On how the world changed for Muslims after 9/11 - part 2
This is a first-person perspective on a post-9/11 world written by an OCP editorial team member Ariel Dasrath
Ariel is an activist, community representative, and qualifying registered clinical psychotherapist specializing in intersectional culturally responsive perspectives. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience and Mental Health and is currently in the practicum portion of her Master’s in Counselling Psychology. As an Indo-Caribbean woman having grown up in Toronto, with a background in equity and mental health work, she has had the unique opportunity to explore a multitude of intersectional identities and perspectives, using these lived and witnessed experiences to inform her current and future practice.
I was five years old when it happened.
I don’t remember the Breaking News announcement that something really bad was going on. I don’t remember the TV replaying the footage again and again and again. I don’t remember the headlines or the pictures or the newspapers. I don’t even really remember that day.
But I remember what came next.
I remember my mom on the phone with her family, telling them to stay safe, stay home, stay out of public spaces. I remember hearing that we wouldn’t be seeing them for a while, because they were far away and flying to each other was no longer an option. I remember the fear and anxious energy that clouded our lives here in Canada, both for ourselves and for our more religious family on the other side of a border it seemed we would never be able to cross peacefully again.
I remember understanding, at five years old, that something had happened and that things were going to be different. I didn’t know what, or how, or why, just that the world had somehow shifted, and we were going to feel it.
I remember eventually hearing about what happened, explained and broken down so that my little five-year-old brain could even try to piece it together:
“There was an attack. Bad guys flew planes into really big buildings. A lot of people got hurt.”
Okay, I could comprehend that. After all, I’d seen movies before; I knew that Bad Guys did Bad Things. It was sad, and I understood enough to feel as much sympathy that a five-year-old could muster up.
But why were we still scared? The Bad Guys were gone.
“The bad guys were Muslim.”
So?
“Our family is Muslim.”
So?
It just didn’t make sense. Bad Guys did Bad Things…but what did that have to do with us? My family were not Bad Guys. We did nothing wrong.
So why were we still scared? Or more importantly, what were we so scared of?
I don’t remember how it was explained to me, or if it ever really was. My Indo-Caribbean parents didn’t have the words that I’ve been fortunate enough to search for and grab a hold of over the years. They didn’t know how to tell me that the world had just become a little more broken, cracks in the foundations of what little safety we did have creating artificial sides because people needed someone to blame, someone to direct their anger and rage towards. It’s one of the oldest stories in the book: it became us vs. them, even if neither them nor us had anything to do with what had happened. Not at the street level, at least.
Our people, our families, became the scapegoats for the fear and animosity that was allowed to fester in the minds of entire nations. It was easier to allow the hate to take over than it was to quell the growing divide. Maybe it was unintentional, a momentary lapse in considering how a series of decisions would hurt the people living right here on the same land that was grieving an attack, as if that grief was enough to excuse further harm to their own.
But how could we rationally chalk it up to mere accidental collateral damage when entire systems and policies were enacted, causing harm to more people than it could have ever protected? If a system in power makes a million momentary lapses, those decisions have to be direct reflections of that system – and when we hold a mirror up to everything that followed the events of 9/11, we see the intentionally perpetuated narrative that the Bad Guys looked a certain way.
They looked like my family.
And sure, maybe no one knew how detrimental and long-lasting the repercussions could possibly be, but none of that matters when you’re five years old and, even then, you could feel the ever-present sense of dread that something bad could happen to someone you loved, just because some Bad Guys did Bad Things.
Even if we look through a lens shaded with the absolute benefit of the doubt, how could intentions of providing safety and security matter when these protections didn’t extend to everyone?
How could intentions matter during the years of being stopped for hours on end every single time my family tried to cross that social construct of a line in the land, with no intentions but to see the people we loved on the other side, unable to convince the systems that that’s all we would ever want?
How could intentions matter when I had family that couldn’t get groceries, couldn’t get food on the table for their kids, because they had been outright and unjustly banned from entering local stores?
How could intentions matter when I look at my little cousins, children, scared to come visit me here because people in the highest positions of power in their country felt comfortable enough, even being celebrated for, openly threatening to not let them back into their own home?
How could their intentions matter when I remember the years I spent internalizing a shame that should never have been mine to carry, distancing myself from my own culture in a sad attempt at being one of the “good ones”?
How could their intentions matter when here I am now, a grown woman, still having to do the work to unlearn all the guilt and discomfort I’ve been persuaded to feel about my own identity, about how these intersections of culture and background and religion have shaped my life? About how these intersections of who I am could have shaped my life, had I been afforded the space to do so freely and safely?
Even if we examine their intentions through glasses tinted with the reddest of roses, their intentions mean nothing in the face of the very real harm being caused to very real people to this day – to my very real family, still being forced to navigate the very same systems that were designed to sacrifice their well-being as collateral damage in the hopes of finding more Bad Guys.
Their safety and security came at the expense of mine and my family’s – a transaction that none of us ever agreed to.
My family and I are not Bad Guys, and we should never have had to be treated as if we were for no reason other than our names and appearance. Our people should never have had to be casualties in a fight that was never ours. That part of it never made sense to me, and I doubt that it ever will.
I know I was only five years old when it happened, but it’s been twenty-one years and just last month I had to sit quietly and watch my family struggle to board their plane home, still being harmed by a system that was never designed to protect us all.
