I was visiting family friends on the night of 11 September 2001 and a shout from the living room sent me scrambling there expecting to find something broken. The TV was on, a live news broadcast. My host, a man who incidentally worked as an air traffic controller at Changi Airport, was flabbergasted. A plane had just flown into the first tower and he was adamant that it couldn’t possibly have been an accident and yet convinced it was a terrible accident. We all then watched the second plane fly into a tower and the world was redefined into two camps, two tribes, two competing world views that if anything have diverged and hardened even further 25 years on.
The next morning was even more surreal. I tutored 4 sisters from an affluent mixed-race muslim family living in one of the best neighbourhoods in Singapore. Two of the girls came flying up the driveway to greet me. “Did you watch what happened last night, Miss M? Whose side are you on?”the older one asked.
That stopped me cold in my tracks. It took me a while to process the question. I had no idea of the death toll at that point. But I had been at the Twin Towers the year before and it was a humongous place with tens of thousands transiting through it. “Are you asking me if I am on the side of mass murderers or the tens of thousands who might have been killed?” Her answer was a disappointed “Oh you support America then!” I will never forget this moment.
I have always struggled to understand America and often felt wary of its political agenda. I felt that I understood my student and her family pretty well – they are a warm, hospitable and generous people. Why had this 11 year old Singaporean child , so removed by geography from New York, instinctively framed this terrible event which she barely understood in terms of allegiance? What was the moral geography that led to that question? What was the poison that led her to skip insouciantly over the lives lost, some of whom were muslims?
September 11 forced a choice upon me, the only one that was morally intelligible to me. I have made a good faith effort to understand the ideas, grievances, narratives and political movements that had travelled far enough to enter the consciousness of that Singaporean child. She is an adult now, a lawyer. I am sometimes tempted to contact her, to have a conversation about the questions she asked me then. I have had that conversation with others like her, but not her, online. I cannot have this conversation in real life because then we reveal ourselves and our allegiances and the relationship is severed.
