I was very little when 9/11 happened. My mom took me with her to work every day in New York. My dad used to work near and sometimes in one of the twin towers. Some of my family members were employed at the CIA at the time. Years later when my parents told me what happened that day, I was so scared because my family was so close to it. I didn’t really know the ethnicity of who the people were that crashed the planes, but I knew they needed to be prevented from doing it again.
Throughout my years of schooling, I noticed teachers were starting to paint a picture of what a terrorist looked like. I honestly thought that the actions of so few people should not be a blanket term for everyone who shares the same ethnicity. However, everyone around me did… and it really started to wear me down. I didn’t realize the war on terrorism was actually a war on a certain way of life until a couple years ago. I started reading more and more about what was going on in the countries of the people who were being marginalized and who we were being biased towards, and I noticed that all of the news coverage - both liberal and conservative - were painting a picture of a man with darker colored skin, a beard, and often times a head wrap or turban around his head as the enemy. What I really didn’t appreciate was that people were claiming to have all the possible sides and solutions to the situation at hand without even considering the difference between the few people who were actually committing the attacks and the extremely extensive and diverse Muslim community.
Last spring break, I went to Egypt for 9 days. Before I left, my friends were all worried about me; they thought that I wouldn’t be able to come home, or that I would get blown up of something. To be honest, I thought it would be a difficult time to travel there too. Seeing as Trump had just been elected. When I got there, everyone was extremely friendly. I felt safe. Not to mention, people there DO NOT look exactly the same. It turns out (as I was mistaken on before), women in Cairo dress conservatively not only because their religious beliefs align with their clothing preferences, but it is also to shoo away any undesirable comments from men on the street. There are many ways a woman can dress, actually. Many wear full black burkas that only show their eyes, while other women wear headscarves and cover their shoulders. My eyes were immediately opening up to what I had really been missing. Not to mention, the cultures that are present and have been present in Egypt have been on this earth WAY longer than European cultures. I began to question where the shift happened, and how the whole world got flipped from the east to the west.
Of course, my blissful vacation to see the pyramids came to an end. When I got home, a week after I had left, one of the most beautiful Coptic churches had been blown up by a small group of people with explosives. People died, were injured, and the people in Cairo were very upset. I wanted to learn more about what was really happening in the Middle East. Not only with the cultures, but with the people who feel that destruction is the only solution.
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