There is no New Orleans.

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I received the following by email from Andy Young, an old friend and a fantastic poet who teaches at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. She recently returned to her French Quarter home to see what was left. Her story is below the fold.

Along Interstate 10 going west to New Orleans, old billboards for Wayne Newton and Meat Loaf are stuck on late September, announcing shows at Biloxi's Beau Rivage that never came. Drive further into the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the billboards turn into big mysterious metal Ts, the wind having stripped everything else away. There is a disaster channel on the radio with a call-in talk show to help those who fled to the storm's edge, or got stuck and stayed, to navigate the often complex business of survival. Most of the callers are demoralized by their experiences of trying to get Red Cross money. They stand in line all day in the heat, only to reach the front and find they should call an always busy toll-free number. Khaled and I had gone to Florida to get our magic debit card after realizing that the further you get from the disaster, the more help you are going to get.

We are planning to go back into New Orleans, exactly three weeks to the day, the minute, really, that we left it, thinking we'd be back in a day or two. Today we got up before dawn, partly because sleeping is almost as scarce as Red Cross money these days, partly because we are trying to beat any traffic going into the city. The help and utility trucks – and any others who want to travel this road of destruction – must share the two-lane highway the Interstate becomes when it goes through Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the bridge washed out. While we don't drive directly through the ruins of these Gulf Coast towns, the view from the highway is sufficient to reveal its desolation: houses now skeletons, houses now splinters, houses now nothing but slabs. Then there are the odd, surrealistic details. Mattresses on the roadside. A jeep with its tail somehow frozen in the air, nosing down into the ground as if to burrow. We roll down the window and soon roll it back up. The smell is of wet rot, like leaves decaying, but less organic.

We think we will be allowed back into the city. Khaled is a business owner, and business owners are supposed to be allowed back this weekend. We saw some of them yesterday on the news. But like everything else about the storm and the attempts to recover from it, all the messages are mixed. First, French Quarter residents were to be allowed back in tomorrow, then next Monday. For a while major news networks were announcing both at the same time. But we hope to get in now, check on our things, then come back, if my place is livable, the following week or at least go back and forth to Mississippi as we try to revive our lives there.

I am wearing what I call my rat-kickin shoes, one of the two pairs of shoes given me by the Salvation Army. I left with sandals on my feet, and I am afraid of rats. My most recurrent fear has been entering my apartment to find that the place is swarming with them. They live in the sewers and storm drains, so had to have been coughed up somewhere.

We get to New Orleans from Mobile in a couple of hours, the same time it normally takes on a good day. I had been prepared for hours of driving, imagining we'd have to circumnavigate the city and back track in order to enter it. In fact, we take I-10 all the way in, hop on I-12 then shoot down the toll-less causeway, all the while listening to the radio announce how the causeway will open tomorrow. We get our IDs and Khaled's business card ready for the checkpoints, but the checkpoints never come. We drive as we always do, with no slow downs or stops, the Superdome looming into view, its roof now the color of cotton on an old Band-Aid. Along the highway, the refuse of those famous days when the people of our city struggled to survive, in front of the eyes of the world and without the help of our country, litters the margins: empty coolers, soiled clothes, a broken baby stroller, abandoned wheelchairs.

We take the exit we always take, drive a short way through the Treme on Governor Nicholls Street, marvel at the old crumbly house I've always loved tumbled like a moldy house of cards. One lone man saunters toward us, dragging bags of something. We nod and wave solemnly to each other as if at a funeral. Driving up to park in front of my house, another man appears and says something, so I stop. He offers us ice. We need it. He offers us another, his last, and we tell him to save it for someone else. He is helping clean the streets, a grim and necessary job. Piles of garbage and limbs cover the streets and sidewalks. He has lost everything, his house by the Circle Food store completely under water. I remember a picture I saw yesterday in Time magazine. A dead man floating face down in front of that store.

The first thing you notice about the Quarter is its nearly complete abandonment. The second thing you notice is the smell. I have gone uptown to escape the Quarter on Ash Wednesday, the stench of Mardi Gras trash too much to take. But I have never smelled anything like this. It is the smell of fear, of rotting plants, of three-week-old garbage, of death. Amplified by the 95 degree heat, it is almost more than we can bear. I pull out my key, stupidly check my mail, then enter. The smell is worse inside the hallway and going up the stairs. The dreaded mold – there is talk of a fearful "toxic mold" – lines the bottom of the stairs with its gray fur. I live on the third floor, and when we get to the final flight, we see that a large chunk of the ceiling (my kitchen floor) has fallen down and smashed, along with the shards of glass. Looking up through the hole, we see that the wood is still intact and should be safe to stand on.

Inside the apartment, there is a buzz in the house, the hum of decay and the living things that spring from it. The kitchen is a tumble, the window panes having blown out, and one whole window frame apparently lifted out and sailed on the wind. Some strange breed of flies swarm around bowls of now unidentifiable fruit, their backs iridescent blues and purples making them look like little oil spills. We had planned to stay for the hurricane, and stocked up accordingly. Then we left in a hurry. What we left in our haste, like so many other things, has mutated beyond recognition.

More windows are gone in the bedroom, and the plaster from the brick wall has crumbled and coated everything under it. I'd tossed most of the books and furniture near the windows into the middle of the room when we left, so the place is a disheartening mess. But it could be far worse. My apartment was built in 1856, and they knew how to build for the weather back then. Most of the windows have wooden shutters, and all but one survived and lessened the damage that would have been done. Still, the feeling of abandonment and decay, which usually adds to the crumbling splendor of our city, has overtaken the joy. The view from my favorite window shows the crooked steeple of Saint Augustine's Church where I have gone to join up with so many second-line parades and dance in the street. There is no music, no mirth, no life left, and there is nothing to do but cry. Cry and clean.

After a few hours of scrubbing, sweeping, scraping and rearranging, we learn that another friend is in town and is having a beer at Molly's Bar, one of the staples of our nightlife. We have been told that the water is so contaminated we should not even wash with it, so we leave in our dirty clothes, knowing we smell no worse than the city. Our bikes are still standing where we left them, so we dust them off and ride down the street, dodging the broken glass and tree limbs. We check on Khaled's store and find it completely untouched. The only oddness is the two chairs set up outside in front of the pay phone. It turns out it is the only public phone that works, and there are notes and messages written on a paper taped to it. "Joe, call your mother," and other messages that you might find on a refrigerator in normal times.

Most of the customers in the darkened Molly's bar are relief workers and fireman, but there are a handful of locals who have also come back to check on things or who have never left. This last group is easy to spot. There is something different in their eyes, a weariness and age that should have taken more than three weeks to grow there. It is great to meet our friend, to see her familiar face and help link today back to our pre-Katrina life. She tears up easily. Ten years ago, she was a refugee from Bosnia, and this whole experience has reminded her far too much of those days. "The only thing different is that we are not being shot at," she says. And of course that is not true of all New Orleanians.

We hear there are a few other friends who have stayed around. We've heard our friend Jorge formed a little army sometime during the chaos and that another has a radio station. But cell phones don't work here, and there are few signs of life outside of Molly's. We have decided to stay the night here. There is more cleaning to be done. And while there is no electricity, we've brought some water and food, and there is thankfully no sign of rats in the apartment. I guess they have plenty to eat outside. The sun will soon be down, and we hear there is a curfew, and those out after dark will be arrested. Everyone in New Orleans knows not to be arrested in the week before Mardi Gras because there is no chance of getting out until after Mardi Gras day. And what could be worse than being forgotten about and locked away on the most joyful day of the year? Being arrested now, when there is no sense of who holds the keys, would be. So we go in and light the candles and incense.

We find a bottle of bourbon and drink it over the ice that is left, sitting in the one clean room with the windows busted out and looking out over the city. It feels good to be here, to be home, to not impose on anyone else's life, to remember that we have our own. From the third floor, we look out over rooftops toward the Business District, lit up as it always is. For a while, it seems that nothing could be wrong, that there is no way the images we've seen on television these last weeks could have come from these streets.

The mosquitoes remind us. After an hour or so of sleep, the invasion begins. We are under attack: a high-pitched relentless humming and bites on any exposed flesh. We try to wrap ourselves like mummies in the sheets, but it so hot and still that it feels like we will bake. Stumbling to the bathroom with a flashlight, I remember that a friend had sent me a bottle of pure DEET. I doubt I should put this directly on my skin, so pour some out in my plastic whiskey cup and dilute it with witch hazel. So I am coated in whiskey, DEET and witch hazel, and the mosquitoes don't even slow down. We give up. At four AM, we get up to finish cleaning by flashlight. By dawn, we are ready for the final dreaded task: to clean the refrigerator. Three weeks of food had rotted in the tropical heat, and I knew it would not be pretty. In fact, many refrigerators were duct-taped and put out on the curb. Many did not even open them, simply threw them away. But not only did that seem very wasteful – when would I ever get another refrigerator when I can't even reach my landlord by phone – but how would we get a refrigerator down three flights of winding stairs?

We don our face masks and rubber gloves, hold our breath, and open the door. As expected, it is a nightmarish scene of fuzz and decay. Trying not to look, we dump everything into big garbage bags, then pick out the clinging maggots with our gloves. I remember being shocked and amazed by the slimy little creatures when I first encountered them as a child. They seemed borne from some terrible magic, moving creatures appearing in a vacuum, life in the mouth of death. I could not help but think of one of the last poems I had taught before the storm hit, "Ode to the Maggot" by Yusef Komunyakaa: "No one gets to heaven without going through you first." We knew we would have to hightail it out of the place as soon as the refrigerator's demonic smell was released. With the water too dirty to wash with, I had filled a bowl with distilled water and lavender oil to at least wash off with before we drove out of town.

The last thing I do before leaving my home is light some sage and smudge the house with it and kick a coconut through the house, visualizing it picking up all the death and decay that had been in the air. I kick it down the stairs, out the door, and like a miracle I see my saviors. The garbage men are coming down the street. After they pick up the bags of swill, I toss the coconut in on top.

Before we leave town, we take a drive through town. It is like one of those children's cartoons in the newspaper: see if you can spot what is wrong with this picture. Let's see, that tree is upside down, dangling from a wire. That tree is on the house. That house has no wall. That window is on the street. This city has no people.

Driving down a street, it is easy to swing from inspiration to despair within one block. The inspiration comes, for example, when we check on a friend's house, find the door strangely ajar, and walk in to find it just as she'd left it. The despair when we drive a few blocks over and see three dogs roaming the street, lost and hungry. We toss them one of our cheese sandwiches, then look over to notice the homemade "Chemical Spill" sign blocking the street next to them. A few blocks up and there is half a house, and we look right into the living room as if it were a doll's. We drive the wrong way on one-way streets when some are blocked off by work crews. No one notices.

The National Guard has set up its base at my school, and their green tents stretch across the spot where I have sat with my poetry students on cool days to listen to their new poems. Their encampment stretches blocks beyond the school, and there are signs and armed soldiers there to keep us out. It is not our city. The images of destruction start to seem normal. The total desertion and occupation by the Guard does not.

On a usual New Orleans day, the presence of the dead is not hard to feel. Our famous cemeteries stand like little cities within them. It is said that many coffins have floated up to the surface and moved around. The dead are taking over, and the restless spirits who have recently passed, most in anguish and many unnecessarily, add to their palpable presence. There are more of the dead than the living here.

Seeing the city like this is like finally seeing a beloved and very sick friend in the hospital. There is a sense of relief because you see she is still herself, and she is still here. But there is also despair because she is so frail, so wrecked.

When I was stranded in Vicksburg, Mississippi, just after the storm, in a darkened gas station that had opened its doors to sell what was left on its shelves, I did not know yet of the levee breaks and asked if anyone knew if the roads were open to return to New Orleans. "There is no New Orleans," said a man, looking me straight in the eye, and it hurt as if someone had insulted my mother. Driving through it now, I know there is a New Orleans. She is just alone, and very, very sick.

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