HANNAH

Justice Has Been Done, Ground Zero 5/2/2011

I will have to admit, I was not quite prepared for the reaction that I had upon hearing of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  It had after all been such a very long time since that terrible day in September 2001. I suppose I, like many others, just assumed he would never be brought to justice.  It had simply vanished from my plane of consciousness.  I had just been back to Ground Zero a week ago to show my daughter the site.  It was bustling now with construction activity, commuters, and workers but yet, there was still a somber tone there.  It was still a place where so many had been murdered so senselessly.  Fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, husbands, wives friends and lovers, so many died that day, so many lives changed forever.  It’s almost as if you can feel the loss in your heart there.  You can feel the pain that those left behind carry with them everyday while you are there.  It is a sacred place, but more than that, there is emptiness there.  On Sunday evening, when I received that first text from a friend that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US forces, my heart actually raced, there was a visceral reaction and alone I cheered out loud, “They got the motherfucker”.  And I raced to the TV, for that address from our President, confirming what we all had hoped that he would say.  With the TV blasting I KNEW that I had to go someplace.  I knew that I had to join in a catharsis with strangers.

Was it Times Square, no not Times Square, just not connected enough to what I was feeling?  It had to be Ground Zero, but do I dare go to Ground Zero to CELEBRATE.  Ground Zero is a place one goes to mourn, to speak in hushed tones and to remember.  Yet, I just felt that Ground Zero was where I needed to be.  I packed my cameras as quickly as I could, waited for the President’s speech and sat in absolute awe.  The minute he was finished I raced out the door and hailed a taxi.  The driver a Pakistani man asked if I had heard the news.  I told him that I had.  He replied to me, “I am glad they got the son of a bitch, I am from Pakistan and my cousin was killed two years ago by a car bomb, Osama should rot in hell.” I was stunned, what were the odds of THIS encounter? I told him where I was headed and he literally raced me down the West Side Highway to the site.  When I arrived I was not quite prepared for what I was witnessing.  I knew that I was elated, but I wasn’t quite sure if others would silently congregate or not in this sacred place.  What I witnessed was one of the most joyous celebrations I have ever witnessed.  The chants of USA, USA, and the flag draped men and women gleefully running toward Ground Zero.  The complete opposite of what we all witnessed almost ten years earlier.  Instead of throngs running away from Ground Zero for their dear lives, there were throngs of people running TOWARD Ground Zero and celebrating as if to tell all those lost, JUSTICE HAS BEEN DONE!

I didn’t actually celebrate in an overt manner there that night, but I do what I do always, I observed and I photographed the events around me. I did that with a welling of satisfaction in my heart and a sense that we all in our own way had come there to tell those lost that we had never forgotten them. In fact, we had carried them in our hearts far more deeply than we had ever imagined and we needed to tell them, to tell each other that JUSTICE HAD BEEN DONE.