My 9/11 Story - 19 Years To The Day
On Tuesday 11th September 2001, like millions around the world I watched in horror the heinous attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. I had visited the WTC complex in 1997 while on business in the U.S. As a lone traveler I did a spot of sightseeing after my round of meetings in New York which included having dinner at the Windows On The World restaurant at the top of WTC’s Building One. My family and my employer didn’t know I was up there, and I am sure on 9/11 there were those in the towers like me who had gone there to visit, have food possibly without telling their families also.
In December 2001 I had to travel to the U.S. to Rhode Island for a business presentation, my family didn’t want me to go insisting America wasn’t safe for our kind. By our kind they meant a turban wearing Sikh with a full beard. This was because post 9/11 there had been many cases of violence against Muslims and also Sikhs mistakenly considered to be Muslims in the U.S., and some of these attacks had resulted in fatalities. I insisted that my not going to the U.S. meant that the terrorists had won, and I’d be damned if I would let a group of cowardly criminals dictate what I could and couldn’t do.
I flew to the U.S., and having negotiated 19 passport checks whilst in line at JFK whilst my fellow white passengers only had to show their passport at the desk just the once I headed to my hotel in Manhattan. December in New York is magical so I had based myself there to enjoy the city, to do some Christmas shopping for my family and finally to go and visit Ground Zero. On my last day in the city before I flew back to the U.K. I went to Ground Zero, it was a surreal experience just a vast space in the middle of all those buildings. The air had a gritty metallic taste to it and there were boards with posters of those missing and unaccounted for. I lay some flowers in front of one of these boards and as I looked at the posters I could feel eyes on me. Turning around slowly I came face to face with a group of angry looking construction workers in hard hats covered with stars and stripes. A part of me simply wanted to get the hell out as fast as I could but another part of me told me to go over and talk to them which is what I decided to do.
As I stood in front of them and told them it had been heart-breaking watching the tragedy unfold on television in the U.K., one of the men called out to a nearby colleague, ‘Hey man, come and listen to this guy he sounds just like an Englishman’. I guess a brown man wearing a turban speaking English like an extra from Downtown Abbey was a novelty. I laughed and told them I was born in England so I was an Englishman, and proud to British. One of the men said, ‘How can you be sad at this (9/11), when your guys did this?’ I explained they weren’t my guys as I was a Sikh and not a Muslim, not that they knew what a Sikh was, or as one of them put ‘You’re a Sheikh!’ I explained that the 19 low lives that had committed the atrocity on 9/11 were criminals who just happened to be Muslim. They killed indiscriminately including Muslim’s in the towers, and the majority of Muslim’s around the world condemned them for their murderous criminality.
Just then the men were summoned back to work but as they were walking away I said the name ‘Timothy McVeigh’. I swear that to a man they all looked at me and said, ‘Who?’ I explained that he bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma in 1995, the most destructive terrorist act on U.S. soil prior to 9/11. ‘He wasn’t a Muslim or a foreigner he was homegrown, he was American, from New York, apple pie and mom, he looked like any one of you guys. Only difference was that he hated America and he was a fucking criminal. So don’t forget criminals come in all colours and religions, so if you see a Muslim man or a guy who looks like me with a turban and a beard, that doesn’t make them bad guys, they can be patriots too’. The guys nodded, shook my hand and returned to their work, and I too went back about my business.
I see lots of posts telling us to ‘Never Forget 9/11’. We need no instruction as it’s something we cannot forget even if we tried. Let us remember those whose lives were cruelly cut short on that day and spare a thought for their families, and let us give no mind to the perpetrators.
#9/11, #GroundZero, #Rememberthosewhomatter