Project Rebirth (25 page)

“Maybe you should tell your story,” Debbie suggested, enthralled but also concerned about her child, whom she sensed had been bottling up so many horrific memories. He nodded quietly. For now, she would have to be heartened by these small moments of openness between the two of them, and the hope that one day, he would tell her all that he had experienced and unburden himself once and for all.

There was so much lost, but still so much to be grateful for. This ties into one of Debbie's favorite Muslim traditions. She explains, “I love it when Ramadan falls during the same time as Thanksgiving, because I feel then that the whole country is observing in this time of thankfulness and reflection.”

Debbie explains that the intention of fasting throughout the month of Ramadan is to reconnect with those who are less fortunate, a time for one to feel the hunger pains, and a time to reconnect with everything that God has given us that is sacred.

On the last day of Ramadan in 2009, Yousif found a beautiful reason to be grateful. He was on the subway platform in Brooklyn, munching on a beef patty as he waited for the Q train to Manhattan, when he saw a young woman standing nearby that he simply could not take his eyes off of. When the train slid into the station they both stepped onto the same car and struck up a conversation.

“Are you Muslim?” she asked boldly.

“Yes, why?” Yousif responded.

“Do you know it's Ramadan and you are eating a beef patty?” she asked, smiling playfully at having “caught him,” before exiting the train.

“Wait!” Yousif bolted from his seat, although he had a few more stops to go, and jumped onto the platform beside her. “Can I call you sometime?”

Yousif and Bedor (a name that means “the sky before the sunrise”) got married on Valentine's Day of 2010.

Grieving is most directly associated with the death of a loved one, but human beings are—in truth—exposed to so many different kinds of losses in one lifetime. We lose our faith. We lose our way. We lose our innocence. We must mourn the passing of time and weather the constant changes that besiege our lives—sometimes welcomed, sometimes resisted with all our futile might. Just as we process the death of a loved one in fits and starts, rather than linearly, just as we can't predict which moments will be most difficult and which will actually prove endurable—losing one kind of life and inheriting another can be a daunting experience.

For Debbie, September 11, 2001, marked the moment when her struggles and her purpose became simultaneously amplified. Before that Tuesday, she was a Muslim woman, aware of what it was like to be misunderstood, committed to fostering dialogue, but blessed with the luxury of pursuing pluralism with a quiet, deliberate commitment. After that Tuesday, she was plucked from her classroom, elevated and illuminated, burdened with tremendous responsibility, defamed and defrauded, and, ultimately, vindicated.

Today, she heals. She mourns a time when it was just her and the kids in the classroom, before the towers fell, before Islam became a Rorschach test for fear and ignorance. She can't unhear the stories of hatred and violence that she has heard from her Muslim sisters and brothers, but what she
can
do is carry on their courage and grow even more impassioned to fight ignorance at the root. She has experienced, firsthand, the ways in which fear, unexamined, rots and turns into indiscriminate anger and blind hatred.

Debbie was not given her school, but she was given her son, and for this she is very grateful. Meanwhile, she will continue to fight for the nation that she believes is possible—one where children don't grow up disappointed in the country they have inherited, but instead have a chance to “advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection.”

Tanya Villanueva Tepper

 

 

 

A
t sunset, Tanya rides her motorcycle, “Big Daddy,” over a Miami highway at top speed. The wind blows past her face, her hair shooting out behind her. She looks out at the horizon—sea, sky, and art deco architecture—and her heart and mind are lulled by the lush landscape and the loud sound of her machine. Her sadness and anger, her painful memories and fears about the future, are drowned out by the simple pleasure of riding, fast and free. There is nothing but the elements, this moment, the movement of letting go.

Tanya, at just thirty-five years old, has been forced to do an unusual amount of loving and letting go. She has had to be impossibly strong in the face of senseless loss. She has had to mourn. Repeatedly. She has had to sit still and feel what no one ever wants to feel.

But when she climbs onto the bike, the whole world rushes by, her eyes give up fighting to focus on any one thing, and it all becomes a soothing blur. There is nothing to hold on to, so there is nothing to lose.

Tanya was not always a biker chick. In Queens, New York, in the fall of 2001, you would be more likely to find her flipping through candle or home-furnishing catalogs in her store, Inner Peace, or pasting pictures of gowns into her wedding-planning album. She was thirty-three. She was madly in love with her Argentinean firefighter fiancé, Sergio, and she was planning, planning, planning.

On the evening of September 10, 2001, Sergio called from the firehouse to tell her good night. They chatted about a few things—the store, the next day's election, their plans to book the wedding hall on Thursday—while Tanya played solitaire on the computer. Since they'd become engaged, Sergio and Tanya loved to talk about the future—the twin babies they hoped to have, where they were going to live, what kind of vacations they would take. Their future together felt truly blessed.

When they hung up, Tanya was struck by the realization that she'd been distracted. She hadn't given her man her full attention. She wondered if he'd noticed. Probably not. Sergio was characteristically happy-go-lucky. He knew that Tanya was entirely devoted to him, that she loved him with every ounce of her being. But just in case, she shot off a quick email to him with three simple words: “I love you.” She fell asleep content.

She was painting her nails and watching the news the next morning when it was announced that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Tanya started calling everyone. “Did you hear?” she asked her mom. “Did you hear?” she asked Sergio's mom, with whom she was very close. The thought that Sergio might be there, that he might be in danger, hadn't crossed her mind. It was shocking but not yet personal.

But little by little, the realization that Sergio very well might be down there amid the smoke and confusion started to creep into her consciousness. Of course he would go; he would want to help his friends. She called the firehouse, Ladder 132 in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a couple of times, but she got a busy signal. Her fear grew, incrementally, perilously. Her senses suddenly felt superhero sharp. She watched. She listened. She waited, nails half painted.

And then the first tower collapsed. Tanya let out a primal scream. A thought flashed across her mind:
Sergio's in there,
but it was followed by an indignant,
No, he's not.
She began talking herself down, “He's on his way home. Call his cell. He's on his way home.” She called his cell and got his voice mail.

Within the hour, people started showing up at her apartment. By noon, thirty people filled her living room. The vigil for Sergio began.

Tanya had let out a scream that primal only once before. It was the day she learned the true story of her mother.

Tanya was born in the Netherlands in June 1968 to a German mother, Sigrid, and a Filipino father, who was at that time engaged to someone else in his home country. A few months after Sigrid gave birth to Tanya, she left the baby with family and a promise that she would send for the baby once she'd found work and started a new life. Sigrid was overwhelmed and desperate—trying to make ends meet, strapped with debt, and in a tumultuous relationship. On December 17, 1968, a few days before Sigrid was supposed to arrive home for the Christmas holidays, she killed herself.

Tanya knew she was adopted at the age of twelve—by her father's brother Emilio, and his wife, Eileen, whom she was with since birth, but she never understood what happened to her mother until she traveled to Germany when she was twenty-seven. Her uncle on her maternal side unveiled the truth.

Sergio was the one who gave Tanya the final push and the emotional support that she needed to make the daunting trip. She had such a happy childhood, such a wonderful family, that she had wondered about the wisdom of seeking out what could only be a sad story. And yet, she could never quite shut off her curiosity. Even as a little girl—growing up in the Netherlands until she was two, then in London until she was six, and on to New York—she'd always felt different from her siblings. When she was eight years old, she asked her parents if she was adopted for the first time. She'd met her biological father, even met her half siblings, but she'd never known the truth about her mother.

Sergio came with her to Germany and held her hand as she learned the cruel news that her mother had been in pain so insurmountable that she'd ended her own life, even though her own daughter's was just beginning. At the hotel later that night, Tanya traced the letters
I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U
on Sergio's back. She felt such a sense of relief. She'd faced the thing she was most afraid of with the man she loved.