A Personal Reckoning with 9/11, Art, and the Politics of Belonging

In a personal essay, the writer reflects on the period surrounding September 11, 2001, beginning with a night of dancing at the Tribeca nightclub Vinyl. By August 2000, the club was experiencing a decline reminiscent of the Peter Gatien era, highlighted by a Time magazine cover on ecstasy and warnings about undercover operations. Following the attacks, the author, then employed at HBO, rode his bike from Broadway-Lafayette to Tribeca after the South Tower's collapse, unable to contact his girlfriend, artist Reiko Yamamoto, who lacked a cell phone. The narrative includes a vigil led by Sreenath Sreenivasan for a Sikh hate-crime victim, where the author connected with activists from Youth Solidarity Summer and the Taxi Workers Alliance. It also touches on the arrival of his green card in April 2001, his Oberlin roommate Saif's visa issues due to their shared Muslim-Bangladeshi surname, and the ensuing "reverse brain drain." The writer contemplates Mahmood Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim and the model-minority concept, noting that Mamdani's son, Zohran, opted to reform the system internally. The essay features a still from the Visible Collective's 2005 video "Disappeared in America: Fear of Flying."