On September 11, 2001, both my homes were attacked.
I am both a native son of Arlington, Virginia, and a committed resident of New York City for most of the past 10 years. As a student at Columbia on that wretched day, I watched the plumes of grey smoke barrel through the canyons of downtown streets from the roof of the tallest building on campus, one doomed tower standing at the World Trade Center where but minutes before two stood burning. When news came of the attack on the Pentagon, and other possible attacks on landmarks throughout Washington, I experienced the terror of not knowing whether my family was safe; my mother, father, and brother were working all over Arlington and its nearby towns that day, and my mother's office sat perhaps a mile from where the plane pierced the handsomely simple facade of the Pentagon. No cell phone or land line could connect me to someone, anyone, telling me that all were accounted for. When my brother circumvented the phones and smartly e-mailed that my family was safe, I collapsed onto my dorm room bed and wept. I wouldn't cry again on September 11, 2001, or for months afterwards.
I couldn't cry, because I was lucky. Despite the physical proximity of myself and my loved ones to the horrors of September 11, we all survived. The true evil of terrorism is that it engenders fear of further terror far from where the actual attack unfolded. The shared national experience of September 11, of watching helplessly as so many perished on live TV, surely folded grief in with alarm for countless millions. From where I stood, though, the tragedy was all too local. The visible wounds on my two homes were ripped open with terrible speed, on the wings of jet planes, and for years I've watched them be stitched closed with painful deliberation. There were, of course, the acts of cleanup and reconstruction that continue to this day, but there were more subtle, less tangible wounds that had to be healed. Of course, the unbearable pain of losing loved ones was felt by New Yorkers and Arlingtonians as they watched their fellow citizens at funeral after funeral. But I also saw the trauma of near death manifested in office workers near the towers who escaped, caked in toxic dust, only to be without offices or jobs for months; I saw the anger of lives being upended even as they were spared by the flames or the debris; I saw the hatred and fury the attacks aroused and then projected onto people who were reminiscent of the terrorists in appearance or religious observance.
In the days after September 11, American flags flew everywhere, but were flown with more urgency by Americans who didn't look "American". I lost count of how many cabbies I saw plastering their taxis with as much patriotic paraphernalia as they could. People forget the vigilante acts of retribution that occurred as people looked to put a face on the enemy who seemingly attacked all of us, but I still remember being yelled at by a jogger in Central Park, who thought I looked Middle Eastern (I'm Jewish) and was part of some fifth column who supported terror. I heard the flatly racist talk of some New Yorkers and Arlingtonians, their prejudices self-justified by the simple act that they had survived the attack and endured its lingering, exhausting aftermath. The evil of terror struck again and again, in the little hits and insults and resentments that divided white from brown, native U.S. citizen from legal immigrant, and Western religious traditions from non-Western. We still live in the unfolding tragedy of September 11 every time it's used to divide one person or group from another.
It may have been necessary, even benficial, for Americans to treat September 11 as a national tragedy, but the simple fact remains: nobody owns September 11. Nobody symbolically owns Ground Zero, where many Muslims perished, or the slice of the Pentagon that was the tomb for 184 Americans. There is no several-block buffer zone around the targets of September 11 where the Bill of Rights is suspended in deference to grief, or anger, or fear.
Most of these people weren't even close to the WTC on September 11. They didn't hear the sirens bellow from every corner of New York City. They didn't see the billowing clouds of pulverized buildings float into the sky, juxtaposed against a brilliant blue indian summer sky. They didn't smell the acrid smoke, tinged with the scent of jet fuel, that settled over Manhattan the day after the attack. They didn't walk past thousands of missing person signs plastered around downtown New York, and they didn't drive past military Humvees equipped with manned machine gun turrets on the highway that runs next to the Pentagon. The effect of September 11 on these people, and the majority of Americans who oppose the Islamic community center plans, is understandable, but their mere numbers or the intensity of their feelings is no counterweight to the sheer scope of the tragedy, in lost goodwill, or fear of reprisals, or the inability to practice one's religion publicly without reservations.
In this place and time, the scars that September 11 inflicted, be they physical or psychological, easily recalled or purposely forgotten, cannot be allowed to mar yet another part of someone's life. If the peaceful practice of Islam nearby Ground Zero comforts one young Muslim who has a safe place to worship; or convinces another New Yorker that in this most multi-cultural of cities in this most stunningly diverse nation, we are the better for allowing the freedom of religious assembly despite our trauma; the community center will be doing something remarkable. The community center will be healing the wounds of September 11.