Fear and freedom
My first thought, seeing the faces of the 9/11 hijackers, was they looked like me.
I was afraid of going out for fear of being mistaken for Muslim and attacked.
A few days after 9/11, the sign outside an ice house near my Montrose apartment read: “bomb the bastards.” I had loved sitting at the picnic tables there and chatting with total strangers. After the sign, I avoided the place.
In 2002, immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, the Middle East and South Asia were asked by federal officials to come in for interviews. The policy cast suspicion on people with no links to terrorism. I attended a small protest outside the federal immigration building and suddenly, a writer mostly interested in fiction and poetry felt called to respond to the profiling, surveillance and war that were being justified by the Sept. 11 tragedy. In February 2003, I sent my first op-ed — a screed against the looming invasion of Iraq — to this newspaper. Wouldn’t you know, the Chronicle never published it.
Many of my friends and family warned me against protesting in the street. What if someone shot at me? What if the government rounded me up? I didn’t want to live in that kind of fear. As a U.S.-born citizen, I felt I had an obligation to speak out. And no one ever rounded me up for it.
I have faced all kinds of malice, before and after 9/11, but the overwhelming majority of the time, I get decency if not loving hospitality.
Not long after 9/11, my future wife and I took a road trip up the coastline, ending up in Louisiana’s Cameron Parish. At a diner, I asked a waitress where to go dancing and she told us about a bar down the road. Then she looked at me and said she wasn’t sure it was safe.
We went anyway and an old man showed us how to Zydeco.
I honor the people who died on Sept. 11, and those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, every day that I live in this country without fear, and every day that I lift up voices of dissent in these pages, including those with which I disagree. That is America.
The “bomb the bastards” language eventually came down from the ice house sign and I’ve been back many times. If you see me there, don’t be afraid to come up and say hello.
Raj Mankad, op-ed editor