It was their country too, but in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, it didn’t always feel that way.
A generation of young Muslims has come of age in the decade since the terrorist attacks. Sometimes it was hard, but they didn’t have a choice. They are now nearly adults, defining for themselves what it means to be Muslim in America.
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MARWA
“I was like, ‘Why are they hugging her? … We’re fine. Nobody died in our family.’ ’’
The Salem family moved to Revere from East Boston in the summer of 2000. Marwa was going into second grade, her sister, Mona, into fourth.
They settled with their parents and older brother in a densely populated Italian-American neighborhood. Their father, a manager at DeLuca’s Market, and their mother, a school cafeteria worker, had come from Egypt a dozen years earlier. In Revere, they felt at home among the Italians, who seemed as devoted to food and family as Egyptians were.
They bought a clapboard house a couple of blocks from the beach, near a small park. The children played day and night with the other youngsters - freeze tag, basketball, ding-dong-ditch. There were neighborhood parties with three-legged races and hula hoop contests.
Within a couple of years, some families left for the suburbs. The man who took care of the park died; the feeling of togetherness was no longer quite the same.
But on the afternoon of Sept. 11, Marwa heard banging on the front door. A group of neighbors came in and embraced her mother.
It’s OK. We’re going to help you through this.
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HALLA
“I had no connection with my religion whatsoever. I was pretty much ashamed of it.’’
Halla Abdelrahman’s parents, who grew up in Sudan and Egypt, didn’t go to the mosque. A bookish girl with long pigtails, she was born in Egypt, where her father attended medical school before coming to Boston to study public health. Her mother occasionally tried to teach her Koranic verses, but Halla never saw the point.
