- On September 11th,
I was a senior at Stuyvesant High School,
which is four or five blocks
from where the World Trade Center sat.
- I was 13 years old.
- I think I was 15 at the time.
- I was a senior in high school.
- It was, I think, our second or third day of school.
- We're just chatting in class, waiting for our books.
- And there was a lot of commotion.
- It was so surreal.
It just felt like a movie, you know.
You're seeing that debris and the smoke.
- Became very afraid,
just felt like my life was in danger.
- We were there, and I don't think
people really talk about the fact that
there were kids there.
- We experienced being a witness to history,
but also ending up, like, if you look back on it,
being a part of history.
- Absolutely everything changed that day.
The city was attacked. The way of life was attacked.
And having grown up here
and having become adopted by New York,
that felt personal.
This is New York. This is home.
- Going to Stuyvesant was really a dream for most of us
immigrant children growing up in the boroughs.
Getting into this elite school was something
that we were sort of hoping for and expecting
since we were real young.
- To get into Stuyvesant,
you have to take a test like the SATs,
and yeah, I was a--you know, a very high-reaching,
ambitious, academic kid.
- My father, he wanted me to go to Catholic school.
My family is very Catholic. My last name's O'Callahan.
We're Irish Catholic. My dad was almost a priest.
But I had a different ambition.
- My parents immigrated from Bangladesh.
They came in the early '70s.
They grew up in very small villages.
My father, especially, grew up
in a one-room village in Bangladesh, got educated,
was able to move to the city, and then eventually
made his way over to the States.
I can imagine it was sort of a dream.
They truly believed in that American dream:
streets paved with gold,
leave everything behind, and come here and make it.
- I was born in Ukraine.
My parents were born in Kiev,
and we came to the U.S. in 1991.
And so America was, you know, my adopted country.
It had taken us in, had been good to us.
You know, eventually, land of opportunity,
I was able to get into Stuyvesant
and had life ahead of me,
and that was all thanks to America.
A lot of those things weren't possible
back in Ukraine.
- I grew up in Brooklyn.
We had just moved from Crown Heights to Bed Stuy.
My was, like, very apprehensive of sending me
to a school in Manhattan, and I was like,
"It's Stuyvesant. I get to go."
- I came all the way from the Bronx,
and given I don't know how many students
have an hour and a half commute at the age of 15.
So going from the tippy-top,
I was at the northern part of the Bronx,
cutting through the south
and cutting through all of Manhattan,
but I had this, like, very ambitious, like,
"I'm gonna seize the day type of attitude" too.
And Manhattan seemed like such a special place,
and it's the place to be.
- It was a sunny day.
Most days that we would commute to Stuyvesant,
we would wake up 5:00, 5:30 in the morning, really early.
First week of school and really excited
for senior year to start.
- I lived in South Brooklyn,
so I was 15 minutes from the nearest subway.
So I would take an express bus every day.
- And I met up with two of my friends,
which we would always do,
'cause we wanted to take the train together.
There was a mall there
that we would pop out of the train station
and walk through that mall every day,
come out right underneath the towers.
- My bus used to drop me off at the Century 21
right in front of the towers.
I walked from there to school every morning.
- Our high school's unique.
It's, like, ten floors,
we have a large student body, so in a sense,
our school's pretty awesome that way.
- It was already a pretty big jump
to be going to high school in the city
and just really excited.
Really, really, excited.
- When I started Stuyvesant, I was about 13,
and it was an interesting time for kids.
The internet was sort of,
like, making its way into our lives.
We were just starting to chat.
None of us had cell phones,
so texting was definitely not a thing.
- This must've have been the first
if not a second week of school.
You know, before you get your books,
before you really know the routine.
- It felt like any other day.
My first class was actually math,
and I was sitting in my math class,
staring out the window.
And I was gazing off at the North Tower
when I saw an explosion.
I saw something enter the building
and then an explosion.
And as soon as the explosion happened,
I reacted, yelling and saying, "Oh, my God,"
at the top--like, really loudly,
and it stopped the whole class.
- I saw the crash of the plane into the North Tower.
I remember asking someone, "Was that missile?"
And they said, "No, it was a plane."
And I was like, "No, that doesn't make any sense
"that, like, so did someone just fire a missile
at the Trade Center?"
And he was like, "No, I saw the tail,"
and I realized that I had also seen the tail.
- So when the first plane hit,
that just, like, usual sound of a garbage truck backing up
and the driver probably not seeing,
like, maybe, the garbage cans, like, that thud,
um, that's what it sounded like.
And oh, God, I forgot his name.
He's a really sweet Spanish teacher,
but I remember he had, like, curly gray, black hair,
and he was very soft-spoken.
He'd be like, "Mis señoras, mis señoras."
That's how he'd start the day,
and I just remember him-- his just gentleness
on his face just quickly disappeared
when he heard that sound.
- And all my classmates ran over to the window.
Our teacher ran over to the window,
and we were all looking out at this ball of fire
that was emitting from the tower.
- I'm looking at the TV, looking out the window,
looking at the TV, looking out the window,
and I just happened to be looking out the window,
and I see the second plane.
And then look at the TV, and then it shows it on the TV.
- And it sort of hit you like a swell of emotion
that this is hap-- it's happening again.
- Everybody at that instant realized
it was a terrorist attack.
- They sent us to our homerooms.
I remember there was some confusion as to whether
we're safer in the building or outside the building,
so we didn't evacuate right away.
Just a lot of commotion, there was a lot of excitement.
It was adrenaline from about-- just about everyone.
- And I think I was--I don't know.
I can't say what I felt,
because it just felt like--I feel like
I wasn't processing it yet at that point.
- A lot of people talk about understanding
after the second plane had hit that this was intentional
and that this was a terrorist attack,
and I could not make that leap.
And I mean, I say "leap."
It was a small step, at that point.
Two planes hitting the Trade Center?
My mind just wouldn't make that connection.
- Some students' parents or family members
worked in the tower.
I had an uncle that was working on the 86th floor
of the South Tower,
and I was thinking about him and what was going on.
And I saw debris falling from the tower.
And I was like, "What is that?
"What's falling?
"What is that that's falling from the tower?
Is that paper? It's so big."
And we realized we were watching people jump
from the tower down to
whatever they felt at that moment
was their best option.
- I personally saw bodies falling out of the sky,
you know, from the building.
We're like, "Did you just see that?"
And we thought it was, like, a chair
or something falling out from the sky.
And--I mean, later on, we realized
there might-- there must have been,
you know, people jumping out.
- And as soon as I saw what I saw--
appendages and arms and legs--
I thought that my uncle was, like, falling from the tower
at that moment.
That's the way I felt,
so I became hysterical at that point.
They sent us to our next class.
That class became canceled, and they sent us, at first,
to our second class, whatever, and I happened to have gym.
And while we were there, the whole building shook.
The whole building shook, the lights flickered, went off.
They were off for about five or six seconds, I think,
or it felt like that.
And then something, like, sort of turned on,
and it felt like the lights came back on.
And we were all yelling and screaming
and sort of running around.
In retrospect, I understood that that was the time
when the South Tower collapsed.
- I remember that I was in that room
when the first tower fell,
and we saw the dust cloud coming towards our building.
And we piled our book bags on top
of the air conditioner just in case
the dust cloud was going to come into the room.
- There were random rumors flying around,
a rumor of there being potentially a bomb
in the building.
There was a rumor of a gas leak.
There was a rumor of more attacks.
Things just kind of kept popping up
and frankly, anything was possible.
- The principal decided we're, like, all evacuating now
and really asking students not to panic
and to make sure to walk calmly.
- Imagine being trained for fire alarms
in single file lines,
and then you have a moment where it's, like,
50 times worse than a fire,
but you're still trying to keep your cool.
- I remember that rush of light,
the doors all opening all at once,
and us, like, trekking out onto the West Side Highway,
and we're seeing the tower--you know,
the towers are right there.
It was so surreal.
It just felt like a movie, you know.
You're seeing that debris and the smoke
and all of us just like a mass exodus.
- I think the second building collapsed
when we had evacuated.
- The ground started shaking again,
and whatever we saw of the remaining tower
started crumbling onto itself.
And we just ran as fast as we could
in the opposite direction.
- The dust cloud was coming,
kind of like what you see in, like, mummy movies.
You see a sandstorm that's coming from a distance,
and this just, like, wall of sand is coming at you,
and at some point, encompasses you.
Just a giant wall, like a mountain of dust
kind of moving toward you.
- They have made the decision to stop
all air traffic control...
- I remember there was a hustle--like,
a real hustle to get away at least ten blocks,
because people were afraid of the build--like,
you know, you don't know how buildings fall, right?
- There's just people walking in the streets.
There are people walking on the sidewalks.
There's just people walking everywhere,
and then you hear sirens everywhere.
There are fighter jets, like, flying really low
across Manhattan, and so you hear them coming,
and you hear them going.
- And the trains weren't working.
You know, when you go to a commuter high school,
like, that's such a part of your life.
And you are immediately aware that you cannot get home
unless you're willing to walk several miles.
- One by one, on the West Side Highway,
our friend group found one another.
And we found one friend, and we found another friend.
Whoever we saw that we kind of knew
who was South Asian, we just had to grab them
and said, "Don't be by yourself, just come,"
because we were young kids in the city.
We felt like we looked different.
We didn't wanna be targeted.
- There was a girl.
Her name was Nazia, and she wore a hijab.
And we're all walking up together,
and this guy just, like, stops
and literally says-- calls her a bitch,
and, um...
we all just, like, froze.
We just couldn't believe it.
We were feeling like we were all walking together
away from danger,
and someone amongst us
that was walking the same direction as us
was looking at someone that I was with as the enemy.
And it just kind of blew my mind.
- I remember we were with one of the younger girls,
I can't recall her name, wore a hijab.
And I remember somebody from across the street,
like a construction worker-type dude, like, yelled at her like,
"Go back to where you came from."
And we're like, "We're trying to go to Queens."
Like, "We're trying to go back where we came from."
- The lines at pay phones,
which still existed in the city at that time,
were, like, around the block,
because the World Trade Center
was also the primary cell phone tower.
- My father was at work that day.
My father is a dentist, and he worked in Queens.
And on the television, he saw that this was happening,
and an assistant--a dental assistant came into the room
and told him that
Stuyvesant High School exploded.
That's what she heard.
She may have heard "evacuated," and misspoke.
And my dad collapsed on the ground,
'cause he thought that the school exploded.
And he was waiting for a call,
and we had one friend who had a Nextel cell phone,
which I don't even know if they exist anymore,
but Nextel at the time,
they had the biggest cell phones,
the biggest antennas,
and they just worked everywhere.
He was the only friend with a cell phone,
and he allowed each of us, one after the next,
to call home.
And I called my father,
and he was bawling, crying on the phone.
He's like, "Where are you?"
I said, "I'm in downtown Manhattan.
I'm with friends."
He says, "Please be safe.
They don't know if there are more attacks happening."
And this is something I'll remember to this day.
My dad, over the phone, said to me,
"Please, please, just survive."
And him saying that to me made me realize
sort of the predicament I was in.
I knew, but hearing my dad's concern
and his voice and what he said to me,
I felt like I--that's when I realized I was in a war zone.
That's what I felt like.
- So pretty much, we got home,
I wanna say something like 9:00 or 10:00 at night.
But the moment we entered the Bronx,
my mom, like, you know, she just broke down,
and she's like, "My baby!"
And she's just like, you know, just hugged me
and just like-- just smothered me to life.
I mean, it was in Korean.
Which means "my puppy."
And these were words she used when I was a baby.
She used those words that she used
when I was, like, an infant like, "my little puppy,"
"my little piglet," you know.
Like, and I guess, like, retelling you this,
it sounds very strange, but I guess she reverted
to those, like, early words of affection for me.
Like, you know, "I almost lost you," you know.
Sorry, I didn't--um...
yeah.
- The first thing, I walked through the door,
and they grabbed me.
And I just collapsed on the floor,
and I just started bawling, crying.
Um...
And I asked, like, "Have you guys heard
"from Shajahan mama?
Have you heard from them?"
She's like, "No, I called you aunt,
"and we haven't heard.
"The last thing he did this morning was,
he bathed the kids."
He had four children.
He bathed them, and he went off to work.
And he told his wife that, you know,
"I'll be back in the evening."
And she was calling his office, and we never heard from him.
He ended up passing away, uh,
from, maybe, the collapse or from the impact.
We never knew.
Um, but he never-- he never came back.
We lost him that day.
- I'm fairly sure that week, the rest of the week,
I was just catatonically on my couch watching TV,
trying to get whatever-- trying to extract
whatever information there was, trying to understand.
- Stuyvesant was closed for a few weeks
after the events,
and my parents didn't let me out of the house.
They didn't want me going anywhere.
They wanted me to stay home.
They were afraid that some random person
with some preconceived notion or idea
would take out their anger and frustrations,
understandably, they would be angry and frustrated,
on some kid that they see who looks like something
that they imagine to be fearful.
- When we came back to school on October 8th or 9th,
I remember the smell.
It smelled like burning and maybe chemically,
but it just-- it smelled terrible.
- It was crazy.
I mean, you had armed military checking our IDs
going into school.
You couldn't cross the West Side Highway
without being checked.
- I think there was a point of pride
of not letting ourselves be too affected
or letting ourselves show that we were too affected.
I feel like it's a pretty safe place to be,
and I know that it'll bring back emotions for me
to be back in the building,
but I think that it's things that I can cope with.
- One of the barges that was removing debris
from the World Trade Center was placed
just north of our building in the Hudson River.
- We were four or five blocks
from this burning pile of rubble.
You could smell it every day going into school.
It had a very unique smell
that you never wanna smell again,
but that was reality,
and that was life at Stuyvesant.
- That whole sophomore year,
I was always afraid when I hear planes.
Like--like that: shoo....
you know, the, like, overhead--that whistling.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.
Any sound like that always,
like, uh...made me sweat a little bit.
- There was a lot of anxiety around the backlash
that people of color, especially that looked like me,
were experiencing across the city, across the country.
And that was a very real part of the aftermath.
There were stories about people of wearing turbans
or people that were Indian or Bengali
or Pakistani getting attacked and getting beaten.
And my mother was hearing all of these stories as well,
and she was scared.
You know, she was scared for me.
- And we were always proud Americans,
and my father was the biggest supporter of America
in every Olympics leading up to that point.
I just remember I thought it was so funny.
I'm like, "Dad, you're not from here.
Why do you like America so much in the Olympics?"
He was very happy and proud to be from here.
And that week, both my father and mother
went out, they bought American flag stickers,
two each, and they put them directly onto our cars.
Not only because they're proud Americans,
but because they didn't want people to feel like
they were outsiders.
And I was upset,
not because I have any disrespect
for the American flag,
but I felt like you don't need to show anybody
or prove to anybody that you belong here.
- But my mom was a life insurance agent,
and I remember she had clients
where the FBI would go over to their house,
Muslim clients, Pakistanis,
and they would just, like, shake up all their furniture,
look through stuff, find nothing, leave,
come back two weeks later.
And so these are things I don't think,
like, the mass media as talking about,
but through literally just ground level
community bubble stuff, I started seeing how
this was really affecting our community,
that people were losing their jobs.
People were losing their business.
The collateral damage of 9/11 is really, like...
There's so much collateral damage,
but a lot of it is brown identity in America.
- Even though our senior year was completely marred
by this experience,
the internal Stuyvesant experience
was incredible for me.
My senior year of high school
was my favorite year of high school.
Because of the way we came together,
there was just a harmony in our class.
And that harmony was because of what we went through
and how it brought us together and how we understood
that everyone was accepting of one another
and everyone loved each other.
That was the difference.
- There were a lot more
impassioned political conversations
in social studies classrooms.
Very strongly differing opinions about whether or not
we should be getting into a war,
about what role we had played
on bringing this on ourselves, if any.
But we sure did get Bill Clinton to speak
at our graduation.
- I thank the class of 2002 for all you did
in the aftermath of September the 11th.
And I thank you for the courage and determination
and spirit with which you bore this great difficulty,
something someone your age should never have to face.
- Our graduation song was just so patriotic.
♪ I vow to you ♪
♪ My country ♪
♪ All earthly things above ♪
♪ A love that asks no question ♪
♪ A love that stands the test ♪
And there's more stuff, but, like, seriously?
"A love that asks no question"
is not a love that I wanna have for my country.
I think it's bullshit,
so I didn't really like
that that was our graduation song.
It pissed me off.
But the chorus instructor was a very patriotic woman,
and she totally vetoed those of us who really wanted
to make Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
our graduation song.
So that also colored graduation.
- We're still in the post-9/11 world.
As a global society,
like, everything is based on protection.
We're still fighting wars against the organizations
that helped perpetuate 9/11.
So that was the turning point of Carlos
who thought that the world was gonna be
a peaceful, happy place by the time he grew up
and the one that was like,
"Okay, this is the reality that we live in."
- I remember it, and I think about it all the time.
I just knew that this was life-altering.
And to this day, I still feel like
it completely changed who I was as a person.
- We were just so close.
I think that the people who were together on that day
and around that day really solidified relationships
in ways that have carried forward.
I don't know anyone who is as close
with their friends from high school
as I am with the friends who I had at that time.
- You know, I was lucky enough to not lose anyone
in the attacks, but--I mean, the whole world changed.
You know, the world is still feeling the shocks of 9/11.
- There's a long history of hate in this country.
And I think how you process events like this
and how much hate you ingest into your process
shows what a country is.
And I think in that respect, we, as a country, failed.
- I don't feel like the world is any safer
or closer to accepting Muslim Americans
or minority Americans
any more than the days after September 11th.
And I feel that as long as hate and ignorance
is around and perpetuated
and not snuffed out,
people will always live in fear
of those who are different.
- When my first child was born
and basically every year since that she's been awake,
when I get home on September 11th,
and they're shining the memorial light,
I've taken her out to the waterfront
to see the light and tell her a little bit
about September 11th.
I want my children to understand
that the world doesn't have to look like this.
It doesn't have to look like a place
where we point to people based on their differences,
because there's something that we think we have to fear.
And I would love for them to understand that
that perspective doesn't have to continue to exist,
and they can work to change that perspective.
- You know, people thrive and rebuild and recover
despite difficulties, and I think that's a testament
to all of us.
And the people who are rebuilding America,
they're also immigrants.
They continue to come,
and they continue to make America
a stronger, better, more diverse,
you know, smarter place.
It's the land of opportunity.
People still wanna come,
and I think that is a testament to, not just New York,
but also, like, the human spirit, generally.
- ♪ I pledge allegiance to the flag ♪
♪ Of the United States ♪
♪ Of America ♪
♪ We're going flag shopping for American flags ♪
♪ They're staring at our turbans ♪
♪ They're calling them rags ♪
♪ They're calling them towels ♪
♪ They're calling them diapers ♪
♪ They're more like crowns ♪
♪ Let's strike them like vipers ♪
♪ I know why they mad ♪
♪ But why call us Arabs ♪
♪ We sad like they sad ♪
♪ But now we buy they flags ♪
♪ We're going American flag shopping ♪
♪ Red, white, blue on our crib ♪
♪ The neighbors threw rocks at the house ♪
♪ They making it harder to live ♪