Forbidden thoughts about 9/11: The readers respond

From "It was only white people" to hoping to get a 212 cell phone number to "I hope my father died," readers share their secret reactions to Sept. 11.

Sep 11, 2002 | Last week, in a story about the forbidden thoughts that crept or leapt into the minds of otherwise polite Americans as they heard about the attacks on Sept. 11, or the events that followed the disaster, we invited readers to reveal their own quiet heresies via email. Hundreds of readers wrote, and a selection of their responses are printed below.

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I knew a guy who narrowly escaped getting hit by a falling body. The first e-mail he sent out, two hours later, was, "Hey, how do we get ahold of all the new 212 cell numbers that'll be available?"

I had another friend who watched the towers go down from Brooklyn, didn't know what to do to get out his sudden rage against Arabs, so he opened his refrigerator and started throwing out all his Middle Eastern food, yelling as he tossed items one by one into the garbage: "Fuck this baba ghanoush! We don't need their fucking pita bread!" I won't even tell you what he did to the hummus.

-- Name withheld

My husband and I were playing Jenga afterward. When the Jenga collapsed, I shouted "North Tower." Then the second round of the game, we shouted, "South Tower." Now we don't call it Jenga anymore. We call it North Tower.

-- Marisa

For the first month, every time they would show a picture of Osama bin Laden on television, I couldn't help but think that his face looked so sweet and kind. I kept thinking there had to be some mistake because he kinda reminded me of my dad's side of the family, who are all such gentle and loving people. Interestingly enough, I got over that. Now every time I see him, I want to kick his bony ass up and down the street.

-- Amanda E.., an Iranian woman in New York

When I heard there was a terror attack downtown, I hoped the situation would degenerate into urban guerrilla warfare. I was really psyched to go out and kick some Islamist ass.

-- Dave Gottlieb, student

At the time, my first thought was, "Holy shit. That's badass. I wonder what their ideology was. Hopefully they weren't Muslims."

-- Name withheld

I worked at a prominent chain of sex stores. On Sept. 11, I worked there all day, and as weirdo after weirdo came in, oblivious to the fact that hijacked airplanes had just crashed into and destroyed American landmarks and killed thousands of people (at that time, people were guessing up to 50,000 plus), I thought, Godammit. Of all the times to be on commission at a fucking sex store ...

-- Tim Link

In the days and weeks that followed the attacks I found myself worrying about the rescue dogs that were working the site. There were reports in the media almost daily about injuries to the dogs (and in some cases deaths) and I found myself wondering if it was really that important to recover things like concrete splashed with the victim's DNA.

-- Name withheld

I watched from my window, not on television, as the twin towers fell. As shocked as I was, I felt that this was not my problem as a black person. The people who worked at the World Trade Center were mostly white men, and so they had nothing to do with me as a black woman.

When there was an outpouring of grief and donations from every corner of the United States, I said to myself, If those planes had flown into a housing project and the victims were poor blacks and Latinos, people in Missouri wouldn't give a damn. When I heard that there had been over $1 billion in private donations, I asked myself where was this money before? Why hadn't it been donated to help the homeless, children who do not have access to an education, people who do not have access to healthcare? Here we have people rushing to write checks to people whose families will be taken care of by insurance or their employers.

To me, 9/11 was just another example of the American paradigm of deservedness and white entitlement. We are not all Americans; the white investment banker, the white fireman, the white police officer, the white EMT, they are Americans.

-- Name withheld

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