A Decade of Hope (37 page)

Then I became very sick and almost died. I was cleaning the deck in the backyard with a poisonous solution and the pressure nozzle came off. The solution went straight in my nostrils and I got chemical pneumonia. Zeshan had come home that day, by chance, and a few hours later I said, “I can't breathe, take me to the hospital.” My oxygen level was forty-seven, and they said I had to have a lung biopsy, which revealed that my lungs were damaged. They then said that I would not come out of it, and if I did, I would need a lung transplant. But then I made a remarkable recovery—it was a miracle recovery. That was last June, in 2010, so now there is still just the three of us—myself, Adnaan, and Zeshan. Adnaan is now doing his medical residency at Syracuse and is in the emergency room department. He finds it very challenging, and he likes challenges. Zeshan is going back to college. We all suffered; we all suffered a lot.

We try to be happy. Even considering the climate at the time and what we as a nation went through, I still feel our trust was betrayed. I remember thinking it was as if America had been raped at that moment. And now, what happened during the ninth anniversary, with the Muslim center going up and all the Islamophobia that grew around it, there was all of this hatred again. There was so much hatred, discrimination, and bigotry that reared its ugly face to the nation.

When I was in the classroom teaching my eighth-grade class after 9/11, I gave them a lesson contemplating what comes to mind when you hear the word “terrorist.” The top answers were Muslims, or Islam, or also bin Laden. But now I've gone back to teaching, and a fourteen-year-old in my school actually called me a terrorist, based on my Muslim faith. When 9/11 happened he was only five. How does he know all this? His parents and our society. And our media. Children at that age echo what they hear. So that truly concerns me, because this is not something like fighting communism. This anti-Islamism is directed against one of the largest faiths in the world. As President Bush said, We all need a good faith. There are some people on this side of the Western hemisphere who are fighting for a good faith. Many people over there in al Qaeda are fighting for a jihad. So if you look at it from that perspective, I think that most people who are religionminded, whether they are Muslim or Christian, are in their minds fighting a religious war with one another. We are paying the price for jihad—especially those of us who live on American soil, who have been living here for years and as citizens. I am of the first generation, but there are many other Muslims who are second, third, fifth generation living here. I do think the Arabs are paying more than the Pakistanis and Indians because of their race, because bin Laden was Arabic, from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and his mother was Yemeni. But we are all paying a price.

Why are we being held responsible for the acts of a foreign terrorist organization? They don't have ties with any nation or state, and they have distorted my faith, our faith, in the name of Islam. People living here, Muslims who were not terrorists, also died on 9/11. We are paying our taxes, going into the military, serving our nation, our country. Even if not a single Muslim American had died that day, it's still not right to hold a whole community convicted based on its faith.

So how do we educate the public? My neighbor asked for a ride to her church one day, so I said, “Okay, I'll go with you.” And I ended up going a few times, and it was very nice. They have different activities, and they know I'm a Muslim. I volunteered to go with them to distribute church donations. They go to poor areas, and they give out food and clothes as a way to reach out and help these neighborhoods in need. And that's what I think the Muslim communities, wherever they are in America, should be doing more of. Immediately following 9/11 there was—and still is—a lot of talk about the mosques breeding terrorists. So people are keeping an eye on the mosques. No such thing is happening, there is no anti-American talk going on in any mosque. At the mosque I attend in Queens, they don't talk about any politics at all. Before 9/11 many sermons were given in Arabic, and a majority of the students don't understand Arabic, so they are also given in English. They have Sunday schools, but what they need to do more of is to reach out into the community and show them we are Muslim Americans, and we are here for you as your neighbor.

Things are happening now, interfaith dialogs and so on. There is still segregation in the mosques, women sit separately and men sit separately, and I don't know when that will be resolved. Another thing is to have discussions at the university level to debate mutual tolerance. The media also plays a very important role in disseminating knowledge and directing the heart of a nation, and so far the media has not been fair. CNN does studies on different ethnic groups, and needs to do a similar project and show the American people the different faces of Muslim Americans who are contributing members of society. How often do you see a Muslim face on the television? There are scientists. There are people in the military. There are people in the private sector who are very successful businessmen. There are people in the education system, teachers and educators. Bring them forward and show that they are normal people.

A national debate opened up this last year: Who are the Muslims, and why are we being ostracized? I asked one 9/11 parent, who also lost his son, “Do you think that your pain is greater than my pain? So much so that you are willing to advocate cutting off the religious freedom of an entire community and throw this nation back into segregation along religious lines, instead of uniting this nation and healing and moving forward?” That's what we need: to move forward together as a nation.

I want people of all nations to remember my son Salman as an American, and as a hero who gave his life saving his fellow Americans. Without the thought of faith, race, and ethnicity, he sacrificed for all. He and the other people who died that day were killed not because of their faith or race or ethnicity, but because they were Americans. America was attacked that day for American values. Salman's legacy is to represent those values—of liberty, democracy, and freedom of speech and religion, to practice the faith of one's own choice without any discrimination. This is a great nation, and I'm very proud of it. And so was Salman, proud to be an American.

Toni Ann Carroll lost her husband on 9/11. He was a firefighter assigned to Squad Company 1 in Brooklyn, and he responded early to the attacks on the World Trade Center. It was a late marriage for both, and Toni Ann was grateful that she had finally found the love of her life. After losing her husband, Toni Ann went through years of suffering, both physically and emotionally. She is only now starting to find happiness again.

 

 

 

I
t was 1995 when I first met Pete, when he came and painted for me. Painting was his side job, when he wasn't firefighting. I had heard his name years before through some connection of sorts, but we had never met. I initially hired a different painter, but he was a little expensive. My cousin called and said, “Toni Ann, there's this guy, Pete the painter, who works in our development. Try him; he's more reasonable.” I called Pete, and he came over for an estimate, which was fifty dollars cheaper than the other guy. So I hired him.

I was working in Manhattan at the time, as executive legal assistant in a maritime law firm by the World Trade Center, and my mom stayed and chatted with Pete the entire day while he painted the room. When I came home she said, “What a nice guy that Pete is. But he's had a life like you've had.”

My first husband left me with two children when I was very young, only twenty-five. Then I remarried at twenty-nine, and my second husband was very controlling, so I got out of that relationship. Pete had similar difficulties with married life. He had been married twice as well. So I guess we had a past in common.

When he came back to be paid he saw that I had fractured a few of my fingers and gashed up my arm from a Rollerblading fall. Pete was very concerned and asked, “Oh, my God, what happened?” I told him, and he felt so bad. But that was it. I paid him, and he left.

Pete stopped by again the next day, but I wasn't home. My daughter, Dana, spoke with him. He had flowers. “How's your mom feeling? Please tell her to call me.” But he had so many problems, and was going through a divorce, that I didn't want to get involved, so I didn't call him. But then he called me and came by again. My father was outside gathering the mail, and he said, “Hi, I painted for your daughter. My name is Pete, and I just wanted to know how your daughter is doing.” My father told him that I was doing okay. And Pete said, “Well, please tell Toni Ann I was asking for her.”

My father said, “Hold on, Pete the painter.” And he came inside to get me.

I said to my father, “Oh, that jerk? What does he want? Tell him I don't want to be bothered.” And that was it.

In the meantime, he had split from his second wife for good. So I finally gave in and said yes when he called and asked to take me to dinner. And from that day forward it was like we were the best of friends.

Pete would take me out to dinner, oh my God, almost every night. When we'd finish dinner, he'd say, “Thank you, Toni Ann.”

I'd respond, “Why are you thanking me? Thank
you
, Pete.”

He would then say, “No. Thank you, for your company.”

By 1998 we were engaged, and we were married on February 17, 2000, in St. Lucia. We got married on the beach, and it was really beautiful. Then we came back home and had a little ceremony and dinner with a wedding cake and all, with the family.

This was the third marriage for both of us, and there's an old line about marriages that goes: The first is for because you don't know any better, the second is for money or looks, and the third is for love. And it was that way for us. We were really in love.

People could see our love—it was like that. Pete's captain gave his eulogy at the funeral, and in it he said, “I've never seen Pete with such a smile on his face until he found Toni Ann. He came to work every day with that big smile, and he couldn't wait to go home to her.”

There were a few who made comments about how we had only been married for nineteen months when Pete died. But the others who could see what we had would say, It doesn't matter if it was nineteen months or nineteen minutes, the love that they shared was so strong that it's immeasurable.

Everything that Pete and I did is just a memory now. Everything was just beautiful. We would take walks at night, and constantly talk, with never a lull in conversation. And it wasn't just the wedding that was memorable—it was those smaller moments, like just taking a ride to visit his dad, a retired NYPD police officer who lived up in Neversink, New York. He had prostate cancer and was very sick. Pete was so happy, because he did not see his dad often, and when he met me, I used to love to go there. He enjoyed that.

Pete had called his dad from St. Lucia on the morning of our wedding, and he was so nervous. His dad said that he couldn't have picked a better woman, and that he was going to be very happy. I didn't meet his mom, because she had already passed away. But I loved his dad. I really did.

 

On Monday, September 10, 2001, I went to a tattoo parlor and had Pete's name put on my lower back—just a no-frills tattoo that said PETE. When I got home he told me not to uncover it, because it needed to heal, but I said, “I really want you to see it.” When I showed it to him, he actually got tears in his eyes. He picked up the phone and called the tattoo parlor where I had it done, and he made an appointment for that Thursday to have my name put on him the same way. But he never made it in, and the tattoo artist was so touched by the story that he decided to give free tattoos to firemen after 9/11. If they wanted their shield or their company patch put on, he was doing it for nothing.

The next day was Tuesday, September 11, and Pete was going back to work at Squad 1 in Brooklyn. That was a tough job. Before 9/11, I had been pushing him to take the lieutenant's test, but he said, “I don't want to leave my house and be jumped from here to there. I just want to stay where I am.” At one point he transferred to Squad 288, HazMat 1, in Queens, as he wanted to be able to teach HazMat eventually, and there he could become an expert at it. But he missed Squad 1, and so I said, “Your happiness is what matters.” And so he returned to Squad 1 in Brooklyn, and he was a first-rate firefighter for nineteen years.

That Tuesday morning, Pete left for a day tour. I was sleeping upstairs, exhausted from a long weekend and not feeling well. At the time I was on medical leave because I had been very sick in 2000. I had fallen off my bicycle while we were on vacation at the cranberry festival in Cape Cod. It was a very bad fall, and we should have gone to the hospital. I was cut up, and the bone was sticking out of my leg—it was really bad. Pete took it kind of lightly, because he had seen so much gore in his life as a fireman that it didn't seem like a big deal to him. I got an infection from the gravel and dirt and developed fibromyalgia. I was critically ill, bedridden for five months, and Pete literally had to carry me around. I also had herniated disks in my neck from the fall, for which I had to have surgery in 2004.

So at 7:15 A.M. he kissed me good-bye. I said, “I love you,” and he said, “I love you too”—that was our thing.

He went downstairs, where my daughter, Dana, was eating Cheerios, getting ready for her first day of school as a senior at St. John Villa Academy. She said, “Where are you going?” “I gotta go to the firehouse.” She said, “Stay home. Mommy doesn't feel good.” He said, “I can't.” And he wasn't usually affectionate with the kids, but that day he kissed Dana good-bye, and left.