I Was In Jersey City On 9/11. Nobody Was Happy, Mr. Trump.

Everything was disappearing before me, on Sept. 11, 2001. The big buildings across the river. The lives of people who worked there.

It felt like the end of the world, and it was happening right outside my car window.

I had to get “reaction.”

I had to get ”Muslim reaction.”

I was told by my newspaper, The Bergen Record, to go to Jersey City, Bayonne, to Newark, to Passaic, to Paterson.

It was the first thing I was told, after watching the North Tower crumble into dust. What did they see? How did they feel?

Sounds like a trivial task. But it was something I kind of specialized in, because I was known for getting people to speak even when they didn’t want to.

And if people were cheering, I would have seen it.

If anybody had even the slightest bit of joy in their voices, after nearly 3,000 people died, I would have reported it.

And even if they tried it to hide their feelings, there was a good chance I would have gotten them to talk about it.

I was all over North Jersey that day, particularly in Jersey City. I was at a gas station. I ordered a sub. I was knocking on doors.

Here it was, the reaction, in three words:

Sad, sorrowful and sick.

Canvassing New Jersey

Indeed, I was in Jersey City so long, I got lost.

If you get lost in Jersey City, you just have to remember: the Hudson River is to the east, and the Turnpike is to the west.

As Yogi Berra may have said, “When you get lost, go there.”

I didn’t think of any of those things. I was watching one of the Twin Towers crumble, this iconic symbol going back to my youth, turning into ash.

I was thinking about everybody in there I knew. I thought of their spouses, their children. I imagined their funerals (they all survived).

I knew I was watching death. And I’m pretty sure I smelled it, too, because the smoke and ash floated across the Hudson River, and into Liberty State Park in Jersey City, where a “triage unit” was supposed to be set up.

The stomach virus I had for three days was getting worse. More importantly, I needed reaction.

I made a lot of bathroom stops, and each time, I got reaction.

“It’s terrible.” “It’s awful.” These were the kinds of things people were saying as they bought cigarettes, or the people behind the counter said as they handed them change.

I was told to go these places, because each of these places had large Muslim populations. I spent the day chasing this, and even going so far as to ask people: “Are you Muslim?”

After that awkward question, I quickly forgot who they were, and where they came from.

It was like spending time with people who were just trying to get through a bad day.

Making it up as I went along

My cell phone wasn’t working, for the most part. Nobody’s was, really. But every so often, I got a call.

One of the things I was told went something like this:

“We got a report about a lot of Muslims in a van, leaving an apartment above a laundromat.”

“We got a report about a lot of Muslims who live in an apartment, who suddenly left last night and didn’t come back.”

I got those in Jersey City and Passaic. I had to sit outside the apartment, and wait for somebody to come or emerge.

Both times, nobody ever came.

Indeed, there weren’t a lot of people outside that day. I don’t remember any partying from the rooftops. I don’t remember T.V. reports of it either.

I remember people standing along the Turnpike, and people standing along the Hudson River, pointing video cameras toward the disaster across the water.

I don’t remember much about what was said, and most of what I got that day - for all I know - didn’t even make it into print.

The only thing I remember, specifically, was when I was getting my sub. This was in Bayonne. I asked a man to keep the mayonnaise off of it, because I was still sick.

Then I asked him the question. Yes, he said he was Muslim.

I asked him how he felt. I asked him about empathy.

“I feel terrible,” he said, “because people I know were in those towers, too.”

Photo: “Wtc burning on 9-11 (5)“ by Jvolkblum at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wtc_burning_on_9-11_(5).jpg#/media/File:Wtc_burning_on_9-11_(5).jpg