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Friday Mezze: Remembering 9/11: “If There Is An Act Of Love, It Is Memory”Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Good morning Family, Friends, and Colleagues, Within the spaces I live one wall is my “Memory Wall” a collage/collection of photos, greeting cards, IDs, prayer beads, remnants of faded fabrics, posters, etc., etc., that goes back decades … amidst all of that is a business card for the FBI agent who came to Exeter and spoke to me after 9/11 … we met for coffee at Me n’Ollies. He said I could call him if I ever thought of something that might be helpful. Also, I want to remind those of you for whom such things matter that when news of the 9/11 attacks reached Iran more than 2,000 Iranians defiantly - chanting and singing - held a vigil in Tehran for the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington even as they endured beatings by their own government.* That was an act of Love. Remembering 9/11: “If There Is An Act Of Love, It Is Memory.”“How was your flight?” “Great. I flew from Amman to Newark where I went through customs, then caught the connection to Boston!” On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, on a day bright, clear, and full of hope, I embraced a young Palestinian at Boston’s Logan airport, helped locate his luggage, and hit the road for Exeter NH for the start of a new school year. We left Boston around 08:00 - within minutes, perhaps, of the hijackings of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flights 175 and 93 - planes filled with terrorists. We never turned on the car radio. He talked about leaving his family, his excitement about starting school, and spoke of seeing New York from the air: “The pilot banked the plane so we could see the World Trade Center. It was really beautiful with morning sun on it.” It wasn’t until we got to Exeter that we learned of the attacks. Not until I was home with my daughter did I witness the towers fall. On that day the world changed. On that day we, as a people and nation, changed. I changed. On September 14, 2001, at a whole-school interfaith service, two Muslim students began to recite - in Arabic and English - Fatihah, the opening prayer in the Qur’an: All Praise is due to God alone, the Sustainer of all the worlds, the Most Gracious, the Dispenser of Grace, Lord of the Day of Judgment! Thee alone do we worship; and unto Thee alone do we turn for aid ... As I listened I heard spoken sotto voce by a young student in the audience, “First, they blow up our buildings, then we have to listen to them pray.” The day confirmed to me, as I listened to them pray Fatihah and to the student’s impulsive utterance - which I am not judging - that our world would never be the same. That Muslims - who had shared these lands been since 1619 - would be profiled, attacked, arrested, and killed, mosques would be desecrated, hate and ignorance rage in the media and turbaned Sikhs and bearded Armenians were attacked because of the way they looked or the way they prayed. September has never been the same. Until that date I had quietly, and comfortably, lived as an American – a Muslim, a Semite, an Arab, son of immigrants – with privilege accumulated through education and experience and talent as a photographer. On that date I was faced with a choice: I could chose to remain attached to privilege or I could choose to stand with the Other, with those being vilified and attacked not because of anything they had done but because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their religion. Knowing that I, too, was Other and therefore suspect, I made my choice: ironically, I was liberated by 9/11. As anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Other rhetoric roiled this land from sea to shining sea - as Islamophobia erupted - as Muslims and Arabs and people who looked like me were targeted and 1000s arrested just because of a name or how they looked - I, who had unthinkingly passed as white for most of my life realized I was being called upon to choose with whom I would stand going forward. It was an easy choice. While T.S. Eliot would argue that “April is the cruelest month ... mixing memory and desire ...” today I argue that September, sadly, too often has fit that definition. It is a month where memories of Black September, the Munich Olympics Massacre, Sabra and Shatila, the Oslo betrayal, and - in a very singular way - 25 years ago - 9/11 - flood my consciousness and darken my days. Each year each horror shapes and reorders my memories and desires in ways that persist to this moment. As I remember unfinished conversations and struggle to reorder landscapes of pain and loss I know well, as Catalan writer Montserrat Roig wrote, “If there is an act of love, it is memory.” And through love and memory I find it is not all darkness. September is when I first left America to travel and explore the Levant, the world of my origins, lands from which my parents sailed. There I discovered a world of extraordinary diversity, beauty, and conflict previously unknown to me, worlds that today still form the core of my memories and desires. September is the month my father, a union organizer, truly celebrated Labor Day, and each September I remember my daughter’s first day of school and celebrate all she has become, all she has shared with me and her loved ones. One September my mother and younger brother died with days of each other. I remember, too, that my friend Edward Said, who daily reminds me ”No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind” died in September of 2003. On 9/11, many believe, the United States was attacked without reason by people speaking a language they didn’t know, expressing grievances they didn’t relate to, believing in a religion – Islam – few people knew anything about. Nearly 3,000 people were killed and, in its immediate aftermath, with the exception of the overwhelming courage of first responders and the all-consuming grief experienced by the families and friends of the victims, few, including our government and the media, responded with perspective and deliberation and, I believe, not enough time was taken to deliberate over strategic options and interests, making decisions for which we are still paying a price. Today, “Muslim” has become, I believe, the xenophobe’s code word for “The Other,” for everyone who is non-white, non-Christian, not privileged. Not only does such prejudice persists to this day it is increasing daily - particularly within our current administration - and I am grateful that, as I mourn all that was lost on Sept. 11, 2001, I remember, too, that it liberated me from the belief that I would ever be more than Other to many other Americans. While I, and we, may never fully understand how much our response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 transformed our world, I know that here at home – my home – I continue to stand with the promise of America, with the promise that “all [people] are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That is where I stand. Today - September 11, 2026 - not only do I mourn the loss, as Rumi describes them, of “...secret places inside this violent world where [lovers] make transactions with beauty” but I mourn that too many of our children will never know that such places ever existed. Love them. Love them. Salamaat, * Time Magazine 2001 / IranRobert Azzi / The Other is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You're currently a free subscriber to Robert Azzi / The Other . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |