Special Section: At War - City Desk: Our Day of Infamy.(Brief Article)

And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven.

The day of infamy was a perfect September day in New York. The city had been stifling under a mask of late summer humidity; the night before it had broken in a torrential thunderstorm; an inch of water had fallen in a quarter of an hour. But the next morning was bright, blue, at the edge of crisp.

As rumor, the dog of panic, made its way, the story pieced itself together. People stood on street corners that had views to the south, the direction of the financial district. Truckdrivers turned their radios up, dog walkers slowed to listen as they passed. From the World Trade Towers, distant and gleaming, stretched a thick windsock of smoke. A plane had crashed into it, said a looker-on. This had happened to the Empire State Building, decades ago, by accident. But then one who was more in the know said it had been two airplanes, one in each tower. This was the piece labeled intent. At a hospital, miles north of the scene, the squat EMS vans were already homing in like carrier pigeons. At my voting place (it was primary day), a poll worker, an old black woman, looked out the window and fretted with the soft pained sympathy of the last Christians on earth.

As soon as one entered the realm of media, all became the usual fever of stimulation. Professionals trying to discover the truth said what they did not know. Leaders, joined for a brief moment with the led in bafflement, stiffly assumed the mask of command.

For in one hour so great riches is come to nought.

The World Trade Towers were slow to enter the affections of New Yorkers. The city's previous tallest buildings-the Chrysler Building and the Empire State-will have the look of the future stamped on their aspiring lines as long as they stand. The World Trade Towers, tall though they were, seemed squat for being sawed off. The TV mast on Tower 2 only emphasized their apparent hunching. They didn't even give the city the honor of having the tallest buildings in the world, as that distinction flitted to Chicago, then Kuala Lumpur.

Light helped them-dawn, dusk, moments of haze. So did their doubleness: It was very American, an amateur architecture critic pointed out to me, to design not one huge building, but two. Maybe the investors got a deal. The failed bombing attempt in 1993 sealed the buildings' bargain with New Yorkers; evil foreigners had tried to do us wrong, but luck and pluck had seen the towers through.