Like many others, I’ll never forget where I was when I first heard the news of 9/11.
I had just returned from two days away at a company training course and put my bags down in the hallway of my home in Peterborough. My wife Jas went to make me a cup of tea and I switched on the TV.
And there it was: one of the World Trade Centre buildings ablaze following an air crash.
Both my wife and I sat and watched in horror and disbelief as people screamed and ran as one tower collapsed, and then the other fell – it was heart-breaking to watch. We both went to bed that night feeling as if the day had been an awful dream and hoping that things might have some semblance of normality the following day.
I went to work as usual on September 12 2001, but we had all awoken to a changed world. I took the train, traveling from my hometown of Peterborough to London Kings Cross station. The talk in the carriage was unusually quiet, more of a whisper as people silently read their newspapers, which were plastered with images of the burning towers and people covered in dust and debris.
Walking out of Kings Cross station towards the taxi rank to get a cab I heard a man’s voice shout, ‘murderer’. It was frighteningly loud, as though someone was in my ear. I shook it off, thinking ‘it’s London, there are always nutters shouting random stuff.’ But as I climbed into the back of the black cab, I happened to look down and there was spit dripping down my jacket. Then it clicked: the man had been calling me a murderer and had spat on me.
I was barely able to tell the taxi driver where I wanted to go as I wiped the phlegm sliding down my suit. I was in shock. Me a murderer? What the hell had I done? And to whom?
As a Sikh born in the UK in 1960, who started wearing a turban at age 10, racist abuse was commonplace throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with the likes of the National Front and BNP stoking the fires of hatred. Derogatory terms used to describe my turban ranged from, ‘you got a bad head wearing that bandage?’ to ‘raghead’ and ‘punkawalla’ jibes. Over time I’ve pretty much heard all the nasty comments people – usually Caucasian Britons – are capable of making about my turban.
But after 9/11, the abuse escalated and unfortunately the Kings Cross assault wasn’t isolated. Following the attacks, I was regularly called a ‘terrorist’, ‘bomber’, ‘Bin Laden’ and referred to as being ‘ISIS’.
A few days later – trying to put the incident in the station out of my head – I was staying overnight in Farnborough, where my company’s offices were. I popped out from my hotel to grab a bite to eat and a car drove past me at speed. The passenger threw a bottle at me, which smashed on the pavement in front of me. A young white lad half hanging out of the window screamed ‘terrorist bastard’.
It was clear this mistaken identity thing wasn’t a one off. Things were getting very scary now.
The very next day in a sandwich shop, as I waited in line for my tuna melt, a little old lady sidled up to me and proceeded to hit me with her handbag while shouting, ‘you evil people’. The lady behind the counter escorted her out of the shop. One man corrected her, saying, ‘he’s not even a Muslim, he’s a Sikh’.
Despite what she’d said, I ended up apologising for her and explaining that she probably equated my turban with Bin Laden, as she’d seen on TV no doubt. Yes, the man was right I wasn’t a Muslim, I was a Sikh, but chances are this lady wouldn’t know what either faith was about, or the difference between us.
Incidents like this show that one awful day also brought unforeseen chaos into the lives of Sikhs in the UK – including mine, all because I wore a turban and had a beard. The ignorance and abuse continued.
As December approached, now three months after 9/11, I was asked by my company to fly to the US. I had my passport looked at 10 times at JFK as I waited in line at immigration. My fellow British travellers were appalled at my being singled out in this way – but I wasn’t surprised. America was still hurting and the threat of further terrorist activities were still so real that everyone at the airport was on edge.
My nervousness of walking the streets of New York was unfounded in that I got no grief from anyone; it was safer for me than the streets of Farnborough.
However it didn’t last. On my final day in New York, I decided to visit the site of Ground Zero, to pay my respects to the victims of 9/11. I bought some flowers and walked to the place that had once been full of concrete and glass, and now was just mounds of rubble and boards covered in missing people posters.
As I placed the flowers down, I felt eyes burning into the back of me. Turning around, I was confronted by a line of construction workers. With their arms folded they looked angrily at me, as though I didn’t have the right to be there. I walked over to them and explained how awful it was seeing the images in the UK and how heart-breaking it must have been for them and the people of America.
Upon hearing my English accent one of the men turned to his colleague and said, ‘listen to this guy, he sounds just like an Englishman’. I said that I was an Englishman as I was born in the UK. They responded with: ‘but your guys did this’. I explained that I was a Sikh and added that, although the guys who did this were Muslim, they did not represent Muslims. I told them that all the Muslims I knew despised their actions, and saw them as criminals – which is what they were.
I then had to explain that I was a Sikh and not a Sheik, which is what they thought I had said. I asked they please not judge anyone who looked like me or who was a Muslim as a terrorist.
The men’s reaction at Ground Zero scared me initially but, not one to cut and run, I was glad I had a chance to explain myself. In doing so, I hoped I might have stopped these guys from abusing someone else who, like me, had brown skin.
Traveling home from New York, I was profiled again, and searched this time. And, as a global traveller post 9/11, this profiling happened on pretty much every flight I took. At first, I wondered what the ‘SS’ hastily scribbled on my boarding pass meant. I found out that it stood for ‘secondary search’ and yes, I got this at every airport all over the world.
After a while, when people like me got wise to the ‘SS’, a yellow highlighter pen was used to single me out for a secondary search.
The turban is an essential part of Sikhism. As a 10-year-old, I went from a top knot to wearing a turban and it became a part of me, defining me ever since. It’s not simply a head covering to protect and keep clean a Sikh’s uncut hair (called Kesh), it’s an identifier.
As a warrior race founded 500 years ago, the turban also historically offered a degree of protection for the head. In a crowd of thousands, a Sikh man with his turban and beard will stand out. Sikh soldiers fighting in two world wars with allied forces wore turbans and not helmets. Sikh police officers around the world wear turbans. In the 1970s Sikhs in the UK fought to change the law, so they didn’t have to wear a crash helmet when riding motorcycles. It’s an integral part of our identity.
On 9/11 when those 19 criminals hijacked four planes, they also unwittingly hijacked my identity. As their architect in chief, Osama Bin Laden, was often pictured wearing a turban it has been wrongfully associated with him. As a Sikh, it is of course hurtful to be called a terrorist and to be compared to Bin Laden. Not least because one of the cornerstones of the Sikh faith is, ‘Sarbat Da Bhalla’, which translates as ‘The Wellbeing for All’.
Thankfully in recent years abuse aimed at me and other turban wearing Sikhs has generally lessened – although events like Brexit didn’t help. In fact, the weekend after the UK voted to leave the EU, I was abused in my hometown of Peterborough by a group of Brexiteers who were celebrating ‘getting their country back’. I was told to ‘go home’ and when I said I was born in the UK, I was told that ‘a dog born in a stable doesn’t make it a horse.’
And now, with the recent takeover in Afghanistan, I have had people shouting abuse at me in the street again. Two weeks ago, I walked from my office in West London to the tube station and a group of four men outside a pub shouted at me: ‘Look, it’s the Taliban!’ I felt a feeling of dread as I thought, ‘here we go again.’
I can’t bear for things to regress like this and so – following that incident – I posted on LinkedIn to make it clear that as a turban wearing Sikh, I have nothing in common with the Taliban.
My post has now been seen by over 3million people and, with messages of support from all over the world, is proof that education works. If my post helps stop one person being abused then it was more than worth the time I spent writing it. The biggest and best change we can make is by educating people.
My advice to others in the Sikh community is to always try to educate and inform others with kind words, and avoid conflict as violence only leads to more problems, and possible injury or even loss of life.
As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the situation in Afghanistan and the real threat of yet more terror related attacks should make us all more vigilant but also more tolerant.
I hope and pray that in another 20 years from now we will have greater respect, love and understanding of one another’s differences.
As told to Minreet Kaur.
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