So, can you tell me what you remember of 9 11?
Of that day, how it unfolded for you? Sure.
I'm laughing now because
all these kids were leaving. So I remember
I didn't know what had happened, I did know that
one of my teachers, I don't remember who it was, but
because fifth grade we had different teachers for different subjects.
So my teacher had received a phone call that
something, some crash happened in Manhattan. I had no idea what this crash
entailed, obviously, all I thought was like, "Oh, this must be a car
crash. Oh, how horrible a car crash happened in Manhattan. But why...
Why did she have to receive a phone call for this?"
Like I thought these things had had happened normally, and
throughout the day we had students leave. Their parents were calling them
out
and just asking...
Asking them to come home, and I remember thinking like, "Oh,
mama would never call me home." She would never...
She would never be like, 'Rabia, come home' for whatever reason.
And actually, I didn't realize that those students were being called home
because of the crash in Manhattan, whatever that crash may be. I hadn't
connected the two, I just thought something other than that had happened
that students are being
called out. And I remember, by the end of the day,
I was just so upset, there was maybe five kids left in the
class, me being one of them, and I was just so mad at
my mom, like why didn't she pick me up? Why did she let
me stay the whole day in school? Later on that day,
we found out that the planes had hit the towers and whatnot,
but at the time I didn't understand the implication of it.
I thought... Actually, it's so funny, because I thought this was like a
regular thing, like this happens all over the world. Now it's just happening
here. I didn't understand
really what this would entail.
And then the following day we understood, "Oh, hijackers." High jacking
became something that was a regular part of my language at that point,
or after that rather, and then Osama bin Laden... Then understanding that
there is negative connotations to like Muslims being in the news and Osama
bin Laden, and I remember a couple of months after that.
I remember kids saying, "Oh, is Osama in your basement? Are you hiding
him? Is he your uncle?" And all of these different things that I'm
sure that hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslim
New Yorkers, especially, had to probably deal with.
How did you deal with it? I became a bully. So,
in order to prevent me from being bullied, I became the bully.
I was such a... I was such a... Especially
after fifth grade had an... I remember in fifth grade, somebody had pulled
my scarf off, and I cried so much because I felt so violated,
not that I had any real attachment to the scarf, definitely not as
a religious thing or not even as like a cultural thing.
It was just like, "Oh, I do this, whatever." But I felt like
somebody had violated me because it was a part of me that they
had ripped off and... But the following year,
especially this one kid, he would constantly would like the Osama bin Laden
jokes. It was so lame. It was like you have nothing else in
your arsenal except this one lame thing that you keep saying.
Meanwhile, I'm literally s**** on your entire life. Like how?
But I became a really big bully in middle school and a lot
of it ended up... A lot of it was because of
this fear that if I don't bully, someone's gonna bully me.
How did that manifest, your bullying? I picked on anyone and everyone.
I would say... I was pretty witty and so I could,
I don't know, I would just make fun of people, make fun of
the way that they looked, make fun of the way that they did
things, or especially their level of intelligence. I always hit
wherever I felt like somebody had an insecurity, I would pick at that.
So I was pretty good at finding out insecurities. And it's interesting because
years later when I met some of these people in college,
and just randomly,
totally coincidence...
If I would meet them coincidentally or whatever, I would apologize for
being that person. And I remember this one person in college,
I
randomly saw him and I remember chasing him down and being like,
"Do you remember me?" And he's like, "No, I don't."
And I was just like, I had to remind him and then reminding
him, I was crying so much. "I bullied you, man. I'm so sorry
about the person that I was then," and explaining myself to him and
that I'm different, and that I repented, and he does not understand anything
or did not understand anything that I was saying to him,
but I remember crying so much like, "I'm sorry for being that way,
and... " But I was a bully. I was really mean and...
But it was survival.