September Morning

Seven years may be a long time but the memory of that dreaded day still makes me mad, furious, borderline vindictive.

New Yorkers will never forget the moment and the place they were at when they first heard or saw what happened that ghastly morning to their city. Those who witnessed the disaster up-close have psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

I was on subway to work. When I arrived at work, there were 2 frantic phone messages from my wife waiting for me. While I worked across the river from WTC, my wife worked less than half a mile from the disaster site and saw the first plane fly by her office window before it hit the tower. The messages were - “there has been a plane crash, we are evacuating our building”, “I can’t get thru to the school, do something to reach the boys”.

I caught a cab to my sons’ school. School doors were locked shut, and I was told to go home and wait to be called.

It was around 11am, and by this time both towers had fallen. The coverage was on all TV channels and various theories had already begun to emerge. Phones were dead. I could not get in touch with my wife, or my kids. Later my children were dropped off. I had to explain the best I could to my 8 and 10 year old boys about what had happened. Rudy Giuliani (the Mayor of NYC) said that thousands were feared dead. By now the extent of the disaster was somewhat clear, as all air traffic had been accounted for. There was a sure uncertainty whether this was it, or will there be more attacks.

I sat on our stoop that evening, not knowing where my wife is, not being able to get in touch with my parents, friends, and most importantly what to tell my boys about their mom.

My wife makes home around 7pm, after walking 10 miles from the place where her office had gathered. We looked at each other with tears in our eyes.

The ensuing days were a mixture of depression, sadness and unbelief as we will every day hear about someone we knew, either personally or through friends, who had died. A police officer, whose son played soccer on the same team as my son, died. I had talked to him only 3 days ago. My wife and I knew business acquaintances that died in the towers. We attended many funerals. We went to Pakistan in summer 2002. Most there blamed the usual suspects, the Jews and the Israelis for the terror attacks, and blamed even those 4000 Jews that did not show up for work that day. No one offered any compassion for the dead as if they deserved to die.

7 years on. The country that supplied the suicide hijackers is still as prosperous as it was on September 10, 2001, while Iraq and Afghanistan have been turned into rubble. Pakistan, because of exemplary incompetency of its leaders, has been taken for a ride as well.

9/11 certainly changed a lot of things. After the dust settled, one hopped that nations will challenge the ideologies that breed terrorists and fanatics. The ideologies that have nurtured movements and groups that place no value on human life. What makes their followers dispatch young impressionable boys on suicide missions while their own children are safe either in some foreign land or in their own? To this day, not a single suicide bomber has been found to be related to any leader of any terrorist group. It is almost always some poor little boy from some poor family, or brainwashed schmuks like the 19 hijackers. When a martyrdom opportunity arises, the leaders are the first ones to find a shortcut to safety even if it means escaping wearing a Burka. On the day Bin Laden presided over his son’s marriage to an Afghan Mulla’s daughter, young future martyrs were being trained in the same compound. Wonder whether the wedding sermon was “a bride for my son, but you wait for 72”. His son is now in Iranian custody, and Iran is hoping to cash him in when the market takes upturn. One of many of his other sons turned out to be his worst nightmare, a pacifist dreadlocked Jesus Christ Superstar looking dude married to a British woman his grandma’s age. To each his own. Aahhh there’s always one in every family.

There are many cases now being filed in the US courts challenging the legality of Guantanamo detentions, renditions and tortures of prisoners and gross violation of Geneva conventions, etc. The countries where police brutality and torture in police custody is a norm, before even brining the accused to a judge, should not worry about Geneva conventions. Seriously. The countries where religious minorities are treated like dirt give up any right to complain about intolerance and prejudice directed towards them. It is laughable to read press from countries where women are not allowed to go out shopping unless accompanied by a male relative or to drive a car to so passionately write about “human rights of Palestinians” or where minorities can be imprisoned for using Islamic greetings to talk about narrow-mindedness of others.

9/11 was a gift of intolerance from the uncivilized to the civilized. It was a statement of hatred, a confirmation of abomination, and most of all it was an affirmation of a belief in killing the innocent for no reason other than their faith. It certainly was not a clash of civilizations in “Huntington” sense but a clash of animals with the civilized world. These religious extremists and fanatics are not part of a civilization per say, but followers of an injudicious ideology that happens to cut across civilizations.

Even though a cliché, much bigger victims of 9/11 have been the ordinary Muslims that have nothing to do with religious extremism or terrorism. The worst tragedy of it all is the innocent lives lost as a collateral damage. These ordinary Muslims also have a choice, they can continue to be victims, or they can step up to the plate and take a position. They do not have to live in “interesting times” a la Chinese proverb. Many have taken on the challenge. The pace might be pathetically slow but an increasing cadre of writers and thinkers have started to question self-righteousness of the Islamic world. A few like Irshad Manji have pushed the envelope a little farther and have attempted to catch the phony ideology by the horn, an ideology with no leg to stand on. When a Dutch Lawmaker, for example, equates Quran to Mein Kampf, charges are brought in Dutch courts against him, but when minority worship places are desecrated in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia, the law stands besides it. A Bangladeshi journalist might face a death sentence for the crime of “advocating ties with Israel”.

If we don’t get our house in order, martyrdom may be the only other alternative left for us.