Losing Liberty One Bit at a Time

Jimmy Breslin

October 8, 2001

The cab driver was wearing a red turban that was as bright as a traffic light.

"You ought to take that off," I said.

"Why, sir?"

"Because you could catch a good beating at the first checkpoint," I said.

"I am a Sikh. I am not a bomber," he said.

"You can't prove it by that red flag on your head," I said.

He got me to Newark Airport unscathed, although four officers from some law enforcement agency stood with one of these dogs that can't find liverwurst and scowled at him.

This was at the start of what I thought could be a couple of days off on the eve of war. That ran out suddenly yesterday when bombing started.

I was in Florida, in Naples, and had to go to Fort Lauderdale to get a plane home.

The moment I heard the news I knew what we had lost. Moodily, I looked around before getting into the car in Naples. I'd never see this place again, I told myself. The amount of security checkpoints and rules and directions from armed people between New York and Florida was more than I'm ever going to be able to bear. You lose liberty a little bit at a time. And I knew we started that yesterday.

On those days following the World Trade Center catastrophe much of the city became a police precinct. There was one day when I was on Park Row and I started to go down Beekman Street to look at a series of shoes that people had run out of and left there. Shoes in the dust of the dead.

Two patrolmen talking on the corner now looked at me.

"Where are you going?" the cop asked.

"To look at the shoes."

"You can't go there," he said.

"Why?"

"Because you can't."

Then he resumed his conversation with the other cop. The street was empty, but he was playing martial law.

That day, I thought it was one of these annoyances that soon would be gone. Yesterday, I knew that scenes such as that would become a part of the daily life we will all have to lead from now on.

The other night, on the Upper East Side, I saw two New York State Police cars patrolling. One of them stopped and the troopers inside looked into a restaurant to see what was going on. Big Stetson hats playing Big City cops.