From Davos To New York

By Michael Elliott

Around 3,000 big shots--everyone from Bill Gates to Bono to Hamid Karzai--will be in New York City this week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This year the gabfest has decamped from its mountain fastness in Davos, Switzerland, for the charms of midtown Manhattan, where the movers and shakers will discuss the state of the world and glide from one party to another. I'd bet a trayful of caviar canapes that none of them will make it to Canal Street. Too bad; they could learn more there than they ever will in the Waldorf-Astoria.

Canal Street is the clogged artery of lower Manhattan, a pothole-riddled, axle-breaking highway stuffed with trucks belching their way from the Jersey shore to Long Island. I love it. On a visit last week, I wove past Asian markets with windows full of roast ducks and durians, checked out prices in tiny perfume stores with Vietnamese names on the window and peered into that weird place that appears to sell nothing but fans (kitchen ones). I stopped in a tattoo parlor as three teenage girls from Queens, in J. Lo jackets and spray-on jeans, hovered nervously at the counter. I wondered whether to buy a new car radio at Taj Mahal Stereo or at the place that advertises WORLD LARGEST SPEAKER SELECTIONS--SE HABLA ESPANOL. Then lunch: Dim sum, falafel or Tex-Mex tortillas? Hell, let's go for a carnivorous selection from the food cart that sells hot dogs, gyros, shish kebabs and Italian sausages, all of them--so the Egyptian in charge claimed--guaranteed halal. "Food for every nationality!" he told me.

He got that right. Everyone knows New York is a great international city, but few, I think, understand just how international it has become. Around 40% of New York's population is now foreign born; it was less than 18% in 1960. In 1996, according to the city's planning department, 45% of all children born in the city had mothers born overseas. None of the world's other great cities has a mix of cultures anything like so rich.

Where do the new New Yorkers come from? Everywhere. Large numbers of immigrants now arrive not just from such traditional countries of origin as Russia, Ireland and the Dominican Republic but also from Nigeria, Bangladesh and Egypt. To be Hispanic in New York once meant you were Puerto Rican. Not now. In 1990 there were only 62,000 Mexicans in the city; by 2000 there were an estimated 200,000.

We learned the stories behind the figures on Sept. 11. The next evening I walked from my office to the Armory on Lexington Avenue, which was acting as a clearinghouse for emergency supplies, and jotted down the names of the missing whose pictures had been posted on the nearby walls. There they were: Garcia, Munoz, Kuo, Lee, Srinivasan, Khan, Kampour... Nobody has an accurate count of how many foreign nationals died in the World Trade Center--some of the dead held dual nationality, and some undoubtedly were illegal immigrants--but the number was certainly substantial. David Usborne, a reporter for the Independent of London who has made a careful study of the casualty lists, reckons that about 150 Muslims died in the Twin Towers. Not all the victims were from nations whose people are tired and poor. Between 80 and 100 Britons were killed, and so were 22 Japanese. Niall O'Dowd, publisher of the Irish Voice, a weekly based in New York, is writing a book on the hundreds of Irish Americans, many of them brave cops and fire fighters, who died on that late-summer morning. (Irish America's tragedy on Sept. 11 was so profound that three days later, Ireland held a national day of mourning.)

For the Davos-in-New York crowd, there are two lessons to be drawn from our city's mosaic. The first is that globalization, the great theme of our time, is driven not just by technology, economics or trade in goods and services but also by a restless movement of people--millions of them--on a scale the world has never seen before. The second is that with good humor, sound institutions and tolerance, that swirl of humanity can create a vibrant culture and an unparalleled opportunity for people to dream of a better life for themselves and their families. New York isn't perfect, but an hour spent in the liberating mess of Canal Street should convince the most jaundiced observer that it doesn't do too badly.

Visitors inspired to make the trip downtown this week might make one more stop. At Varick and North Moore, a minute from Canal and just 12 blocks north of where the Trade Center once stood, is the firehouse of N.Y.F.D. Ladder Co. 8. You can stand outside, with the candles and damp flowers, and see the picture of a fire fighter missing since Sept. 11. Then turn south to look at the now unscraped sky and wonder when the rest of the world will be touched by the magic with which New Yorkers live each day.