The connection between 9/11 and 26/11: Mira Kamdar

I was living on the West Coast on the morning of 9/11 but my husband was scheduled to fly to New York, where his head office was, on September 12 and we owned an apartment in the East Village. My husband woke me up around six am. Pacific time, nine am. in New York. “Get up. There’s some kind of an attack on the World Trade Center.  It looks really bad.” Our family gathered in front of the television and watched the horror unfold like millions of other Americans and people around the world. I kept thinking: “This can’t be real.  This looks like a movie.”  I didn’t realise I was crying until my daughter, then six years old, said: “Mommy! Why are you crying?”  I told her: “You know Sweetie, when I was your age a really terrible thing happened to our country. The president, John F Kennedy, was assassinated.  I remember all the teachers at my school were crying and grandpa was crying. It was the first time I’d seen them cry. Well, what is happening now is like that, and when you grow up, you will remember this just like I remembered that.” We had a young woman renting a room in our New York apartment who worked in the Financial District. We tried frantically to reach her. Hours later, she called to say that she had walked all the way home, after running for her life from the smoke and debris near her office. She told us she was covered with soot, but otherwise okay. [caption id=“attachment_82011” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Mira Kamdar.”]  [/caption] When I flew to New York a month later, it was shocking to see the gaping holes where the Twin Towers had been. I remember the holes were still smoking. And it was just heartbreaking to see all the posters put up seeking information on missing loved ones, the wilted flowers and burned out candles everywhere in our neighbourhood in front of fire stations but also in front of buildings of all kinds. New Yorkers were collectively in a state of shock. Everyone said “hello” and smiled weakly to one another on the street.  People were super polite. The paperback edition of my book, “Motiba’s Tattoos,” was to be launched in the home of painter Natvar Bhavsar on September 15.  Needless to say, the launch was postponed. My publisher’s offices were downtown and closed for a couple of weeks. The book was finally released in November. By then, New Yorkers were back to their usual remote selves on the street, the posters were faded, many of the improvised flower and candle shrines were gone.  Life was starting to return to normal. Ten years later, I am shocked that the new buildings to be built on the site are not yet up. I resent the way the Bush administration handled the attack and its aftermath. I feel the real damage to the country was the subsequent attack on American citizens’ privacy and civil liberties, especially those of South Asian or Middle Eastern origin. Every brown-skinned person with an exotic name became a suspected terrorist, and many of my South Asian friends were singled out for special searches or other forms of harassment. I also resent that 9/11 was used as an excuse to invade Iraq, a huge mistake that has cost the United States, not to mention the Iraqi people dearly. The culture that was subsequently created in the military that led to the shocking photographs of humiliation and torture of detained Iraqis did much to damage the sympathy extended to the United States right after 9/11 by people around the world. Meanwhile, while the country’s attention was focused on what the Bush administration called “the war on terror,” big finance was given a free hand to execute what may be the largest transfer of wealth in history out of the hands of middle-class Americans and into the pockets of the super rich, and to lay the groundwork for the economic crisis the country, and now the world, is still facing. I resent that Guantanamo remains open and that the United States still engages in extraordinary rendition. I also resent that the terrorist groups that operate out of Pakistan with the blessing of the ISI are basically funded, if indirectly, by US aid to Pakistan.  Those terrorists struck very close to my heart when they murdered my cousin in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, and I see that attack as another tragic outcome to the US government’s reaction to 9/11. Mira Kamdar is the author of Planet India and Motiba’s Tattoos_. She is a_ Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute, an Associate Fellow at Asia Society in New York and a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Franco-American Commission in Paris.