Overview:
A Haitian American reflects on the 9/11 attacks from her Brooklyn apartment and how the tragedy shaped her identity, spurring her decision to apply for U.S. citizenship.
BROOKLYN—I was in a deep sleep, cocooned in my snug twin bed after tiptoeing into it just before dawn, when the house phone blared. Inside my family’s Flatbush apartment, my beeper was vibrating somewhere in that junior bedroom too.
Seconds later, I heard the apartment door open and slam shut quickly. Then, my father’s voice was heard as he walked quickly from room to room. He got to my room, but I kept my eyes closed as he whisper-shouted in Kreyol, almost fretting.
“Leve, leve pitit. Nou an danje. Leve!” Wake up, wake up, child. We’re in danger. Wake up!
Once I finally realized what he was saying, flashes of me at the World Financial Center skidded to the forefront of my skull.
- There’s me inside Tower 2, twice a week at 6 a.m., taking an ear-popping elevator ride up to a floor in the sky, to cold call registered voters at that ungodly hour about the upcoming city elections. As per my script, I reminded them to vote on Election Day: Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.
- There I am working or having lunch with a group of fellow JP Morgan Chase interns.
- There’s me in high school and college, rushing with everyone else, as I visited the gold vault at the Federal Reserve Bank, offices of the Wall Street Journal or Crain’s, sitting on the steps of Chase Manhattan Plaza, and buying that hat or umbrella from a sidewalk vendor.
These flashbacks told me: I could’ve been in that rubble had the hijackers picked any of the days I was there. The attackers wouldn’t have pinpointed only ‘Americans’ in their rampage. So, where would that have left me or my loved ones left behind?
Destroyed mullions, the vertical struts which once faced the soaring outer walls of the World Trade Center towers, are the only thing left standing behind a dust covered bus and subway entrance, after a terrorist attack on the twin towers of lower Manhattan Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. In an unprecedented show of terrorist horror, the 110-story towers collapsed in a shower of rubble and dust after two hijacked airliners carrying scores of passengers slammed into the sides of the twin symbols of American capitalism. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
That Tuesday, replaying these moments and swapping “last time I was there” stories left me on high alert and feeling jittery. Everyone had an “I was just there” tale or relayed where they were.
Over the phone and with neighbors, we went back and forth. Inside our building—a three-floor limestone with two apartments per floor owned by a Haitian and housing all Haitians—we learned about and recounted who came ‘this close’ to death that morning.
One upstairs neighbor, Junior,* said he was only alive because he had left his WTC building to grab a bite from a sidewalk cart when the first plane hit.
My cousin Jimmy* was rushing out of the subway for his morning shift at 8 o’clock when a crush of people came fleeing from the building. He ran too.
“My train was late! If it had been one minute earlier, I would’ve been in there,” he told us, louder and incredulous than his usual self. “I wouldda been dead.”
One of my brothers, a college student then, was sitting in class inside a Metrotech building, directly across the river from the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, when black clouds of smoke rose. After the first explosion, the class thought it was an accident and all expected to resume the session. When the second plane hit, everyone ran out.
He trekked the four miles home to Flatbush, alongside soot-covered people who spilled out from the bridges, trying to get into the packed dollar vans — all of them trying to absorb the news that New York City, America, was under attack.
Being Haitian American, I can’t claim that 9/11 had the same impact on me as it has had on so many Americans who are Muslim, of Arabic descent, or from police and fire department families who lost loved ones.
Our community didn’t experience the same depth of loss or, later on, persecution and prosecution that followed for those groups. There’s no monument to Haitians who died on 9/11, and that’s ok. We were spared for the most part and should be grateful for that.
Still, 9/11 left its mark on us as individuals in different ways. In the long run, we’d feel the pain of stricter laws enacted as a result.
Yet, as cliché as it may sound, 9/11 was a wake-up call for me. A few months later, I applied for citizenship — a step that spoke volumes about how I saw myself and where I belonged.
First – New York City is home. America is home. Even though I wasn’t born on American soil, I realized on 9/11 that if America is under attack, that means I’d be pulverized too in an assault. No enemy is going to ask for my Haitian identification card to spare me.
Second – I’d lived here longer than I had in Haiti at that point. I let go, feeling like a Haitian just going through the motions while waiting for God knows what with Haiti. I claimed America on her own merit then. A few months later, I completed the naturalization application to make it official.
Third – The vitriol that rose against Muslims and Arab Americans really bothered me, especially the way it was dressed up as patriotism. It felt more like an extension of the racial profiling and brutality Black people had to shoulder historically. I figured I’d need as much protection under the law as possible if that hatred expanded to other groups. Sure ‘nuff, here we are.
Fourth – Finally, I’d get to vote. Considering how much time I spent at rallies, following politics and, yes, calling people at dawn to remind them to vote, I figured I might as well have the option to cast a ballot myself.
Looking back now, perhaps a lot of Haitians felt this way too. In the years that followed, after all, Haitians successfully entered New York politics as the city rebuilt. Some joined the military and other bastions representing service to country.
Over the years, as I watched the Freedom Tower rise up in stages, reported on the squabbles over it, witnessed the anguish of families advocating for Ground Zero workers, or visited it with my own family — all these moments reinforced the choice 9/11 spurred me to make: Embracing being an American.
Now, does this mean I stocked up on American flag lapel pins or that my acceptance is a rejection of being Haitian? Of course not. More than anything, it meant looking for and embracing the best parts of both countries I love so dearly to build my little world. Considering the state of both Haiti and the U.S. these days, that’s worth remembering in our movements to build/rebuild in both lands.
*Names changed for privacy.
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