes.

Through the window, I spot cranberry muffins and cheesecake. I see her reflected silhouette placing an order while I reach into my bag for gummy bears, giving Magnolia Bakery a pass. The rich aroma of yeast dough and cinnamon lingers in the air for another block. Every tree along the street is competing to see which can burst into the whitest bloom.