by S. Abbas Raza
Note: This is a true story about something that happened 17 years ago but I am publishing it here this week, which marks the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/01, to give an indication of the many ways that life changed for people in the wake of that horrific day.
Recently I came upon this photo of my friend Eric, me, and his father, tucked into a book that I was trying to place in the correct place on my shelves as a part of a recent book-organizing effort and it made me think about one of the scarier events in my life. It was 2004. It was also only a couple of years after 9/11 and by then the Patriot Act was in full effect and I personally knew completely innocent people who had been caught up in the “bad Muslim” dragnet and had been detained, deported from America, etc. It was in this atmosphere that I was invited to attend my good friend Eric’s wedding on a lake in Michigan. I found the cheapest ticket possible which would involve a stopover in Pittsburgh on the way to Detroit from NYC and a stop in Philadelphia on the way back. I also reserved a rental car at the Detroit airport to get to the rural lake where the wedding was going to be.
So, on Eric’s wedding weekend, I braved the always-horrible M60 bus from the upper west side to Laguardia airport and, after going through the terrible post-9/11 security, got on my plane to Pittsburgh. All went fine.
Once in Pittsburgh, I wandered about the terminal looking at shops and tried to while away the time until my next flight and at the same time tried to ignore my nicotine cravings (I used to smoke two packs of Marlboro Red every day at that time) but in the end I couldn’t do it and decided to just go outside for a smoke, even though that meant I would have to again stand in the security line to get back to my gate for the flight to Detroit.
So there I was, sitting on a bench just outside the terminal, quickly smoking the second of my cigarettes within 15 minutes, and frequently glancing at my watch to make sure I still had enough time to get through security and onto my flight to Detroit, when I was startled by a man (African-American, in his late 30s most likely, dressed neatly in civilian clothes) who said to me in a tone which canceled all the politeness of his words, “Sir, excuse me, I am a Federal Marshal and I would like to speak to you.” Read more »