Letter from Ground Zero
The momentous changes in world politics provoked by the 9/11 attacks have still not been recognised in the United States itself.

No special sign, or warnings, greet the traveller who seeks to visit the site of the World Trade Centre twin towers, destroyed in the epochal minutes of 11 September 2001. New Yorkers suggest taking the subway to Chambers Street station in Manhattan, and then walking a few blocks, and this is what I do. Nothing marks the approaches to the site except one lone street-vendor, who turns out to be from Cameroon, selling twin-tower key rings, New York fire department T-shirts and a photographic album of the events from which all human victims are removed.

Turning the corner into Cortlandt St you run up against a large empty space, surrounded by a wire fence, within its sixteen acres little movement can be seen: in effect, a building-site where, from now to 2009, a new Freedom Tower and other smaller buildings are to be erected. Around the site apparent normality prevails: a temporary Port Authority train station was rapidly rebuilt; St Paul's Chapel, where George Washington used to pray when New York was the United States capital, and where the fire-fighters and victims took refuge and rest on the day stands unperturbed; hotels, cafes and offices continue as normal. No souvenirs, no plaques, as yet no memorial.

This apparent calm also applies to New York as a whole.

Curiosos ?

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