Reflections on 9/11: Where Can it Take US?

 I was one decision and 3 hours away from the events that occurred on 9/11/2001. Despite acceptance into more familiar schools in the Big Apple, I decided to pursue my graduate work in the state of Vermont.  The smell of dryer sheets fills my senses as I still remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and the accompanying surge of adrenaline I experienced as I watched on a laundromat TV, the twin towers fall. The years of my childhood living in war zones gave me the body memory to respond and in the immediacy, I went to campus and joined others galvanizing support for classmates, staff, and faculty who were trying to get hold of friends and loved ones. I knew that what I had grappled with since residing in the US was only going to intensify in the wake of these events. I instinctively knew that all the human life lost that I had witnessed, grieved, upheld, and absorbed in other parts of the world would not compare to the way in which the loss of these lives would be remembered because it had occurred on US soil.  I knew that like most of US history, not all of what went down that day would be revealed and the narrative would be very intentionally presented to uphold US righteousness in the situation.  I also knew that for my Arab friends and community members lumped together with a mix of identities from the Indian subcontinent like myself, the racist scrutiny by Whyte community members, law enforcement, and government officials would only heighten.  As the weeks in the aftermath progressed, signs like “These colors Don’t Run” splashed across the US American flag showed up on my walk to school. These signs spoke of promised retaliation and violence. Psychologically, these signs whispered, “these US Whyte colors don’t mix, don’t run together with the likes of us Brown, Black and Indigenous folks” as if we were all clothes being sorted like I had been doing at the laundromat on that fateful day.  As my graduate coursework encompassed what would be debated  20 years later as “critical race theory”, I found concepts like Edward Said’s Orientalism and the myth of “the Model Minority”  offering me frameworks of understanding and touchpoints for my sanity as I made deeply personal decisions like whether or not to carry my naturalization papers on me, pack away my Salwar Kameezes for good, and inform my White family that I would not be flying anywhere in the next couple of years in order to avoid targeted abuse at the hands of airport security.  My education was not a mere intellectual exercise to understand “the other”. It was my ticket to survive a very harrowing reality that had been born with the invasion of North American lands by European Colonists and had continued full force into the present.

Today, we see the series of events that have snowballed since 9/11 including “justified” invasions on sovereign nations. We see individuals fleeing their own countries and coming to the United States; the very country that raged war on them.  Yes, I will speak of, grieve and honor the lives that were lost on 9/11. I will also speak of, grieve and honor the lives that have been lost as a result of our US retaliation both in the United States and around the globe. And I will learn through this collective experience, Gandhi's wisdom, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and ask myself what vision do I dare to see beyond one of hatred and fear? 

We are learning to sit with our individual trauma and pain. Let us also sit with our collective loss and listen deeply to the cycles of inhumanity that we repeatedly inflict upon one another, more often than not, on the Global Majority.

Let our understanding lead to action that creates true humanity reflective of a Oneness that embraces the differences in our ways, beliefs, and expressions of our authentic creativity without exploitation of who we truly are; body, mind, and soul.

Let us grieve our individual and collective loss without deliberately setting out to harm another for the loss we have endured.

Let us receive the lessons of compassion and connectedness and receive the gift of collective transformation through these tragic experiences.  Let our ground zero be the place from which we empty ourselves of the cycles of oppression and build systems anew that uphold collective sustainability and holistic well-being.