I remember September 11th, I was in a unit
that was only one block south of the World Trade Center.
So, as it was happening, the first plane hits and I'm thinking,
it was like a private jet, 'cause we'd heard about John Denver's jet,
JFK was another one. We hear about the people in these private jets,
and I remember saying to myself, "Oh my goodness, another private jet.
Why can't they just book a commercial flight and take the commercial flights?"
And that's what I'm thinking. But then
I'm like,
"I don't know." And we went outside of our building, I was standing
literally under the first tower that was going to go down.
And I looked up and it was the shadow that came over my
head, and it was the second plane going into the building in front
of me. And it's this huge, it was so close, I could look
up and see like the numbers written on the bottom of the plane.
So, of course it cast a dark shadow over
my head and then it goes into the building, and it tilts sideways
so it can get more of the building. That's when I knew. And
I remember thinking, "Oh my God." And then my second thought was,
"Please don't let them be Muslim.
Please don't let them be Muslim." And I didn't scream,
I was just in shock.
And I was like frozen in place for a minute.
So I literally just ran back down Washington Street into the building that
I was assigned to and started telling people, "Get out of the building.
We don't know if there are more planes coming, get out of the
building." And as I'm saying that, I realize now people are staring at
me.
And I'm like, "Why are they staring at me like that?"
And then I realized like, "Oh my God, it's my hijab." I'm like
I'm wondering if they're thinking that I know something
about something else coming
or whether I had something to do with it. And so,
the crazy part was they probably thought I did know something,
that I did... Yeah, and they were listening to me, because they were
like, "Nope, if she's saying get out, we're getting out."
So we're all standing down and now the fire trucks are starting
to come. So we had one,
he was an assistant deputy warden, his name was Tommy Hall.
He told the officers assigned from the Department of Correction,
"Do not go into the tower." And we were kind of pissed at him,
because we're like, "We need to go in and help people."
And he's like, "Don't go into the tower." So now we're furious,
'cause we're standing on the plaza, but he's not letting us go in.
So, a police captain comes and says, "Oh, we need as much help
as we can. Clear these streets, the fire trucks have gotta get through."
So that's what we started doing, just standing in the streets,
clearing the streets, telling people, "Go back," because I don't know what
it is about human nature, but when there's a disaster, people wanna go
look and gawk. And we're like, "This is not that day."
And we had no clue that the buildings were going to come down,
but we just needed to keep the area clear.
And we're telling people, "Get back, get back, get back,"
and they were. And I'll never forget it, this one fire truck goes
through, and I can see the man's face. And
he just looked down at me and he gives me like the thumbs
up sign. And then the next time I saw his face,
it was one of those 343 faces of the firefighters who died.
His face just kept haunting me. I didn't sleep
when I finally did make it home for literally a week.
I had to go to the doctor to get something, because I was
just so on edge. So, that day,
we kept the streets clear, the building's come down. I had my
hijab on and I had to take it to cover my nose,
because it was like a cement dust. It wasn't
smoke. People see all this... It wasn't smoke. It was as though someone
opened a bag of fine cement powder, and I just thought I was
going to die that day. And I actually saw my
headstone like, October 3, 1963 to September 11, 2001. And then the funny
thing, and I won't say funny, but ironic, is when I drove into
work that morning 'cause we had parking there,
it was such a beautiful Tuesday morning. It was a gorgeous day.
And I looked ahead and I was like just,
"Wow, I can appreciate nature. I love driving upstate New York,
seeing the Catskills, the Adirondacks, even going up to Niagra Falls,"
but then I saw the city skyline out before me, and the sun
was shining. And I'm like, "That's God's wonder too that we were able
to build that, that we were able to make this, that God gave
us the skills, the knowledge, the creativity."
So I can appreciate kind of both. And that was the last time
that I saw those towers standing. When I couldn't breathe anymore,
I just dropped to the floor. I'm like, "I'm gonna just pray.
There's nothing else for me to do, but pray."
And when I got on my knees, I felt
water, and I kind of just followed, crawled
toward the water. And what it was, it was like a
fountain in Battery Square Park, 'cause I had made my way back down
to the Battery. And I was able to clear my throat and my
nose. And then I just took the hijab and wrapped it around my
face, so that I could breathe. Then we start hearing cries,
people crying. And you couldn't really see much,
but someone saw my uniform and came toward me. And they're like,
"Officer, officer, what are we going to do?" And I'm like,
"Well, just come. Stay, we'll stay together." And a group of us just
started
grouping together. And then I saw some of the other officers
from the unit that I worked in. We didn't see the man who
told us not to go into the tower,
but thank God he told us not to go into that tower.
And we decided we're gonna just start getting people together and let's
take them down to where the ferry is to get them inside of
the terminal. But there was a restaurant down there and the restaurant owner
had opened the doors and said, "Just put everybody in here."
There was also a group of school kids who had come down to
see the Statue of Liberty, he found most of them, and started putting
them in the restaurant. So at this point,
no one left outside and we're just stuck
down in the restaurant. Eventually, one of our radios, we had a police
radio,
and we were able to start getting communication. So that's when we find
out we're under attack. We also heard, and it was really scary,
I guess it was NORAD, they were responding. So there were fighter jets
in the air, but we didn't know
if we were being attacked or if it was NORAD.
And that was really, really scary. So, having gone through all of this,
and the crazy thing was, not to say that there weren't other
Muslims in the area, but I don't know that there were any other
Muslim officers in that area, police department, or fire department, or
correction department, and clearly, with the hijab on.
So by the end of the day, the hijab had come off,
I had to wash it 100 times and keep putting it around my
mouth.
There were boats that came in and we put the kids on the
first boat. The officers that were down there
took the last boat off, and it took us to Brooklyn.
We got off
kind of near
where Brooklyn Bridge Park is now and we were able to walk up
Atlantic Avenue to the Brooklyn House. And my husband was at the Brooklyn
House, because when all of this had happened,
he took his bus, got our boys from school,
put them in the house, and then he came back to look for
me. He took his bus back to the depot and got his truck
to come to look for me, but of course, he couldn't get over
the bridge. So the only thing he knew to do was go to
Brooklyn House and see if they had heard from us, but this was
probably 8:30, 9:00 that night. And when, he had this
grill on his truck, I did not like that grill. I thought it
was so ghetto, but I was so happy to see the grill on
that truck waiting there. So a group of us got in and he
was able to drop us all
home for the night.