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The New York Catastrophe: A Personal Experience
By Hana Siddiqi
20/09/2001
I recently moved to the financial district in lower Manhattan to start graduate school at New York University. Being far from home for the first time, and slowly adjusting to New York life - which moves at a much different pace than life in California - the timing of the largest terrorist attack in American history could not have been worse.
That Tuesday morning I did not have the pleasure of hearing my brand-new alarm clock go off. Instead, the sounds of sirens of one ambulance after another were what roused me from my dream state. Once awake, I got out of bed and looked through my window. I was quite startled to see thousands of people on the streets below staring at some smoke, which was all I could make out from my 28th floor view, as another building prevented me from getting the full picture.
"There must be a big fire," I thought.
Suddenly, I saw people running away screaming. What I did not know at the time was that the second of two planes that had targeted the World Trade Center's twin towers, had just hit Tower 2, and thousands of people were running for their lives. What I did know, however, was that something was definitely wrong.
I hurried to the bathroom to brush my teeth and quickly dressed. When I turned to look out the window again, I was surprised to see my entire view obscured by a veil of opaque white. It took me a second to realize that it was actually smoke at my window, and the quick minute it took for that smoke to reach me meant trouble. I then received a phone call, shedding light on the matter.
When I heard that there had been a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, I felt my heart stop for a second. My brother had left town three days earlier. He had been training with his company, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, on the 84th floor of Tower 2 for the past few weeks. I could remember him telling me that it took him fifteen minutes to get to work; and that was after entering the elevator.
My roommate and I quickly went down to ground level to find all the residents of our building filling the lobby with panic. Soon after, we were evacuated from the building. At that time I did not know that all those leaving the building that day would soon become homeless; for being so close to the disaster sight, authorities quickly placed the building off limits as a safety precaution. I left that building with nothing but the clothes on my back, and those clothes would be my only possession for quite some time.
The first thing that came to my mind as I stepped outside onto the street were my childhood days in London when I would wake up one random winter day to find snow, everywhere. In this case, however, the beige color covering the roads and cars was not snow - it was ash - and it was still alive in the wind. I covered my mouth with a tissue, attempting to block the smoky air, and I squinted my eyes as I dodged the ashes and pieces of building flying around in the air.
We joined the crowds making their way uptown, away from the disaster, some with gas masks, some with no protection at all. After walking half an hour, I spotted a pay phone and made a quick call to my parents. Hearing my father's distraught voice, I told him that I was perfectly fine, and not to worry.
What came after the initial shock of this horrendous event was something unexpected, at least for me. The matter that began to circulate through e-mails, phone calls, and engage us the most in conversation was not so much the tragedy that had just taken place, but the tragedy that seemed to follow, as Muslims and people of Middle Eastern/Arab background began receiving blame for the incident. Although those to blame for this incident could indeed be of such backgrounds, to simply incriminate people because they may have a beard or a head covering is just ignorant and a move backwards. Japanese Americans would probably agree.
I never imagined the content of the calls I began to get this week. One friend of mine rang me to describe how Muslim women had been harassed at my old college and to inform me that a meeting had been arranged to organize a way for students to walk in pairs from class to class. It reminded me of the students who participated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the precautions they had to take.
Family members of mine began to call, telling me to take off my head covering, to protect myself. This made me think of Muslim women in Turkey who were by law required to keep their hair uncovered, and the struggle they had been going through. This all seemed so unreal, the prospect of having to walk the streets "disguised" as a "typical" American in order to be accepted and keep myself from being assaulted. It all seemed awkward, since my brown skin might eventually betray my identity anyway. My friend's father's advice was, "Keep your politics to yourself, and if anyone bothers you, just start speaking in only Spanish."
But, of all the issues of personal concern, the one thing that continued to lurk in my mind was the disturbing thought that my brother was saved by a matter of a few days from being a part of that tragedy.
As for my thoughts on the broader impact of the tragedy, my mind turned to the fact that many Muslims and/or Arabs died last Tuesday, both in the buildings and in the planes. And as if taking revenge on innocent Muslims and Arabs seems ridiculous, taking revenge on a person of the Sikh faith, because of his turban and beard, doesn't make much sense either. However, just as I began to question my faith in the American people, I was reassured when certain news anchor people, the President, and mayor of New York asked the public to respect their innocent Muslim and Arab neighbors.
On Sunday, I went to a vigil in Brooklyn Heights, which was organized by the Arab Muslim community to honor those whose lives were taken. I felt I had to go there and "represent", as our generation likes to put it. I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. I didn't see what I saw when I passed by other vigils: people singing the "Star Spangled Banner", wearing bandannas of the American flag with the words "I survived the terrorist attack" printed on them. Instead, I saw a good mixture of different cultures and races present. People held up signs against racism. Others recalled the injustices done to the Japanese during World War II. A group of Jews held signs condemning the mistreatment of Arabs and Muslims. Others simply held candles for the people they lost. It brought me a sigh of relief from the past few days in which walking to and from campus brought fear to my heart.
Although we can't turn back the clock and erase the unwarranted damage already done to people, businesses, and Islamic institutions, we can hope for a continuation of the positivity that I saw on Sunday.
I saw that I can keep my faith in people, and that there are those out there who do think rationally and use their own judgment at times when anger and emotion fill all our minds. And, with that prospect for hope in mind, I lit some incense and set it down by the candles in honor of people, dead and alive.
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