NEW ORLEANS — This city is bleeding. New Orleans is not dying; there will be some semblance of a metropolis here again one day. But it is bleeding.
Since Hurricane Katrina came ashore Monday, I have walked these streets every day. The images have been searing:
The woman who died in a chair, in the middle of a road. Someone covered her with a tarp and left her there. The girl walking along the terrace of the Superdome who had lost both shoes and one sock. The fancy convertible in the French Quarter crushed by the brick facade of a four-story building.
Water is the enemy. Even now, it drips steadily into the lobby of my hotel. It gurgles up from storm drains, splashes against shattered storefronts and front doors when rescue trucks go by. It hides snakes, dead, bloated rats and, in the areas with the worst flooding, untold numbers of bloated bodies.
There is no air conditioning. There are no fans. There is no ice. Katrina knocked out part of a wall in the Hyatt Hotel downtown; some people I've met are envious because that has given my room a little breeze at night. Still, by 8 a.m. every day I sweat through my clothes. Nothing dries.
No one can bathe. The entire city smells, a syrupy, putrid smell of death and disease and rot. There is no sanitation. Toilets do not flush and are full. Well-to-do tourists who have been trapped here and protected for the most part from the suffering of the locals were, by Thursday, using plastic cups as toilets.
Hurricanes are fickle and cruel. Some of the wealthiest areas of town -- most of the French Quarter, the Garden District -- were spared significant damage. While desperate people stood on their roofs for a third day and tried to wave down rescue helicopters, I found Debbie Lavender sitting on the steps of her well-appointed, 150-year-old house in the Garden District, pondering whether to go.
"Careful," she said. "You've come in the middle of a family dispute."
Lavender, 52, was debating with her sons whether to leave town. Though there was no flooding in their part of the city, water was rising elsewhere.
Trees were down in her neighborhood. Her garden was destroyed. But there were still jalapeno peppers growing in a pot on the back porch. Inside, the cat food was still in the bowl. The lipstick in the bathroom was still clustered delicately in a cup. The candelabras were still on the table.
"What can I say? This house was built to last," Lavender said with a shrug.
