Our isolation got worse. Military helicopters had been buzzing the ship repeatedly, checking us out as a potential threat. The captain announced over the PA (we had not seen him in the flesh since dinner the night before) that we'd been ordered to move further off shore because the ship was of foreign registry.

One CIO, who had once been with the NSA or some other security agency, was fuming as he stalked back and forth on deck. "If they'd only let me talk to them, I could convince them we're not a threat!" Everyone wanted to do something. No one could do anything.

I had been able to see the distant skyline of Atlantic City during all of this (and had checked it repeatedly to make sure it was not going up in smoke). Now we would be out of sight of land. Out of range of cell towers. And of course, there was no returning to New York Harbor.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on my own, between the lounge and my room, thinking. I thought about the time, in 1977, when I was 11 and my dad took me to New York and up to the Trade Center observatory. I took photos up there with my first camera. It's all gone now. New York will never be the same. No one will ever think of Manhattan without this tragedy being front and center in their minds. Thousands dead. It's all over.

That night we gathered in the ship's restaurant for dinner. There was little chit chat. The Indian nationals, who served silently as the ship's stewards, waiters and bus boys, looked at us with sympathy in their eyes as they brought out the dinner service. That's a humbling turn of the tables -- foreign people pitying Americans. It's startling to think how quickly the world's sympathy for us evaporated.