N.Y. Heading for Uncertain New Normality

A week after their daily lives were shattered by a terrorist attack, New Yorkers are being urged to get back to normal. But Bernadette Hogan, a Manhattan psychologist, doesn’t know what that means anymore.

The sights and sounds of a city that once seemed routine--the roar of a jet, loud voices in a crowd, the howl of police sirens--are now harbingers of possible terrorism. And it has changed the way she goes about her life.

“You see a package on the ground left by somebody and you wonder if it’s a bomb,” Hogan says. “We were in a cafe the other night, and there were four Arabic-looking men sitting next to us. I was scared, I was on edge.”

New York has joined a dark fraternity of big cities that have experienced a major terrorist assault. As residents struggle to resume daily life, many are wrestling with anxieties that are familiar in London, Tel Aviv, Belfast, Jerusalem, Paris and other communities. The new normality here, experts say, will be a vigilance unlike anything that has come before.

“Once a terrorist attack takes place in a big city, your life changes forever,” says Dr. Nathaniel Laor, a leading Israeli expert on mental health and the psychology of terrorism. “New Yorkers will soon experience what we know: You have to be cautious about where you go physically in a city. You have to be alert for suspicious things on the street.”

But just as important, people will have to put this at the back of their minds and move on. To shut down or grossly limit their routines would hand the terrorists a victory equal in scale to a physical attack, according to Jerry Hauer, former director of the city’s Office of Emergency Services.

“In the long term, we are only just beginning to figure out the psychological effect on New York, because we’ve never had an experience quite like this in any American city,” Hauer said. “For many people, the simple things they do every day, like taking a walk, may feel different.”

New Yorkers were angered by the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, he added, but that incident resulted in a small number of fatalities and did not shut down the city. The Sept. 11 attacks, by contrast, have sparked a citywide emergency.

On a sunny morning this week when Manhattan went back to work, Milton Zoldan, a midtown banker, walked across the street to Macy’s. He needed to do some shopping, but he also wanted to go outside and break the tension.

“I know New Yorkers who walk down the streets these days and imagine other buildings blowing up in front of them,” he said. “I don’t know how you get those ideas out of your head. Maybe they never really go away.”

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and others are sensitive to these fears and stress that officials are doing everything they can to make New York more secure. But how they will accomplish this remains unclear, because much of New York is still focused on digging out the rubble.

The security improvements are expected to include dramatically increased police deployment in key parts of the city, Hauer said. Security checkpoints could become common in ballparks, concert halls and other public places.

Others predict increased video surveillance and screening of people using public transportation or entering office buildings. Vacationing Americans may have been jarred by the sight of machine-gun toting guards on the streets of Paris and other cities in recent years, noted former police commissioner William Bratton, “but New Yorkers will, I think, learn to live with all this. In some ways, they’ll have no choice.”

They’ll also have to become more patient. In a city where “stop” is a four-letter word, basic civility--often in short supply--may be tested.

“We’ve all been moved by the New Yorkers helping each other after the attacks,” said a woman shopping for apples at an open-air market in Union Square. “We have to be nicer all the time now and control our tempers.”

The impulse to blame other groups must also be restrained, officials say. Despite her fears, Hogan realizes it’s unfair to suspect all Arabic-looking people. Others, too, are struggling to remain fair.

“I’ve lived in this town all my life, and I’ve always enjoyed the diversity here,” said Monte Lask, a photographer hurrying out of Pennsylvania Station for business appointments. “But the other night I walked 20 blocks to calm myself, and I didn’t hear a word of English. It bothered me. It made me wonder who’s here that I should worry about.”

The threat Lask feels is personal. And unlike those who experience earthquakes or other natural disasters, many victims of terrorism are haunted by the fact that there are people out there who want to harm them, according to Grant Marshall, a Rand Corp. behavioral scientist.

“You don’t see huge numbers of people fleeing L.A. or San Francisco after an earthquake, and I don’t think we’ll see that in New York either,” he said. “I’m an optimist, but this is a watershed event. You have to worry about long-term stability . . . especially if there are additional incidents.”

Many New Yorkers may initially be obsessed by a desire for revenge. But not everybody will agree on how best to achieve it and there can be interpersonal stresses if people do not respect each other’s differences, said Dr. Frank Ochberg, former associate director of the National Institute for Mental Health.

“Otherwise, marriages fail, friendships fail, groups cleave according to who’s tender or tough and suddenly we’re at each other’s throats,” he said. “In a way, it would be the ultimate victory for all of the terrorists.”

In New York, thousands are assisting the rescue effort, and psychologists familiar with terrorism call this “the heroic phase.” But it will yield to other stages, according to Meredith Martin, a mental health worker who helped counsel victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

“At some point, sheer physical exhaustion will set in, and then some people will feel disillusioned or abandoned when rescue workers leave the scene,” she said. “The goal is to confront what happened, to acknowledge the pain that many people feel and then get stronger in our daily lives.”

Other New Yorkers may be rallied by London’s experience during the Nazi bombings of World War II. This week, when Giuliani said he was reading “Five Days in London” by John Lukacs, a history of wartime England praised by critics, virtually every copy here was snapped up in hours.

“A key lesson from London is that they refused to end their daily routines, despite immense aerial bombardment,” said Bruce Hoffman, author of “Inside Terrorism.” “New Yorkers may be like Londoners precisely because they’re so stubborn. They won’t let anyone tell them how to live.”

The best advice, though, may come from Israel, where terrorism is almost a daily occurrence. To avoid bloodshed, some people refuse to shop in malls or eat in public places. They prefer to rent movies and watch at home instead of going to theaters, and they don’t allow their children to walk alone in certain areas.

Yet a majority in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem refuse to be cowed.

“New Yorkers are smart, they’ll figure this out,” said Batcheva Winokur, a Manhattan school volunteer who until recently lived in Israel.

“I remember once my daughter and I were eating a falafel in a Jerusalem restaurant when a bomb went off down the street,” she said. “We all rushed outside, saw that the police were right there and things began to slowly calm down. Then we went back inside and finished our falafel.”