Eiffel

I dug my hands deeper in my pockets cursing my lack of gloves as I stood there watching the view from the Eiffel tower. If you squinted you could see the Triumphal Arch in the distance, looking like an overgrown grey Lego block almost lost in the visual cacophony of buildings.

“So did anything happen?” asked my host, leaning over the railing with me. Continuing the conversation we were having before.

“Did anything happen?”

“I mean I heard stories… saw things on the news… after nine eleven.”

“Oh,” I knew what he was referring to now. It was a standard Pakistani Uncle question whenever I traveled outside of the US.

Things did happen. Our local mosque was burnt down. I knew people, who knew people that were beaten. Girls in hijab had to be escorted home so no one tried harassing them. There were seminars on how all Muslims are not terrorists, and how Islam is peaceful. Some of which seemed only to say we aren’t like them. It wasn’t us, it was them. Us and Them. Them, Us. See the difference? I wonder how many did. So many sides and all these people hastily jumping from one to another as a line was hastily drawn in the sand. Being carted away in buses for special registration, media frenzy for the war on terror, and the big silence as Americans got together and united to do whatever was required. It was certainly a time when the means justified the ends. And no one really blamed them for it. Not I. Not right after. No one dared. Like a school teacher that’s just turned around, radiating violence, after the kids have been throwing chock at the board. You keep your head down and don’t make eye contact. The world held its breath and lowered its gaze.

“No nothing really happened. At least, I didn’t see anything. Of course I heard stories, but I don’t know... To be honest I didn’t even see the towers crashing down till a couple of days later. It was my freshman year at art school and I didn’t have a TV. I did have this neighbor though, she yelled at me as I was walking up to my house one day. “Why do you all hate us?” I tried to explain to her that ‘we’ didn’t. It’s kinda funny now. I don’t know really. Nothing happened to me or anyone I knew. We had ‘talks’ at the college explaining Islam.” Every things fine, we’re all okay. The standard answer.

And to be honest, that really was it. Nothing really happened. Not in my little world. Not to the people close to me or the people around me. Not to the people I cared about. Nothing at all, except that Muslims went from being just another minority to a topic of great discussion. And during that time it just wasn’t enough not to know about stuff anymore. It was like having your eyed violently wrenched open. You had to form an opinion. You had to take side. You went from being a welcome, a promising student bringing ethnic diversity to really not being all that welcome after all. Instead you were tolerated and people were watchful. But more than anything else what was frightening was silent acceptance of everything that government did. You had to be very careful about what you said not to slow down the machine. But then, all this wasn’t any different than where I had grown up. The United States had just turned into noisier version of Saudi Arabia. Yay! It was just like being back home again. Where foreigners had hardly any rights and you just didn’t say anything against the government, if you didn’t want to just disappear. Of course it wasn’t as bad (and Saudi isn’t that bad either), but there was a time they came pretty damn close. If it wasn’t an American opinion, it didn’t really count. Quietly, the ugly head of Xenophobia arose. It’ll take a while to knock it down again. I hope one day it will. Because, United States (like Saudi) deserves a better fate than blind ignorance that worldview provides. My hopefulness is almost a curse really, but I hope one day the entire world has their eyes wretched open and are forced to form opinions and take sides. Because even not taking a side is a side.

“This war they are building up for, do you think it’ll ever happen?”

“No, I’m sure the American people won’t bother with it, they have bigger fish to fry. They haven’t even caught Osama bin Laden yet. I’m sure there’s more focused on that. The UN seems to be think there are no weapons of mass destruction. They should let the UN inspectors finish. If Bush wants to get reelected he won’t send hundreds of people of die like that. Not without being sure.”

But of course I was wrong. There’s this image I remember seeing after the first few weeks of the Iraq war. It was in a TIME magazine, quarter of the way in, it covered the whole page. An image of a blown up body. A third of the body was just a mess of rags and blood. But that didn’t bother me so much. It was the caption that read ‘Revenge’. Just the single word, nothing else. The Iraq War had used up 9/11 for this? It was the first time I felt sick looking at a caption.

A few months later Tareq died. A casualty of hate crimes against Middle Eastern people in Australia. So I was wrong about everything really. A lot had happened. I’m sorry my friend. I feel I let you down, somehow. Living ‘our’ dream while you’re not around anymore. But I have learned something from all of this. That I will not let people use the death of a loved one to persuade me to hate. What higher form of disrespect could there be than that. Neither will I let death blind me with anger or numb me with sorrow. I will not look to blame others for the world around me. Not to pick sides and to speak up for injustices.