After the Attacks: A 9/11 Memorial

On September 12, 2001 I sat with the other doctors in my office and waited for my first patient’s chart. The Twin Towers had stood across the street from my family home of 15 years, when we were the first inhabitants in New York’s new neighborhood of Battery Park City. We entered those towers everyday by walking through the lobby of the Vista Hotel, and past the CNN broadcast station. They housed the subway station and the Path Trains, our gateway to the rest of the world. After I had announced my first pregnancy, my parents hung up the phone, walked across the street, and celebrated in Windows on the World. It had been years since I lived in New York. But, I felt skinned and gutted, as if I were right there for the attack on my neighborhood, the corner of Liberty and West Streets.

I waited restlessly for that chart, begging for the distraction of my young patients’ problems. I saw that Ahmed Hasan was on my list of appointments. His mother and aunt brought their children to La Clinica Para Los Ninos, the pediatric practice where I worked. It sits in an impoverished neighborhood and serves a mostly Mexican immigrant population. I had treated this Palestinian Muslim family occasionally over the years. In our small southwestern city, less than 2% are Jewish, so it isn’t surprising that I am the only Jewish person working in this clinic. The number of Arabs in our town is even smaller, and Palestinians smaller still. The night before, I had heard reports that Palestinians had cheered the news of the attack on “my neighborhood” and the death of thousands. I remembered that one of the Hasan babies had been given the name of a famous terrorist. I was in no mood to contend with such people. Years ago in an ER, I had once treated a child whose father sat next to her with a swastika tattooed on his cheek. This felt worse.

When it was their turn, I steeled myself, picked up the chart, and entered the exam room. Ahmed’s mother, an attractive young woman in her 20’s sat across from me dressed in jeans and a casual sweater, her hair held back in barrettes. She looked like any American mom. As she explained the history of his rash in her heavy Arabic accent, I tuned out the world around us and focused on this simple problem. As the visit was ending, my doctoring done, I could not leave well enough alone.

I asked Mrs. Hasan if she had family in New York City. “A cousin,” she replied. I told her my sister had seen the planes crash, and I used to live in that neighborhood. Then she pounded her fists on her thighs and started to chant, “It’s too much. It’s too much.” Tears and mascara streamed down her face. Riding my stool on wheels, I slid toward her. We put our arms around each other and sobbed. Again the world outside slipped away.

When we composed ourselves she asked me the dreaded question I had heard so many times. “What are you?” “I’m Jewish.” She countered with incredulity, “I know you are, but you are so nice to me and my family.” Her sister-in-law, Rahima, older, and always in a head covering had warned her about me, “She’s a Jew.” “I didn’t believe Rahima because you are so nice to us. But then I knew it was true because of the way you say my son’s name. My brother is also named Ahmed. In Jerusalem his boss was Jewish. You say it the same.” I had lived in Israel 15 years before and speak Hebrew fluently. Apparently, I pronouce the name with an Israeli accent. I was flabbergasted by her disclosure of angst about me. “How is Ahmed, your brother?” I managed. “Things are very bad there and he is in jail. His family has no money for food.”

A week after the attacks I gathered for the Jewish New Year at my synagogue, in search of spiritual relief from the anxiety and chaos. The familiar rhythms of the chants and the swaying men in prayer shawls transported me back to my childhood in New York. The Rabbi reminded us to “Never Forget!” the tortured death of our own Martyrs, the Inquisition, Pogroms, Holocaust, and murders by the PLO. Now, 30 years later and 2000 miles away, in response to our national suffering, a different Rabbi spoke again of “them” and what had been done to “us”. I thought of Mrs. Hasan crying, “It’s too much!” and of my speech tinged with the accent of her oppressors. For me, the line distinguishing “them” from “us” was already evaporating.

In the years since, I have made more room for ambivalence. When Israel invaded Gaza in 2008, I understood the reason. Yet, it was no balm to my distress. As I read about the conflict daily, I came upon a photo on the New York Times website. A little Palestinian girl who perished was half buried by debris, with only her arm and part of her head visible. She wore a red sweater and I thought immediately of Schindler’s List, and the little Jewish girl who perishes in her red sweater.

Every anniversary of our nation’s tragedy, I revisit the images of the Twin Towers, the beacon of my old neighborhood. I see the sun glint off the sleek edges of steel, the myriad windows, and the souls inside. They stand, first majestic and whole, then burning. They collapse and are gone. We are left to navigate our way in the wake. How long will we indulge the simple truth of our pain before we rise above the ashes and embrace a more complex reality?

Victims often become perpetrators. On September 12, 2001, I saw that it is possible to acknowledge our own suffering and simultaneously recognize our role in the victimization of others. Nine years later, America appears even more bigoted and tribal than during the immediate aftermath of the attacks. We’ve become a country that protests mosques and cultural centers. A church in Florida has planned a Koran-burning event.

On September 11^th we were injured as a nation. Our collective healing can only happen when individuals choose to let go of the anger and fear, vestiges of the attack. Let us transcend our baser emotions, act with moral purpose, and recover as a nation. Let our humanity be the monument of our remembrance.