A Decade of Hope (35 page)

We lived first in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which was a nice neighborhood then and is nicer now, though more crowded. Salmeen, of course, needed a full-time job to support our family and found one at the Blood Brothers company in Mamaroneck. It was a wrecking company, automobile parts, and that's where he worked for five years.

We went fishing a couple of times with Mr. Blood, and Mrs. Blood was a nice lady. We never discussed who was what religion or anything political—that was never a consideration before 9/11. In 1983 Salmeen started working for this Yemeni guy, Ali, in a store on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, and purchased half a share in it. It was a small store, a deli and newsstand, selling newspapers and magazines, Lotto [tickets], cigarettes, soda, beer. We already had two children, Salman and our second son, Adnaan, and it was around that time that my youngest son, Zeshan, was born. When my husband first had the idea to buy the share, we didn't have the money. So I said, What to do? I took all my gold to Ali's wife, and said, “Here, keep this. Whatever you say our share in the store is worth, when I give you that money, you can give me my gold back.” She is such a wonderful person. She said, “No, Talat. You take your gold back. I trust you will give me the money.”

In 1986 Salmeen bought the entire store. Only eight years after coming to America he owned his own business. He set a great example for our sons.

All my boys grew up in Greenpoint, and all three of them went to St. Cecilia's, a Catholic school. I sent them there because I went to public school all my life, and I believed in the discipline of the parochial schools. Adnaan is four years younger than Salman, and Zeshan is eighteen months younger than Adnaan. Salman was the tallest of my three boys—a very tall, handsome man, with everything to live for. But the trinity of my sons is broken now.

Salman used to get beaten up in the neighborhood when he was around seven years old. So my husband said, “This is not right. I can't be there protecting him every day on the streets.” So he put him in karate school, and they taught him self-defense. Salman told me, “Mama, I'm supposed to tell anyone who challenges or threatens me that I know karate, so don't mess with me. And if they don't listen, then I can hit them back.” Which he did. That helped him to become strong and independent.

One day when Salman was in the fourth grade he came home and told me he didn't want to go to St. Cecilia's anymore, because all the kids were saying to him, “You're not Catholic, you don't belong here.” It was because he would not go to the church. I had spoken with the nun who was the principal, and she had had no objection, and suggested that Salman could go up to the principal's office for that period. I went to St. Cecilia's again and apprised the principal of the situation. She said, “Don't worry, I will take care of it.” A week later Salman came home one day and said, “I need the Koran to take to school, because the teacher told us to bring our book of faith to show everybody.” They had all different faiths there, and there was no problem. Years later, I think this is what this nation needs now: a discourse on diversity of faith and tolerance. It's ironic that Salman experienced his first lesson in tolerance at such an early age

Salman went on to become a police cadet, even though he wanted to become a doctor, as the main profession in my family was medicine. Apart from your academic standing, when you apply to medical schools they want to see your extracurricular activities. So joining the NYPD and getting an EMT license added some points for him, as did studying abroad and doing volunteer hospital work. So when he applied to medical colleges, he looked good on his résumé. We also had a family friend, Elijav, who was a NYPD sergeant and a military veteran, but Salman would never let me ask for any help.

Actually, I don't remember getting anything for him after his ninth birthday. Even when he graduated, and I told him I wanted to throw a party for him, he said, “Well, you can have it, but I won't be here.” So I asked, “Why don't you let me celebrate something for you?” He replied, “I'm not proud of it. When I'm proud of doing something, I'll let you know. Then you can celebrate for me.” He had very high values, and was a humble person. Very humble. When our friend Elijav died, he was buried under the American flag. Salman said, “That is an honor, Mama, and that is how I want to go.” And that is how he went when he was finally laid to rest in April 2002.

He was also very compassionate. He would bring home sick birds and nurture them, and he would help people out. One day we were walking in Manhattan, and there was a car on the street with two ladies in it who had been in an accident. He pushed people aside and wanted to know what was going on. Mostly because he was an EMT, it just came automatically to him to respond. He did not need anybody's command to tell him to go and do such a thing. His values and his personality enabled him to see other people's pain. He could see them hurt, or in the hospital, and I think he felt their pain. When he was a teenager he stopped eating meat, and once when he saw me eating chicken, he said, “One day a chicken is alive, and you're eating it now.” He became a vegetarian—that says a lot.

In September of 2001 Salman was in his final year of the police cadets. It was a three-year program, and he had applied the year before to medical schools. He had not been accepted, which happens to many students, and so he reapplied in 2001. He told me that if he did not get accepted again his aim was to get hired as a detective in the NYPD. As a cadet he worked out of different locations, including housing in Manhattan and a center near Queens College. He got paid by the hour by the NYPD, so he used to put in time over the weekend and evening to maintain himself. He also became a certified EMT and worked for one year with an ambulance company in Manhattan and in Brooklyn. By 2001 he was looking for a better job and got an offer from a pharmaceutical company, but he didn't want to work there, explaining, “I want a job that will lead me to medical school.” So in August 2001 he took up a position as a protein lab analyst at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Rockefeller University. He brought home only one paycheck.

For me September 11 began as a normal day, a normal Tuesday. We were in Bayside, where we had lived since 1989. I remember saying to Zeshan, “It's a beautiful day, crisp.” I left about 7:15 A.M. with Zeshan to drop him off at Queens Community College, and I went to my school, Middle School 72, for work. Salman took the number 7 train to Manhattan and usually left home between 8:00 and 8:30 A.M. Because the train runs aboveground through Queens, he must have seen the towers burning. I used to pick him up from that train every day. He would call me on his cell phone—“Mama, leave home now”—but that Monday, September 10, he did not call: He had left his phone at work. So on the morning of 9/11, he had no cell phone during his commute to the city. I know he would have called to say, Turn on the television, look at what's happening. And maybe if he had called home, we would have told him not to go there. That's the whole thing: There's a time and place. You know, also in death.

When I came out of my eighth-grade class for a break at about 10:20 A.M., I saw the other teachers huddled in the hallway, and I thought,
Oh, maybe this is to see how the school is performing
. So I went over to them and heard that they were talking about the towers burning and falling down. This couldn't be right. I remember that moment saying to myself,
This couldn't be right. This can't be right. Let me go and call home.
So I went to the phone and I called my husband, and he was screaming his head off that the Twin Towers had been attacked, and they had fallen, and there was burning, and Salman is there. My Salman was there. I said, “Salman doesn't even work there, why would he be there? There is no reason for him to be there.” Then he exclaimed, “Oh, the second tower is falling!” I said to my husband, “You are fine, and Salman is fine, too, you are both fine.” And the second tower fell while we were on the phone. Months later that's where they said they found his remains. Under the North Tower. Why did my husband feel that he was there? Maybe Salman called out to him. I don't know.

At school they asked for volunteers to stay until all the students were picked up, so I left later than usual and got home about 4:30 P.M. We tried to contact Salman, but his cell phone was going straight to voice mail. My husband sent his brother to check out Salman's workplace, and when he returned he told us that Salman had never reported to his job that day. That was disturbing, for him not to report to his job, and then for him not to call home after the systems went back up. But that day we were not worried. I called Adnaan at SUNY Binghamton and told him
vhaijan
hadn't come home. That's what Adnaan called Salman—
vhaijan,
big brother. I said, “Don't worry,” and everybody in the family figured that I wasn't worried, but then the whole night passed and no call came in. So the next morning Salmeen and I went down to his job, and Salmeen couldn't stop crying.

From that Wednesday morning Salmeen did not stop crying until he died. Even in the hospital, when he was dying, the staff asked me, Who is Salman? I asked why, and they said because every night Salmeen asks for Salman. They were best friends.

So Salmeen and I went to the Howard Hughes Institute, and we told the security guard there that we were Salman's parents and had come to retrieve his cell phone. He got the phone for us, and then said that he had a friend in the FBI and would ask him to look for Salman. We asked him what to do, and he told us to go down to St. Vincent's [Hospital]. That's where all the injured and the dead bodies were being transferred, and we might be able get some information there. At St. Vincent's we found a very long line, and they told us to go and look at the list of the injured and dead that came out every three hours. We waited over two hours on the line, and Salman's name was on neither the injured list nor the dead list. So then we came home and made flyers with Salman's photo.

On Thursday we somehow ended up at the armory on Twenty-fifth Street. Everybody was outside with pictures and posters looking for their loved ones. We were told to give our DNA sample there and to report Salman missing. We gave our name and address, his name and description, and whatever information we could provide. For the next ten days we searched for him, asking if anyone had seen him, but people did not remember, with so much powder and the dust that had come down that day.

They had given us a list of 150 hospitals where the injured had been sent, and we did go visit a few in Queens and one in New Jersey. We thought he might not be able to speak due to an injury, and we might find him somewhere. But he was nowhere to be found. Still, there was hope. Hope gives you that drive to keep moving forward in life. We have to have some hope.

Then, at the end of September, a man came to our store and said there were many people who had been detained. This gentleman used to work for the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority], and he said that officials were asking about Salman. He said he told them, “I know this young man. He grew up in Greenpoint.” He knew our family because he used to work at the hardware store. He was Pakistani, and he said they didn't ask him out of the blue: They were asking questions at the MTA, where they said that if anyone knew Salman Hamdani, to step up. And then he told me, “Maybe your son did not die over there, and you should write to the government and ask where your son is.” So we wrote a letter to President Bush.

Why were they asking about Salman? I think it was because of his first name, Mohammed. Yes, definitely. I had told Salmeen not to name him Mohammed, because one day he would have to pay a price. But he didn't agree with me, and said, “Well, he should be part of our people's everyday faith and nationality.” It is difficult to survive in any society with the name Mohammed, but he did not understand that. It's just politics. Another factor may have been that Salman had not put in hours with the police cadets for about six weeks before 9/11, but that was only because he had just started his job as a lab researcher at the Howard Hughes Institute.

Twenty-five days after 9/11 we decided to go to Mecca to pray to find Salman. Before we left I said I was going to call the morgue, because they were telling people on television to come and identify their loved ones. It took a lot of courage for me to make the decision to go and look at the dead bodies, but I said, “If I am going over to Mecca to get an answer whether he is alive or dead, let's look at the dead bodies; if he's among them, then I don't need to make the trip.” Just for my own satisfaction I called the number the armory had given me. I don't know if I misdialed, but they asked, “How did you get this number? Why are you calling here?” I explained that I had been given this number by the armory for information if I needed to investigate my missing son's case. I gave him Salman's name, and he said, “Oh, he is a Pakistani?” I said, “Yes, he was born there, but he is an American.” And then he said, “But he is also claimed by the British government—why is that?” I told him my sister came from Britain—maybe she had given his name there. He asked all sorts of questions about Salman—what he was wearing, what he looked like—and later that evening we got a call from another detective, asking questions.

On Saturday, when Salmeen and I were going into Manhattan to the morgue, that detective kept calling us: ‘Where are you now? Are you going there? What are you doing?' But when we arrived there, it was the Red Cross; there was no morgue; there were no bodies to be identified. So why did they send me there? I don't understand. I wanted to see the bodies. And all the hospitals I called gave me the same statement: We have fifteen victims ; fifteen patients came in. We cannot give you their names, but your son's name is not on our list. And you are not allowed to see anybody to identify.