It’s this 9/11 thing. I just don’t get it. I NEVER got it, really, according to everything I have read, heard and experienced since 9/12. I am so cold to 9/11 that I think I am—no I KNOW I am—Anti 9/11.
Yes, I am actually not "for" 9/11.
I imagine some real patriot will try to explain to me that it isn’t about being FOR 9/11, it is being FOR everything that 9/11 represents.
To which I respond: Huh?
It’s this 9/11 thing. I just don’t get it. I NEVER got it, really, according to everything I have read, heard and experienced since 9/12. I am so cold to 9/11 that I think I am—no I KNOW I am—Anti 9/11.
Yes, I am actually not "for" 9/11.
I imagine some real patriot will try to explain to me that it isn’t about being FOR 9/11, it is being FOR everything that 9/11 represents.
To which I respond: Huh?
Now on 9/11/01 I was married to an Arab. We were living in the Mid West here in the States. We drank beer, ate pork and generally enjoyed being apolitical and mildly anti religious. (Anti any religion. No, anti all religion. We distained them all, equally.)
I was actually quite patriotic, a real gung-ho ugly American, mostly blissfully ignorant of my country’s history in meddling. My husband was terribly, terribly uninterested in any political and/or history lesson from anyone. He had come to America first during the first Gulf War, on Our Dime, to train at Our Air force Base. He fought, we all won, time to party! He was more of a Patriot than I was, even. He loved America and practically said so every day.
We drank a lot of beer.
The only time I had to even discuss anything political or religious in public was when I had to (insert eye roll and sneer here) explain that, no, I had not seen the movie "Not Without My Daughter" and no, my daughters were not in any danger.
It was always amazing to me that some felt they had any right to ask a question like that (co-workers, casual acquaintances, customers who were fascinated by my surname and who asked dozens of questions). I chalked it up to poor manners and 8th grade educations. I never responded with "So, has YOUR husband stopped beating you?"
Anyway, there we were in September 2001, having been back in the States for about a year and a half. We had been living overseas, in the Middle East until 2000 and then for a variety of reasons, decided to move back here.
September 11, 2001 did change everything for me.
I learned first hand—within 24 hours—that racism was alive and well in America. It was the day after when I went to work and I was asked to produce "proof" that I was an American.
I am, by the way, Irish/German heritage Midwest USA born and bred. Can hardly look more Caucasian or sound more like a Fargo character.
It was my name tag that had the customer freeze up and demand proof of my allegiance before they would consider doing business with me. (Had an Arabic surname). I had to leave the room, collect myself by the copier, and come back in, all smiles and handshakes and pretending not to have heard their demand to ‘see my green card’.
Things quickly got even more rocky for us—for my husband, of course, more than me. He responded to the public stares and questions and comments by becoming house bound. Quit working. Concentrated on keeping the lawn manicured and the laundry done. Quit socializing, except with one or two close friends.
I tried to pretend that I wasn’t seeing PTSD—but of course I was. He was raised in a country were people had been killed for being the wrong religion (Sunni or Shia). He had been there when Sadam’s tanks rolled through Kuwait City. He had seen a lot, and he knew it all began with sorting out who was who....He had seen Bush et al at work before.
In 2002 we decided to move from our small town to a more metropolitan area. Having a crowd to blend into (variety of browns and blacks instead of a sea of white), some Muslim even, cheered him up immensely and he went back to work.
I had a couple of bullshit moments. My immediate supervisor at my new job actually sat me down and quizzed me about my husband a few weeks after I was hired. She then insisted we all go out to lunch together. After lunch, she informed me that she found my husband to have ‘cruel’ eyes. She told me she was not entirely comfortable with "the situation".
Later—I am jumping ahead a bit—at a company Christmas party, she teased my husband endlessly about being a ‘shoe bomber’. I can still see his face frozen in a pretend smile while the people I supervised, with permission from MY supervisor, all laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh, the hilarity.
I was a supervisor myself at that company and had to assist customers with complaints who felt they had not been helped with by the call center—escalated calls. One gentleman calling from somewhere down south told me he knew "all about us people up north". He went on to tell me that he "knew" I was blond and Norwegian from my voice. I smiled and assured him I was not blond or Norwegian and then he asked me for my last name. Without thinking, I told him.
Silence. Then: "You people sure know how to disguise your voice!" CLICK!!!!
HA HA HA! I can’t help but smile, even now. He freaked out, thinking I was some sort of Arabic spy or something. Disguising my voice. Hiding out as a Customer Service Supervisor in mid-America.
Anyway, things rolled along, more beer drinking, and then one day we were watching the evening news and saw a broadcast about Arabic men in the USA disappearing. Seems these men had been showing up for their required interviews with the INS and had simply vanished.
It is hard to describe what that moment felt like. First of all, we were unaware that we were required to go anywhere and be interviewed for anything. Secondly, the only information we got from the news is that Arabic men had been vanishing at the hands of our government. No news about where to find out about ‘special registrations’.
http://www.ice.gov/...
http://query.nytimes.com/...
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/...
http://www.npr.org/...
Now, google "Arab Special Registration" and you will get several articles. But in 2002—there was nothing. That night, after we turned off the TV, my husband paced and smoked and started making a list of things to sell, bank accounts to close, etc. He wanted to make sure everything would be ‘in order’ when they came for him.
He was sure any minute there would be a knock on the door and he would disappear. What could I tell him that could assure him this didn’t happen in the United States?
In fact, I went on line and after a few minutes of research I discovered that he was, in fact, required to register with the INS in Milwaukee, WI later that year. I also discovered that many men who showed up for the INS "Special Registration" had in fact disappeared.
He shut down and began preparing to disappear. It was like watching someone prepare for their own death. He spent more and more time on the phone back home. They were, I later learned, begging him to bring us back "home" where we were safe. He quit work again. I didn’t blame him anymore. I was just as sick with worry as he was.
http://news.independent.co.uk/...
http://sfgate.com/...
We stayed because we knew we had done ‘nothing wrong’. In fact, I assured him that his military training at OUR AIRFORCE BASE as OUR ALLY would certainly be a plus. We were also not so excited about returning the Middle East. He DID enjoy his bacon and beer, you know (both illegal back home).
So, the big day came. We drove to Milwaukee, with plans A, B and C in place in the event that he, or he and I both, disappeared. Our relatives both here and back in the Middle East were on alert, waiting for a phone call within 12 hours, or not.......
I wish I could report something really spectacular; but there is only this. We stood in lines for hours. When it was time for him to be interviewed, I was not allowed to be with him. I was also not allowed to leave. The interview, such as it was, lasted less than 10 minutes. He came out of the room with a huge smile.
He had prepared a binder of all his documents. The INS official, he said, barely glanced at it. She only asked questions about his family back in the Middle East—their names, occupations, etc. After a brief interview she told him something that didn’t make sense—that he had never been required to register with the Special Registration to begin with. He was free to go.
Also, strangely, she followed him out of the interview room to where I was waiting. She still had our binder. She asked me a couple of questions—I wish I could remember exactly what they were. They seemed innocuous.
She handed us the binder and wished us well.
Any of you who think this a happy ending to a story, I would ask that you to submit a similar experience. "So, you and your spouse went down to the government office, knowing there was a good chance that one or both of you could be detained and disappear..."
There was nothing happy about any of this. It was like finding out the cancer hadn’t spread. Good news, sure. But great news? No, there was still a fight going on.
Anyway, later we collected our car titles (signed over to relatives here States side just in case) and other valuables and went home.
I suddenly got interested in politics. Oh, I had always voted. In fact, I had never, ever NOT voted. Not even when I lived overseas! I was so proud of that. But I voted based on...family views and upbringing (i.e. party line). I never questioned anything. I basically voted straight party and felt like I had done my job.
Well, in 2003 I got busy. I learned a lot.
I was embarrassed at how ignorant I had been. Was my country really that much of a world class Asshole? A giant corporate bully? Good god, Operation Condor? http://www.gwu.edu/...
We had bank accounts audited. He could not, for example, get a debit/check card on an Associated Bank joint account. Yes, he was could be on the account, just not allowed plastic. I was allowed the debit/check card. When we asked why, we were told initially that it was because he had a ‘lower credit score’. This was an out and out LIE! His credit score was about 30 points higher than mine!
When we challenged that, after a series of calls, hours on hold, we were finally told that we had to get a ‘branch manager’s’ approval for him to have a check/debit card on a joint account. We went in and found that mainly, the branch manager at Associated Bank could not make eye contact.
He got the debit card.
MCI shut down our long distance service until we could explain the "unusual charges" i.e. calls to the Middle East. I still have that letter. The conversation I had with "John" from MCI in April of 2003 could be an entire diary. I switched us to Working Assets.
We moved back to our hometown "small town". We owned property here and since he wasn’t working anymore, it was cheaper not to pay rent. He stayed home, watched TV and drank. I worked, campaigned, worked, campaigned.
I campaigned for the Democrats as if my life depended on it. My husband became hysterical-convinced that my activism would get us both killed.
Yes, killed. He thought that to oppose Bush was to invite a knock on the door in the night...and it wasn’t a jail he envisioned us ending up in. I thought he exaggerated. I assured him the worst that could happen was for HIM to disappear to GTMO. HA! Gallows humor.
See, y’all, in many counties, political allegiance WILL get you killed. And my family knows that.
And then while ballots in Ohio remained uncounted, Kerry conceded the 2004 election. A great big Fuck You to those of us who had mortgaged property to contribute funds and worked and worked to ensure "every vote was counted". But that is, again, another diary.
I think I will stop talking about my husband at this point. He started flying back and forth between HOME and HERE. Every flight was an exercise in humiliation; the last flight into the US was the worst. All his gifts for family members—cook books, clothing—had been destroyed. Yes, shredded by a knife, it looked like. His suitcase had been opened and searched—Ok. Aint no big deal. But everything other than his personal clothing had been shred with a knife or other sharp object. All the Arabic cook books. All the disdashas for male relatives and dresses for me.
And the questions. WHY is your wife here? WHY are you...WHY? WHY? WHY?
Oh, I suppose some you think these are perfectly reasonable questions for Arabs especially; and you are all perfectly happy to discuss your domestic situation with the "expert" TSA official. Many of you, as I have read here on KOS, are sure our government is somehow ‘on top’ of security at airports and that sippy cups and rude questions and ‘irate’ behavior all deserve some sort of police state crack down to ensure the safety of the rest of us.
He spends his time back in the Middle East where it is safe.
Seriously.
But at this point in this long, personal diary, I think I will get back to explaining why I am not a patriot and why any invocation of 9/11 only makes me sigh, roll my eyes and suppress a gag reflex.
See, I think 9/11 was a tragedy. Horrifying.
It affected my family, personally. My family, personally, started paying the price 9/12. Our daughters, thankfully, have a different surname. But we have nephews (their cousins) here in the States who have had to have a State senator intervene for a passport renewal.
I just don’t worship 9/11. I don’t understand why 9/11 represents Patriotism. I don’t know why 9/11 is "Patriot Day"
At first I grieved on 9/11. There was a year or two, I confess, I mocked 9/11. Now I am plain old cold to it. I feel, like the Rude Pundit who expressed it best "9/11 is Tired of Your Tears"
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/...
What exactly are patriots celebrating on 9/11?
And, in the history of all human tragedies, does 9/11 really rate star billing? I mean, based on a body count score...based on human suffering....Didn’t Falluja alone give us all here tit for tat?—and that is assuming Americans will take any brown person in retaliation for 9/11.
I submit that what really died on 9/11 was a dream. A dream of Freedom. Since 9/11, Americans have proven that this 200+ year old experiment in Freedom was a house of cards.
Since 9/11, Americans have gladly, cheerfully, Patriotically, given up freedoms people the world over are still dying to obtain.
I just can’t call myself a patriot while I watch it happen.