All the Light We Can See
Bits of candle wax, purple and red, were still visible on the curb outside of our apartment building. Two weeks earlier, my daughter Aster, her friend Gabriela and I held a vigil, holding candles up to a night sky that was eerily silent. All flights from O’Hare and Midway had been cancelled. Whenever a driver honked, I felt some comfort, knowing we shared the horror and grief of our entire nation. The girls were energized whenever a car honked. And most did. Feeling powerless in the face of such overwhelming tragedy, this was something I could do. We could do together.
Twenty years earlier, I worked on the 34th floor of World Trade Center Two for a French import-export company. The actual job was pretty tedious, composing letters about taxes on imports and sending Telexes to partners ( Fax machines did not even exist in the late 70s.) But it was fun to speak French. As a young woman from the Midwest, I was proud that I found my place in this auspicious building in Lower Manhattan.
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At the elementary school where my younger daughter and her brother attended, students were pulled inside from recess on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. Teachers told them there were harmful insects in the air, but even my eight-year-old didn’t buy it. My mind is fog when it comes to remembering how they reacted when I told them what had happened. It is too much for anyone of us to absorb, much less children.
Weeks after 9/11, I remember driving to my job in Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway and imagining a plane crashing into the John Hancock and Sears Towers. The shock did not easily retreat.
At the time, there was fear mongering that put Muslims or anyone even looking like an Arab American in peril. Women wearing hijabs were menaced. A Sikh wearing a turban was murdered in Arizona. Mosques were targeted. I think we have made some progress in overcoming our prejudice. Zohran Mamdani is now Mayor of New York City and Abdul El -Sayed is on the ballot for the US Senate in my home state of Michigan.
I live near Dearborn, which has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the country. When I had a pre-surgical physical last week two of my nurses wore hijabs. So did the technician administering my CT scan.
Yet a poll by Pew Research cast doubt on exactly how much progress we have made accepting our Muslim brothers and sisters as equals.
In March 2002, six months after the al Qaeda attack, 25% of Americans agreed that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence. In 2026, that number of Americans believing that Islam encourages more violence than other religions jumped to 51 percent. More than one in two of us believe that lie.
The same survey found that 43% of U.S. adults believed that Muslims are less patriotic than other Americans, while 42% said Muslims have a negative impact on the country.
No doubt the hatred and cruel policies against immigrants perpetrated by our current administration and its cronies have been pouring gas on simmering fears about immigrants who speak and dress differently. Immigrants make America great. They always have.
The following prayer, composed in 2015 for the Imams National Advisory Board of Great Britain, is one that seems fitting to repeat today as we search for peace that seems more and more elusive:
Prayer For Our Nation
Oh Allah, our lord, unite our nation around the principles of justice, peace, love and faith.
Put peace and love in our hearts for the diversity that makes our country so beautiful
Oh Lord, most Strong, Give us the strength to protect and care for our neighbors.
Oh Lord, we pray for our nation, the United States. to remain loving, compassionate, remove prejudice from our hearts, and enable us to love our brothers and sisters of all faiths.
AMEN!