911 Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. - Narrator, 500 Days of Summer Monday, September 10th, 2001, was an unremarkable day. It began, and it ended, with no lasting memories made in between. It had no impact on the course of my life. If habit can replace memory, I probably woke up from an unremarkable sleep, ate an unremarkable breakfast, sat on an unremarkable yellow school bus on an unremarkable commute, and attended an unremarkable day of junior high school, starting the unremarkable second week of an unremarkable seventh grade. I probably felt unremarkably bored during my unremarkable classes, ate an unremarkable lunch, and played an unremarkable game of 3-on-3 pickup basketball during an unremarkable recess. I probably took an unremarkable ride back home, and played unremarkable video games, expecting life to remain unremarkable for quite a long time. Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, was a remarkable day. It began, and it ended, with every memory made in between lasting, having total impact on the course of my life. I remember being jolted to attention in my math class, watching my teachers face turn pale as he answered a call from the principal’s office. I remember Mr. Atkins calmly informing the class about what had happened at the World Trade Center, delivering a diluted version of the incidents, trying his best to retain his usually cheerful demeanor. I remember looking out the window around nine o’clock. I remember walking downstairs and seeing my mother and father, along with scores of other parents, waiting for me. I remember my father calling my sisters high school in midtown. I remember my mother struggling to hide her tears, so as not to upset me. I remember sitting in the car as we tried to drive into Manhattan to pick up Baji, and sadly returning home after being told the bridges had been closed to incoming traffic. I remember what I ate for lunch that day: a stale slice of plain cheese pizza. I remember watching the news and seeing footage of planes striking the Twin Towers and watching the smoke rise as they collapsed. I remember feeling afraid, confused and lost. I remember everything. Wednesday, September 12th, 2001, was the first day of the rest of my life. The patriotism was palpable. America seemed closer to its ideal of a perfect union, and I saw in my neighbors and fellow New Yorkers a mutual love and reliance, despite our fears and concerns, that is rarely encountered these days. And yet, I also saw the ugly face of discrimination and racism. I remember having a Snapple bottle thrown at my head by a classmate and being told to “go back to Osama bin Laden”. I had no idea who Osama bin Laden was. I figured he was a substitute gym teacher. Then I was told he was the leader of al-Qaeda. I looked him up on Wikipedia, and slowly learned, and unlearned, and relearned. Truth. Lies. Propaganda. Rhetoric. Polemic. Fear. Loathing. For my generation, our childhood, our innocence, our ignorance, ended at 8:46AM on that Tuesday morning, and we began to understand the world around us with clearer vision. As time passed, we understood the depths of depravity, depicted in the crimes of nineteen angry men, whose minds were corrupted by a bloodthirsty, demonic agenda previously unknown to us. We recognized the heights of humanity, in the sacrifice and urgency of the first responders, firefighters and police officers who knew nothing except the reality of anxiety, emergency and death before their eyes. I began to appreciate my religion, too, and saw that it possessed nothing of the savagery and insanity, espoused in the beliefs, and commandments, of self-proclaimed leaders of the faithful, pseudo-caliphs and quasi-scholars who had hijacked Islam to suit their perverse agenda. Before that day, my worldview insisted the bad guys were only found in cartoons and games, and I could escape their grasp by defeating them or turning the television off. But soon enough, I learned that evil flows through the hearts of men, and our cosmic battles of fate and fury are not as easily won, much less properly understood. We may never fully grasp the gravity of that day, its traumatic events and its lasting aftershocks, given our human tendency to forget terrible and our self-preserving penchant for repression. I cant believe over a dozen years have passed since that Tuesday, and Im not sure we will ever return to the yesteryear of September 10th. What I am sure of is that I wish that unremarkable Monday lasted forever. by Farooq Zafar, originally published on 9/11/2011 love911nyc.wordpress/2014/09/02/911/
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 12:45:56 +0000
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