By Sepideah Mohsenian-Rahman
Age (when it happened): 12
Location (when it happened): Southern California
Memory: By the time I woke up, most of the day’s tragedies had already unfolded. When I went downstairs for breakfast, my mom had the news on and it felt like I immediately saw an image of a plane striking into a very prominent building on the NYC skyline.
The living room was still, and I could sense my mom’s tension as she briskly worked in the kitchen but tuned into the news. I don’t know what exactly pulled me to do so, but I found myself thinking that Baba would want to know what was happening. I walked upstairs and calmly told him that he had to wake up and watch the news, because planes had been hitting building in Washington D.C. and New York.
Immediately, he woke up, and I felt proud to have relayed news that were important enough not to be dismissed. For context, this guy was hard to wake up. He came downstairs and my parents deliberated as to whether my brother and I should go to school that day.
For young Americans my age, we have not known a USA aside from one engaged in perpetual war.
At school, the day remained eerie. A few weeks later, I was presenting in front of my class for our country reports, as one does in middle school.
After presentations, students could roam the class and ask about each other’s projects. Casey walked up to me to proclaim that “my family had killed her family on 9/11 and that we were all terrorists” — apparently I had missed that speaking point in my presentation.
I had no idea how to respond, I turned and made eye contact with my teacher (whom to this day I am convinced heard the exchange), then with a few other students who were around us, and without any verbal or non-verbal cues from others, I walked to the restroom without responding to Casey. It was the first time I had cried in school.
How it lives with you today: I’m still creeped out by the fact that I went upstairs to tell my father what had happened. What exactly pulled me to do so? I didn’t know what was happening, in the slightest, but could feel that something was seriously shifting.
The tragedy of 9/11 cannot be removed from the socio-political experience of young people coming of age in a time of Islamophobia – whether they are Muslims or not.
For young Americans my age, we have not known a USA aside from one engaged in perpetual war. We have been dramatically impacted by the U.S. military industrial complex that will continue to impose an intersectional and far-reaching impact into our futures.