And then they said he was dead....
I woke up this morning to the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Now, I have never considered myself an extremely Patriotic person or anything of that nature, but I cried. I cried for a number of reasons. For 1, it brought me back to gym class where I remember finding out about the attacks. I was 14 and pissed off that we were delaying playing dodgeball as Mrs. Perez wheeled out the television and said, "there has been an attack on the twin towers." I didn't know what it meant at the time, as we all sat down in neat little rows and one of the kids next to me said "I have family that works there" immediately he was rushed out of the gym and to the office to make a phone call. I remember floating between classes in a sort of a daze and listening to my other Muslim friends say they were considering taking the next few days off of school and not wearing their hijabs, or the boy in study hall who said "your dad's a Muslim isn't he? You're not one of them, are you?" I didn't understand why anyone had done something like that and I couldn't comprehend hating someone simply for being from a different place.
I watched the world change in a short 6 months, saw how scared people had become, and how the U.S had become an environment of fear and terror. I met people who jumped at the sounds of airplanes or cried when they smelled smoke and I realized that was no kind of life at all.
I can honestly say every day of 2001, after 9/11, I expected to wake up hearing that Bin Laden had been found, so the news came as a bit of a shocker. When I logged online I kept reading things that said: "Burn in hell Bin Laden," "Haha, we caught that bastard" and various conspiracy theories. I was surprised that people had lost sight of the basic fact that it all came down to humanity, the way we treat each other and respecting the families and friends of those who lost their lives at the hands of Bin Laden. While it must be fun for people to play devil's advocate and create dramatic conspiracy theories, we forget that we are taking something away from the people who have waited 10 years to feel some kind of closure. The idea that 9/11 was a lie, (a government cover-up) is common among skeptics, but I can honestly say nothing is more truthful than the way we all felt watching the images of the falling buildings and burning bodies under the rubble. Nothing is seared into my memory more than the image of the couple jumping off of the roof holding hands, I know I will never forget it. And the reason I won't is because it was about true human suffering, love in the face of terrible violence and hatred. Matters of life and death should not be politicized and have nothing to do with presidential campaigns. What this means is that after 10 years of grief, which leaves families shaken, houses filled with memories of their missing loved ones and a constant feeling that nothing would sacred or safe ever again, these people can breathe a bit easier.
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