September 11 2001 is a date that marks history, something like BC / AD.  The entire world shifted on that day. The world has not been the same since. Today my Turkish and Arab friends still are “randomly” selected for security searches. They are treated as potential threats. No one really acknowledges that many of them also experienced pain and sorrow due to that fateful day.

Two small snippets occurred in my life in Istanbul, Turkey on September 12^th 2001.

9/11 occurred for us in Istanbul, during the evening hours of that day. I learned about the first plane crash when I was buying a ticket to see a movie. The woman at the ticket counter, upon learning I was an American, asked if I knew about the plane crash. I rushed home after the movie, not truly able to comprehend what was happening. As events continued to unfold, I experienced a totally surreal disconnected feeling, that I have no need to describe. You all know what I mean. The following day at school, many of our faculty members were gathered in the Faculty Room listening as one of our American teachers shared her anxieties and fears for her brother and sister-in-law who lived adjacent to the WTC. She was crying. In fact many of us were crying, Turkish faculty and foreign faculty. We surrounded her and comforted her. Then one of our Turkish teachers expressed what many of our Muslim teachers were feeling, “This is not the Islam I believe in.” All of our teachers, whether they were Muslim, Christian or Jew, were full of deep, deep sorrow. They all shared an intimate moment of profound pain and grief. This was not just an American tragedy. This was a world tragedy.

That afternoon I went to my Turkish dentist. He told me that he had been frantically calling a dental school classmate who worked in New York City. She was a Greek. I asked if I could help him with the telephone number. He took out his address book where I immediately spotted “WTC 2” by her address. My heart sank as I shared with him the meaning of these initials and the reason her phone was “disconnected”. We cried together.

As we near the end of the month of Ramadan, the month of fasting from sunrise to sunset in the Islamic tradition, let us embrace one another in the full spectrum of our differences. We share a common humanity and this is what we embrace with love and compassion.

Selam/Shalom

Alison Stendahl

Alison Stendahl serves with the Near East Mission, Istanbul, Turkey.  She is Academic Dean of and a math teacher at Uskudar American Academy in Istanbul Turkey.