A TESTIMONY

On that bright September morning, they decided to let their seven-year-old son sleep rather than wake him to go to the train station to see her off. They had moved to New Jersey from India on an assignment for her, and it was ten days since they had found the apartment. She had cooked their favorite lemon rice for their lunch and packed some for herself. As she walked to the train station, she missed seeing her husband and son walking along with her and waving goodbye. When disaster struck and the towers came down, Mr. A, the husband, knew nothing. They had not bought a television yet. The telephone had just been connected the previous evening but no one knew their number. It took a cousin who lived two hours away to drive over and tell them the dreadful news. But they kept hoping, as so many other families did, that she had somehow escaped and was missing.

Mrs. B was from Bangladesh. She and her husband had a beautiful little daughter and were expecting another baby on September 11th. Her husband worked on the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center. He switched his shift with a coworker to work that morning so that he could be with his wife later in the day when the baby was born. She gave birth to a baby boy a day later, and he was not there to welcome his new son. She too waited, thinking he was missing or injured and would join his family when he was found.

Such were the hopes and experiences of those we started working with when South Asian Council for Social Services (SACSS) began its 9/11 relief work. The organization had been created the previous year to empower underserved South Asians in New York. We had just launched a survey to assess the needs of the community. But 9/11 was so urgent and so immediate that the organization had to respond right away. We could say that 9/11 defined our work and direction.

The families we started assisting after 9/11 were hardly the underserved we had expected to aid. Those who had perished with the towers were financial experts, Information Technology pundits, restaurant workers, young, old, and middle-aged men and women who left behind spouses, parents, siblings, and many young children. As a community, South Asians were “young” in the country—only 20 to 30 years old. We did not have organizations in place that could care for these families who were in shock.

As SACSS scrambled to set up a viable network of volunteers, counselors, and psychiatrists, the families themselves started referring other families to us. We sent out an email appeal and soon had a panel of eight mental health professionals who spoke various South Asian languages and had origins in different South Asian countries. We had individual therapy sessions for them and held group therapy sessions in Edison, New Jersey, and Queens, New York.
The needs of each family were different. But they all needed a friendly South Asian face or a voice at the other end of the telephone to talk to. I was especially touched that they warmed up to me because they were aware that I had known sudden loss.

I went with one young woman, Mrs. C, and her baby daughter when Mr. C’s wallet was found. For something so small that had been through such havoc, the leather wallet was surprisingly intact and his identification card, a little money and keys were intact too.

When the Medical Examiner’s office told Mrs. D that her husband’s body had been identified, devastated as she was, she wanted to do the right thing according to her religion. She arranged for cremation and invited other family members and friends to the temple for a religious service and a meal to follow. It was a shock to her to find out that the ‘body’ turned out to be an inch-long finger bone. She had to give up the idea of cremation but did go ahead with the religious service.

Mrs. E was very upset. She could not understand why her husband’s remains would not be released to her. I had to explain to her the local laws that preclude the authorities from releasing the remains to anyone except a funeral home. There was a maze of formalities to be completed before she could fly with her beloved’s remains to India and take care of the religious rites there. We were working with two other organizations to ensure that three families that lost their visa status along with their loved one remained here legally. They all had small children and had dreamed of bringing them up in the United States. The long wait and uncertainty was too much for two families, and we bid them a tearful goodbye when they left for their countries of origin. The family that stayed back and faced the challenge did get a U-visa after a long and arduous struggle.

SACSS paid tribute to those who lost their lives on September 11th a year later in an event that was cosponsored by the Asia Society. The response to this memorial event was immediate, sincere, and warm. There were elected officials, representatives of South Asian Consulates, other notables, and a whole host of individuals. A mother who had lost her young daughter, a sister who had lost her elder brother, and a young wife who had lost her soulmate spoke and the whole auditorium was in tears.

At the event we released Book of Memories, a tribute to the South Asians and Indo-Caribbeans who were lost on September 11, 2001. The publication was funded through a grant from the Asian American Federation and contained thirty-eight profiles of those who perished that day.

When Sree Sreenivasan of South Asian Journalists’ Association (SAJA) sent out an email appeal on our behalf for volunteers to write the profiles, within twenty-four hours forty-four people contacted us. The write-ups captured the essential person with short quotes and a photograph and were finished in record time—within a week. There was such an outpouring of thoughtfulness and empathy from all who contributed.

In the years since 9/11, there have been times when the compensation for the victims’ families was on everyone’s mind. There was a lot of media coverage of how, to whom, and how much would be paid out. We saw, regrettably, the erosion of sympathy for those whose lives had been changed forever. Words such as “millions” were bandied about, though people who tried to guess how much it would be knew nothing. We could not understand how they thought that money, even if substantial, could set everything right for the families! And not everyone received substantial compensation.

We worked on the 9/11 relief project for five years and watched as the children of the 9/11 families grew sober beyond their years. We had started with forty-six families which included Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Indo-Caribbeans. By the time we officially wound up the project, we were still working closely with twenty families. We have kept in occasional contact with them over the years and have watched their gradual progress closely.
One of the most rewarding outcomes of our involvement was the network of bereaved families that SACSS brought together in New Jersey. While attending the group therapy sessions, they formed a close bond and continued meeting by themselves. They are a strong support group for each other to this day. Some have changed their lines of work. A few have started new families. Some of the children are still under psychiatric care. Yet the families have all shown uncommon courage and grace in surviving the devastation and fulfilling their responsibilities with quiet dignity.

September 11th jolted all of us out of our comfortable existence and taught us many lessons. It revealed how unprepared all our communities were to respond to such a calamity. Especially for South Asians, a newer ethnic community, it was a tougher lesson. Though several family members of direct victims spoke and understood English, there were quite a few who did not. I remember arranging for a Bangladeshi counselor to see the spouse of a victim only to learn that even for the counselor it was difficult to communicate, as the client only spoke a dialect from rural Bangladesh.

During the latter part of 2001 and 2002, we attended several training sessions by the United Way and Red Cross on case management and counseling. We were told time and again not to bring ourselves in and not to get personal. But our experience showed that our community members responded only to warmth and friendliness. The clinical mode may work with other cases, but during such trauma, the personal touch seemed to work best. That has been our experience during these ten years with clients of other programs as well.

We South Asians, as a community, tend not to seek emotional support or counseling. The stigma attached to counseling goes deep and prevents families from obtaining the help that they desperately need. If we are to ensure the mental and emotional well-being of our community, we need to invest our time in an awareness campaign on the link between physical and emotional health. We need to ensure that we have a network of mental health professionals who understand the culture and speak South Asian languages.

SACSS entered the world of 9/11 relief work as a fledgling organization. The experience molded us into who we are today. As a preventive services agency, we counsel our clients on parenting. We assist them with healthcare access and teach them English. Through it all is a distinct thread of understanding of our community that has come to us mainly through our 9/11 work.

As Published in The Asian American Literary Review 2002