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Lizzyy... 😛 Add me to the PM list..
Read it till here.. It is rocking..
Update soon 🤗 🤗
Read it till here.. It is rocking..
Update soon 🤗 🤗
Thanks Shobi, Vartika, Pinky and Ridz...and yes, Ridz, you can take your time to review 😃
Sorry for the delay...here's OS 12, and I used a little help with the details of 9/11 from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_for_the_day_of_the_September_11_attacks
I still remember how horrified I was, seeing this from the TV screen back in Dubai, and worrying immediately about our relatives in New York. Given the kind of shock we all went through back then, I can only imagine that it was half of what people who were IN NY when it happened, felt.
--
...A Time for Strife.
In the future, people who had been in the US on September the eleventh, 2001 would take no time in recalling the minutest details about how that morning had begun. Somehow what was to take place at 8.46 that morning had made the events before it dream-clear: probably because those moments were precious in a way nothing else would ever be again.
For some, those last moments seemed to represent an America that once was, an America it would never be again.
--
For Orindam it begins with a phone call from a business associate at six in the morning, and afterwards from Shekhar checking on his son's progress: his old friend from the good Calcutta days always took care to call late at night so that whenever Orindam picked up the phone it would be morning. His friend's constant worries over the boy confuses him sometimes...you would have expected the man who thought about his ward day and night to at least sound excited whenever he spoke to the boy himself!
By this time, a number of highjackers have already made a number of highly coded calls to each other from Portland to Massecheussets to Boston, knowing well that this will be the last time they would talk to each other, or to anyone else.
--
For Mikhael Cohen, it starts roughly around 7.30 am, with admiring the view and wishing his mother was with him to see the city he's fallen so much in love with and will eventually want to settle down in. His mother doesn't know, of course, that he has decided finally to leave his plans for joining the army, just as she had wanted him to, and will probably stay in Queens to look after her.
From his window one can see the Twin Towers in all their glory, and the sun rising right behind them. So moved is he by the sight that he takes his camera out of his lightweight suitcase and clicks pictures of it to show his Maman. He knows he will take many more of the towers in the years to come, but for some reason right now that he cannot fathom, he holds this moment caught on film very close to his heart.
By then, a man on board the American Airlines Flight 11 has already made plans to sear the image of these very towers in the minds of every American alive. Only this time, those amazing turrets will conjure a very, very different memory.
--
For Asha Sengupta and her little daughter Gargi, it'll start with a phone call made at 8.44 to her brother who stays somewhere in Houstan. She can hear the TV blaring from his side and wonders what she should prepare for dinner tonight, considering her little girl is suffering from high fever.
Two minutes later, the phone goes completely silent on his end, and when she has told him for the tenth time that she's keeping the phone, he tells her in a strangled voice to switch the TV on. She does. And the moment she does, her first thought is to place a protective hand over Gargi's eyes, not noticing that they are already shut. She wonders how fast Mrinalini can get home.
By then, Micheal Woodward at the American Airlines Flight Services Office in Boston listens in horror as the woman on the other end cries: "We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low...oh my God, we're flying way too low..."
--
Leticia Cohen will be able to think of only one thing as she watches the second tower crumble to dust on her TV: that she made ten calls already to her son's hotel and that none of them have been answered. It is nine in the morning and her heart is beating so fast it feels like it'll burst out of her chest. She is in tears by the time her Mikitty calls, garbling nonsense in the midst of his own sobs.
She understands exactly what he is trying to say.
Motya, I'm glad you died, I'm glad you didn't live to see this day...
And President Bush, oblivious to the events of the morning, reads The Pet Goat to a class of Booker Elementary students.
--
Later that day, Onu will be able to see only a blur of his teacher as she rushed in to tell the class something absolutely, completely, terrifically crazy. He, and his three best friends, will treat this information as unwelcome proof of their hangover from last night's slumber party, and shake their heads vigourously in denial until they see the terror on the faces of their classmates.
That day, the non-American children ' especially the South Asian and the Middle Eastern ones ' will be accompanied along the way separately, tensely searching the faces of passersby for a sign that the news was false. It's slightly cold and nippy by evening, and Nupur wears a thin scarf over her head. Hajira Khalil, her Lebenese classmate, sees this and tightens her own headscarf, sobbing because she remembers how - just this morning - her father kissed her on the forehead before leaving to the Twin Towers for his day's work. Mrinalini and Onu walk ahead, not knowing that their friend Jeremy is following them from the fringes of the group, looking around for anyone who might try anything on them.
They won't believe it's true, not even the moment they catch the daily news. Onu and Nupur will claim that it's a shot from some badly-directed movie, Jeremy will turn the telly off at his upscale house in New Brunswick, and also turn off the sound of his mother speculating which towelheaded terrorist could have decided to take the world over this time. Mrinalini will watch the TV with morbid fascination, unable to tear her eyes off from what she had once considered a symbol of what America meant to her and her sister...until her mother abruptly switched it off.
Over the other side of New York, Mikhael will stare at his camera blankly, his back to his window, unable to bear the sight of the towers slowly falling into nothingness. Orindam will try to calm Shekhar down, telling him that Onu is safe at home.
But at the end of the day...all of them did know one thing.
The world, as they knew it, would never be the same again.
--
September 11, 2001.
Mishti,
Twin Towers. Gone.
Motu.
--
Not very sure I wrote this one very well...it was a bit of a struggle writing it because I was travelling, because I needed to make sure I showed what was happening without America-bashing (I mean, 9/11 was a terribly crazy time and people reacted accordingly...) AND because making the transition between that Onu and this Onu was harder than I'd thought. I'm still not sure if I'll ever get it right 😕
One line in the letter is dedicated to Nads, who said that particular shairee in one of the EDTs...try and figure out which one! 😉
--
Home Sweet Home?
Since when had knowing you didn't belong somewhere become a blessing?
Onu had somehow always seen his sojourn in America as a strange one: unlike Jeremy, he was not part of it, unlike Nupur and Mrinal and Veena and a hundred others, he didn't feel he belonged there the way they did. And what guarantee was there that he would feel at home in Calcutta if ever Baba would allow him to return? He had changed far too much, become too used to the snow and the cobbled streets and the elm and the oaks.
But now...now it was as if he'd known a truth that the others hadn't all along.
You could spend half your life thinking you belonged somewhere...and then one fine day someone else would come along and tell you to get off their land, their country, and leave you wondering what it was about them that suddenly made you less American than they were.
Hadn't they come from foreign shores too, almost a lifetime ago?
Nupur and Mrinal were too proud to let it show, but Onu knew how deep their wounds ran. This was their home. They'd been Americans since the time they were born, and now something as basic as that was now proving to be a lie. The days following 9/11 were days of fear and anxiety for half the residents in Queens and at the Senguptas' neighbourhood in Manhattan, such that a number of the kids in the neighbourhood were barred from going out beyond school hours, and nobody knew whether to sympathise with the bereaved Khalil family, who had just lost the head of their household, or to look at them with suspicion because of their origins.
Orindam uncle, now hypervigilant about the whereabouts of the children, made sure they were locked inside whenever he'd had to leave the house. Of late he'd had to help a Muslim client who had lost his business in a fire the previous week: after chasing the courts to get the culprits booked, and seeing them get acquitted with not a scratch, the man had broken down, taken the meagre savings he had collected in the last ten years and decided to leave.
Onu had rung up Aunt Letty a few hours back, only to find out that no one was home. Must be at Hajira's place, trying to help Sarah aunty contact her brothers...
Veena had managed to sneak out of her house to give them a bunch of God Bless America and Proud to be American banners. She was still going around with Javier and still embarrassed to be seen in public with them, but it seemed as if the way things were turning out had affected her too. Nupur, still not willing to forgive Veena for the way she'd been treating her, wrinkled her nose at the banners.
"Give them to someone else," she'd hissed, "I'm as American as anyone else here, and I don't need some crummy banner hung on my porch to prove it."
Frustrated, Veena had left them on the threshold and left. Her parting shot was delivered like a scorpion's sting, but only Onu could sense the truth behind it: "That's what you think. Go and tell the arsonists that, Nupur, and all they have to do is tell you to change your skin colour to be one of them."
Nupur had blanched as much as her dusky skin would allow. She wouldn't speak for the rest of the day, not even to him.
--
Whenever they met together, they would lose no time in convincing each other that nothing had changed. Or at least, these days, whenever Onu, Nupur and Mrinal met together. Jeremy seemed to have returned to his disappearing act, something that made both Mrinal and Gargi worry incessantly. Everytime she'd tried talking to him he'd seemed to find some excuse or other to get away.
It was almost as if September 10th had never happened...that evening of bright lights and warm hugs and camaraderie...
Was a single 9/11 enough to break a friendship as strong as what they'd had with Jerry?
Was it enough to turn him into one of them? Or was that just how strong friendships everywhere were? Were friendships just made so that they could break one day?
One look at the tears Mrinal refused to shed and he'd got his answer.
Yes they did.
--
Mishti,
When the Twin Towers crashed and burned the way they did, I thought it was the worst moment of our lives...and that it must have been even worse for Mrinal and Noorie. I mean I'm the stranger here, and I know I always will be, but what about them? They don't know how to be strangers in this land. They've never felt unsafe here, they've never felt like these trees weren't theirs, the air they breathed wasn't theirs, these shops weren't theirs, that their home would never last.
If I'd ever wanted them to feel that way at any point in my life, then please God, I take it back. I'd never wish that on my worst enemy, and here it's happening to my closest friends.
Today...Misthti, today it was Gigi.
She won't open her door now. To anyone. Won't talk. Won't eat. Won't anything. Three days we spent wondering why. When it almost seemed like we'd never find out, Hajira came to us during breaktime one day, telling us that her little sister Firdous was doing just about the same thing.
From what she could tell us, the two of them had taken a walk down to a downtown supermarket a few days ago. Fiddy wouldn't reveal much else, but Hajira kinda traced it back to some particular day when she returned home without her hijab on...
They almost tore the scarf off her head, Mishti. From a motorbike. It's been years and years since Hiji and Fiddy have been in NY...more years than I can even count...and not even once have we seen either of them with their hijab off. And it's not like they're forced to wear it. They wear it with pride. They wear it because they freaking want to. That's American enough, isn't it? To do stuff because you want to do them? "Just because we consider ourselves American doesn't mean we forget we're Lebenese too," Hiji once said, and till now I'd believed it even though it didn't make much sense.
Gigi tried getting it back from them. She did all she could, our little midget who has fingers so soft they felt like butter. And that...that swine threw her away in the middle of the street where a cab would've almost hit her if the man hadn't been so careful.
Those guys laughed and said "watch where you're going, towelhead!" as if she'd jumped in front of that car all on her own.
Our classmates won't understand what the big deal is about someone snatching a scarf away. It's nothing, they say. Just a bunch of rowdy teens with nothing better to do.
Firdous is too scared to tell her class, too scared that they laugh at her. Her mom's forced her to take off the hijab for now. Her head looks so small and bare, even with that big basket of curls all over it. She looks like this small scared bird and she flinches everytime someone comes close to her.
Gigi's head looks the same but she acts almost the same way.
Both of them have never gone down that street since. Forget that street...their life is now home to school, school to home, home to school again.
Writing it down was almost like reliving it all over again. He shuddered...he knew if he didn't stop now his hands would shake and what he'd written would be illegible. He could almost feel Gigi's butterfly hands in his, shaking like his own hands did now. The way Firdous would back away whenever he came closer. The way Hajira would keep looking outside the window these days, wondering about her little sister, wishing her father was still there.
The irony of it all, Onu thought, was that Mr. Khalil was a victim, and those thugs out on the street were treating a victim's daughter like she was a culprit...
Breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out, he said to himself. He had begun this letter...he couldn't stop writing it anymore than he could stop remembering what had happened.
If it was one of us we'd probably be able to stand it, Mishti. We're old enough. We'll scream and yell about it for a few days and then forget about it, or at least try.
But Gigi...she's our little princess. Our baby. Most of us are happy living in this world because we know that no matter what happens, the little kids will always be spared.
Anything happens to her...and we'll crumble because we're not strong enough to see someone that young in so much pain. And we almost lost her. We were this close to losing her.
I don't know if I can write anymore. I'm sorry. I haven't written to you in the past week and it's killing me not to, but whenever I lift a pen to write I can't find the words.
God save us all.
Love,
Motu.
P.S. One good thing about this entire thing is that it shows you who your true friends are. I can't believe I almost tried to hook Mrinal up with that complete waste of space. It's been a week and he hasn't uttered a word.
P. P. S. Considering the way he's cutting us all off, it's strange that he keeps looking our way. Never seen such a fair-weather falooda in all my life.
P. P. P. S. Good riddance. He turned out to be a Mummy ka chamcha after all.
P. P. P. P. S. In a fit of anger after one of Jeremy's famous snubs, Nupur quipped: "chuhe ne kiyaa sherni ko propose..." It was enough to make me start laughing in the middle of class. LOL.
P. P. P. P. P. S. Mikhael's coming in two days and staying two days. Bummer :( Poor Aunt Letty.
P. P. P. P. P. S. LOL = Laugh Out Loud.
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