When Towers Fall
By Bobby Malley
In the New England of my school day memory, autumn would creep its way in until it was all I could see. First, the air turned brisk and sharp against my cheek. Then the leaves burst an anxious array of gold and orange. My mother would brew her tea dark on those early fall mornings when the light was low. I’d hurry off, backpack slung over my shoulder, wondering each year which version of myself might emerge.
I remember one such morning six years ago, when I kicked around the leaves and sticks that littered the doorways of my high school and watched the sky turn a gauzy gray. I heard the voices of a few of my classmates, echoing behind me as we walked from building to building.
He must have cheered when the towers fell.
I kept on kicking, as I was taught to do. I ran my fingers through my hair, knocked pebble from shoe to stone, and kept my head down.
That morning, in a classroom discussion, I had spoken openly for the first time about my family’s Syrian background. We had opened our conversation with a now infamous image of a young Syrian refugee, who had died on the treacherous passage through the Mediterranean, projected on the white board. To my classmates, he was a figment of some exotic, imagined East—where wars ravaged villages and women could not drive. He looked so much like my father to me, like the baby pictures we passed around and giggled over. Imagine Baba with hair, we would say.
He must have cheered when the towers fell.
In another lifetime, perhaps one where the leaves didn’t darken so quick, where I didn’t run a thick comb through my curls and try to tame the hair creeping up my chest, where I could look across the table and see kids who looked like me, instead of sandy-blonde manes and Patagonia, where I was braver and stronger—I might have turned around and shouted back. I might have defended my family, my heritage, my identity. I might have even laughed at them. But New England-- liberal New England, which sparkled with Obama-Biden signs and labradoodles then-- was too cold for that. It was too unfriendly, too unwelcoming.
He must have cheered.
I did not cheer, of course. But those words have followed me across state lines, and have reverberated in my memory. They have reminded me that friendly faces in welcoming towns can disguise profound hatred and mistrust. They have terrified me even, into hiding and deception. They have made me hate the way I look and distrust the rage I feel.
More than anything, they have reminded me of the great project that lies ahead, for Americans and for Westerners around the world. They have motivated me to reject complacency and question the passivity of nominally progressive neighbors and friends. They have inspired in me both faith in our democratic systems, and deep disappointment. There is no vote strong enough to cast out the specter of white supremacy and racism.
But there is the power of political awakening: those moments when people who live in ambivalence are called to a higher purpose and deeper engagement, either for themselves or the people they love. I have grown wiser, and older, grown out my curls and reimagined myself prouder and steadier. I have never looked back since that moment—I haven’t dared to turn around and confront what I heard—but I have learned to walk forward, with a surer step.
Bobby Malley is a fiction writer and poet from Beverly, Massachusetts, and a content writer and producer for the water justice organization, Aquagenuity. His work focuses on queerness, migration and the Arab-American experience.