Part 1: The Call is Free.
We all know that number. If you have a heart attack, call 911. If there’s a fire or your car flips over into a ditch because your dumb-ass ignored the flood warning sign, call 911. Now people call 911 if Subway didn’t make their sandwiches to their specifications, they are drunk and need a lift home, or because a little Black girl is selling lemonade on a public sidewalk.
SmackDown: September 11, 2001.
After living in Egypt for two years, I’d just returned home with my new husband. Initially, we met on my first trip to Cairo, and it was like and then love at sight. He spoke some English. I barely knew ten Arabic words. When my trip was over and less than six months later, after letters and called back and forth, he asked me to marry him. I was stunned. I’d just divorced a Sudanese man, and here was another. I felt like not only had I made one of the biggest, not the only biggest, mistakes by marrying him,m.
Now here I was, considering marriage to another Sudanese man. Was I stupid or what? I’m sure it was all he could do to keep his head on straight as I hesitated to answer. “Let me give it some thought,” I said. Later I decided to return to Egypt and see if it would work. Again, risky business, but something just naturally clicked, and I stayed there for two years.
We married in 2000, and here he was with me in Richmond, California. He was settling into a new country, an entirely different culture, with voices of English all around him, and a grown stepson not eager to be privy to another Sudanese taking advantage of his Mother. One September morning, we were squeezed together on a small futon. Suddenly we were awakened by my sister’s urgent voice. “Wake up, guys! Turn on theTV.! Our entire world has changed.” Boy, was that an understatement.
Breaking News!
8:46 a.m. E.S.T. American Airlines Flight 11 careened into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The camera panned to a jet hanging out of the side of the 110-floor building—grey dust everywhere with jets circling. As we watched, another plane slammed into the South Tower. We looked at each shaking our heads with dropped mouths as more reports flowed from horrifying reports on every channel.
9:43 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
10:05 a.m.: The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
10:10 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.
10:28 a.m.: The World Trade Center’s north tower collapsed.
5:20 p.m.: Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex collapsed.
President George W. Bush gets the news in front of an elementary classroom of kids.
No Turning Back Now.
The dust had not even settled, and we were in Afghanistan on the hunt for Saudi militant Osama bin Laden said to have masterminded the whole operation. Fighting intensified in Iraq. The battle was on. He said he didn’t do it but, later, said he did. Ten years later, we got him, and who knows where Mohamed Atta – the tactical leader of the 9/11 plot, is. We will never know all the ins and outs of what happened. What we do know is this was no fly-by-night operation. It was years in the making. And our government knew about it years in advance.
Is it too late to call 911?
Weeks, months, and years later, images of those scenes play over and repeatedly. We watch one man falling to his death, the towers crumbling, and women and men running and screaming for their lives as pieces of steel, fire, and smoke chase them down the streets. The scenes are surreal and vividly captured so that we can watch them from every angle. In slow motion, in fast Action, and back in slow motion. We were a captive but frightened audience.
Welcome to the Desert.
In the movie the “Matrix,” Morpheus gives Neo the low-down on the war between man and machines, saying they were relegated to a battery by the God of A.I.bent on winning. The Machine war where, using their vast computational power, the Machines trapped humanity inside a complex virtual reality to ensure that society would cause no trouble to the dominant Machine collective.” “
Eleven days after the terrorist attacks, Homeland Security came online in one of the most extensive reorganizations of the U.S. since World War II. This stand-alone, cabinet-level entity with twenty-two departments under its jurisdiction became all-powerful and is now running the “National Security” Show. It feels like we’re living in virtual reality now. They control;
- Citizenship and Immigration Services
- Customs and Border Protection
- Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- Transportation Security Administration
- United States Coast Guard
- Secret Service
Now You’ve Gone & Done It!
Kill the Terrorists! Kill Them All!
And just like you don’t see a T.B.A. (traumatic brain injury) coming, there’s no going back and no total cure. A slow recovery is possible, but things are never the same. We are brain-damaged. There is no turning back to what it was. Now, you can reboot a computer, but not without losing some data. However, after 9/11, Americans were demoralized, angry, and embarrassed. Years later, we still live in fear, paranoia, and mistrust.
How could a superpower get caught with its pants down and skirts up? Al Qaeda had splintered into the more extremist group Isis (the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and the Taliban). Consequently, we hunted, captured, tortured, and murdered anyone we even suspected with impunity. They, in turn, cut off heads while we attached bombs to automated drones.
We Still See Dead People.
In an ever-expanding and endless global war, we are holding the line in at least seven countries due to 9/11 (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Niger, Yemen, Pakistan, and Ukraine). Those four plane attacks changed the destiny of the entire 1945. As a result, the U.S. government stripped away our ” inalienable civil rights” overnight, and we didn’t protest. Hate crimes against anyone remotely resembling a Middle Eastern person are still common. Never mind that Arab people come in all shades and colors. We do as told when TSA.A. agents ask us to strip butt naked at the airport. Most of the guys flying those jets into buildings held pilot licenses. Where was 911 then?
No One is Exempt.
On one of our trips to California, my 11-year-old Granddaughter was walking through security when the screaming alarm went off. She had to stop while they searched her bags. “It’s a random stop,” the agent told us. She was frightened. Who wouldn’t be? How do you explain to a little girl? Sorry baby. They suspected you put a bomb in that cute pink backpack.
U.S. citizens like my family with Arab-sounding names are afraid to travel outside the country. Some travelers get escorted into private rooms and questioned. Some held for hours. Even now, Muslims carry instructions inside their passports on what to dTSA.S.A. agents stop them on suspicion they might be a terrorist.
They fear they won’t be able to return home. The world tension after the 911 attack meant that when many Muslims returned to their homeland with American Passports, they were harassed, beaten, or murdered and seen as traitors.
Nope. We Can’t Just Get Along.
Islam, a religion most of us don’t understand, became the villain. We see terrorists in our sleep. The rise of the Alt-Right, White SupremKKK.K.K., Nazism, and Christian fundamentalism after 9/11 was noticeable—no more”colored” immigrants. Keep them out except, of course, Europeans. And while you’re at it, hunt them down and kick anyone out who isn’t European. Build a wall around the country except for the Canadian border. It’s the end of the world. Prepare for the rapture. The End of Days. God Bless America! All People-of-Color are suspects in the War Against Terrorism.
America has a short, selective memory. The 9/11 story doesn’t have the same punch as it once did. A lot of our kids now don’t remember what all the noise is about. They see stuff blowing up, usually in their games, television shows, movies, and fantasy books. As a result, the visceral taste of horror fades. Most terrorists were Saudi, but Saudi is now one of our strongest allies. During his reign, Trump announced we would sell $110 billion in military equipment to Saudi Arabia, and the deal could grow to $350 billion.
Part II: That Girl Can Fly
So, I returned from Egypt, got a job, and began to rebuild my life. I also started my Belly Dance business again, and my husband found a good job. Things were looking up. We’d moved into our apartment and settled in. That passionate love, at first sight, fostered in Cairo, carried through that shakey uncertain time. That is, until my feet got tangled up in some stray computer wires at work. I flew head-first onto a protruding steel file cabinet handle.
Blam! In an instant, my entire universe changed. Perhaps I was stupid. I jumped, rubbed my head, and attempted to return to work. A colleague thought it was best to get to the emergency room. Fortunately, it was just across the street, and he walked me over. It wasn’t long before I had epilepsy due to that head injury. After ten years of uncontrolled seizures, a lengthy legal battle, and one medication after another, none worked. Brain surgery was the final alternative.
Epilepsy. What is it?
My brain injury is minor compared to the horror of the attack on the United States. But now, my country doesn’t know it suffers from silent seizures. Epilepsy is the underlying tendency of brain episode seizures, which are sudden abnormal bursts of electrical energy that disrupt brain functions. One in ten people will have an epilepsy incident in their lifetime, and 1 in 26 people will be diagnosed with it.
Seizures are classified by generalized, focal, and unknown onset seizures: Seizures don’t always mean falling to these episodes leave you confused, exhausted, embarrassed, and emotionally spent—e ground. I’d wake up in bed without recollection of how I only spent. Sound familiar?
Sometimes it can take days to recover, and panic attacks and depression are regular. I lost my independence and could no longer drive. I had “medically intractable seizures,” which means medication didn’t control them. At one point, I was on so many drugs I couldn’t feel my feet. I hallucinated. I felt like I was floating in space or walking through walls.
Can you say “Amygdalohippocampectomy”?
My final option was surgery to remove the Hippocampus from my right temporal lobe and a portion of my Amygdala. Both are part of the limbic system, where your emotions live. Mostly my seizures came from within the Right Temporal Lobe, but the left was also affected.
It took over ten years of a legal battle with the California Workman Compensation and another two years before Social Security decided I was disabled. Winning the case meant I could afford the care necessary for a brain-damaged person, including the surgery I ultimately elected.
Kaiser, my original health care plan, didn’t see surgery as an option because they said I was “too old.” And that after a multitude of tests and stays in the hospital, visits to a variety of neurologists who only added on more medications that didn’t stop the seizures.
During the ensuing ten years, I set up my dance business. During that time, my husband worked as an interpreter in Iraq for two years. After his stint, he came home, and we decided to buy a home in Arizona. Arizona is an epicenter of advanced medical care in neurology. Fortunately, the last Neurologist I had in California referred me to a colleague he’d studied with at the University of California in San Francisco.
Once I moved to Arizona, I began treatment with my current Neurologist, Dr. Steven Chung, Chairman of Neurology and Executive Director of the Neuroscience Institute at the Banner University Medical Center and Professor of Neurology at the University of Arizona. He is also the Director of the Epilepsy Program at the Barrow Neurological Institute.
Dr. Chung, an Epileptologist, was horrified by the amount of medication I was on. Finally, after even his treatments wouldn’t control the episodes, he referred me to Dr. Kris Smith, MD, a neurosurgeon at Barrow Neurological Institute whose expertise includes the surgical treatment of medically refractory epilepsy.
Before the surgery, Dr. Smith ordered more tests to get a closer look. Holes were drilled into my skull, and screws tightened into my head. Wires were then attached to my brain to see if I was a good candidate. The outcome is uncertain, Dr. Smith said.
A short lesson.
The Amygdala: is where the “Fight or Flight,” emotional responses, and memory live. The Hippocampus also plays a critical role in forming, organizing, and storing new memories and connects certain sensations and emotions to these memories. And retrieves them when needed.
Well, That Sucks.
Dr. Smith was funny. I wanted to see those wires before they put them in and asked, “How are you going to patch up the holes after you take those screws out.” “We hold onto them and stick them back on.” Candidates for epilepsy surgery undergo an extensive, expensive, and exhaustive pre-surgery evaluation. I say candidate because once they open your skull and look, they still determine if they can do it. Okey, Dokey, you can proceed I said. What did I have to lose?
Epilepsy Surgery Demo.
I had to pass many tests to verify that I was a candidate for brain surgery. During one test, one side of my brain was put to sleep while a Neuropsychiatrist spoke to the other. “What’s your favorite color?” “Purple,” I answered. I spent days in two different Epilepsy Monitoring Units. The Neurologist wants to see where the seizures are coming from in your brain. They try all types of things to cause seizures so they can observe and record them.
Sleep deprivation, different foods, noises, T.V.TVashing lights, etc. You get Neuropsychological testing and psychiatric evaluations before and after the surgery. Wada Test is where each hemisphere is alternately injected with a medication to “put it to sleep.” They run a needle through a vein that goes up through your groin. While one side of your brain is awake, they test the other for other is tested for memory, speech, and the ability to understand speech. That’s when they ask a series of questions.
The Enhanced Brain
I was handcuffed to the bed at so that point so that I couldn’t snatch the bandages off after surgery. My husband was with me the entire time. That man deserves a gold, silver, and bronze medal. After the surgery, he was horrified when he saw me in the intensive care Unit. “Is she gonna’ stay like that?” he asked the Doctor. “No, no. That’s just from the swelling.”
I’ve often asked why he didn’t take pictures. He answered, “No, Asata, you wouldn’t have wanted to see that.” “Why,” I asked. “You looked like an alien. Your head was all smashed and crooked”, he said with a traumatized look. I felt for him. Though actually, I would have liked to see those pictures.
Passion and Tears
Healing from Brain Surgery is a slow process. So far, my operation has been a success. Some of the damage to the brain due to seizures is irreversible. However, after such severe head trauma and lengthy surgery, when I was tested again and asked what my favorite color was, it was still purple.
My Neurologist humorously told me, “YIQIQ. scores went up.” Wow! Imagine that chunks of my brain are gone, I’m paranoid, have felt suicidal a few times (typical for people with Brain damage), and the dread that seizures will return is always there.
You are constantly aiming to return to the person or live the life you had before the injury. For instance, one time, I ran out of the gym in tears when free weights came too close to my head during one of my training sessions. At full-speed mode, I was out of there. Fight or Flight, baby. I have my independence back and can drive again. Was the surgery worth it? Hell yea. Could I have gone through this without my husband? No way. Without my family? Nope.
Without supportive friends? Not. Will I completely recover? I don’t think so. It’s a part of my story now. The new and reconfigured me. Indeed, the damage leaves you feeling lost, irritated, violent, and often depressed. I remember the day I sat and watched old Star Trek; it felt like the first time. I recall saying, “Hey. They held that episoSpecial memories are gone forever. de back.” I’ve alienated some friends and family. Some are forever lost.
When I told Dr. Chung I’d forgotten many things, he said some weren’t worth remembering. True. I feel more vulnerable emotionally. I say what’s on my mind even more than before. I am truthful even when it isn’t such a good idea. Empathy pours out and leaves me emotionally drained. I cry at the drop of a hat. I have to text when it is too hard to talk during some conversations. Although, that is getting better. At least I’m wiser now.
Seizures are common, and one day you might have to help someone. Don’t panic or stick something into the person’s mouth.
Part III: Battle Fatique in the U.S.A.
It’s a war between the right and the left hemisphere. As a result, we don’t trust each other. But did we ever? We are in constant “Fight or Flight.” Foreign entities can manipulate us as they couldn’t before. Both countries’ Hippocampi were cut out, and the Amygdala was also. We are an emotional mess. Emergency response teams can’t fix that. You’d only know I had brain surgery if I told you. When I do, people look at me strangely but never ask me why. The saying, “It’s not brain surgery,” resonates differently now. Maybe people don’t know how to respond or want to ignore it.
My injury was life-altering for me, my family, and my friends. That is to say, what happened on 9/11 altered an entire country. I have a question, though. Has our traumatically brain-damaged country become smarter? Can we move through the world without fear of another terrorist attack? Perhaps. We’ve turned into a mean, frightened, and closed country. We are frightening to the rest of the world and scared of each other.
American Inhumane Squads.
First, we have squads of inhumane police officers in Tennessee who gang up and beat or choke a man to death and then have the gall to show up in court to say they’re innocent. Second, what kind of sickness causes people we trust to call 911 to need us to call 911? Thirdly, how can our law enforcement officials take a picture of Tyre Nicoles (29-year-old FedEx worker and photographer pulled over for a so-called traffic incident) handcuffed and bloodied on January 7, 2023, to text it to “at least five people,” as if it were something to be proud of.
In addition, the medical technicians who arrived on the scene admitted had not provided medical care to Tyre Nicoles for almost 20 minutes. They never even got off the truck. Stress is the big culprit of T.B.I.s. I have been unable to watch the recorded attack video for fear it will cause me to have a seizure.
Somebody really should call 911!
I used to get upset when people I thought would understand me changed things. For example, a former friend and I went to a mall for lunch. She was visiting from out of town. She blathered on about some Buddhist group she was part of. They were going over to Africa to help build wells or something. I don’t know what country, but it irritated me that these White folks always went to a “developing. Country.” how could they fathom such a thing?
Something that they’d never even consider doing here, and there are people in America who have Africans?” I would have knocked her out of her chair if she wasn’t a friend. However, that was it. Brain damage doesn’t often give you the option you once had to shut it down. Though I think I would have still had an issue with thatIt’s more sexy or altruistic to build wells in Africa, I commented or something to that effect, and she responded, “Well, what have African Americans done for Africans?” comment.
I may have taken that opportunity to be less brutal or more calmly educational and explain how hurtful and shameful those words were to me. But, nope, I was baited and immediately went into attack mode. This was an Asian women journalist, activist, and longtime friend who should have known better than to make such an insulting statement. It wasn’t meant in a friendly way. Once we reached my home, she said, “Wow. You are different now.” I said yep, absolutely; I have less tolerance for bullshit comments, and the filters I once had are gone. Can you handle that?”We are no longer friends.
Part III: Ground Zero
Yes, I’m different now in subtle ways, even to me. And like America, all the previously unsaid hate, racism, White superiority attitudes, and on and on are standing toe-to-toe with more awareness, distrust, and fear. I overreact. Sometimes, if I’d taken a breath and walked away, I might jump down a friend’s throat instead of returning later and saying sorry I misunderstood. I’ve got a hidden scar behind my right ear, and I rub it sometimes as a reminder. It’s the mark of a warrior.
Pressure. Tension. Strain. Intensity. Worry. Anxiety.
It was an unmitigated bombardment of family stress a few summers back. Just like that, I had a full-blown seizure. It was as if my brain decided it had missed the adventure; I found myself in Target shopping to lie in my bed at home. On autopilot, I made it home and woke up to pure devastation. My Granddaughter with me was afraid of being alone with me. She was probably around 14, and we hadn’t prepared her for what to do.
Brain surgery for epilepsy doesn’t always mean no more seizures. And after six years, they returned, not with the frequency of before surgery and different. I feel them coming. I can’t describe the sensation other than to say it’s a feeling of doom, dread, and the oh no!!! Feeling. It’s depressing with enough time to sit down, take an “emergency seizure pill” (which I carry around), and go lie down.
And at least every couple of months, whether it’s stress, lack of sleep, or just life itself, I feel it, and it throws me out of commission for the rest of the day or night. Commonly, Dr. Chung tells me, who still sees me every six months, seizures can return. In my case, activity was in both lobes, just more prominent on the right. He was at one point ready to remove all medications. And I was too afraid to do that. Now, I had to up the dose because how do you eliminate stress from your life? The truth is you don’t.
Trouble. Distress. Trauma.
I now feel them coming. A feeling of dread. Of “Oh No, no, no.” If there is time, I go to my emergency medicine, hoping that will stop the seizure in its tracks. But, no matter, I make my way to a bed. If my husband is home, I find my way up the stairs to him. He can look at me and tell I’m in the midst of one. For some reason, I always make my way to a bed. My sister says it may be because when we were kids and got in trouble, my Mother would say go to your room and bed.
Nonetheless, most of the time, I don’t go unconscious. Lately, though, things are heating up with trying to sell my house and perhaps moving to another countin’. I experience a feeling of uncertainty. But, usually, I wake up in bed. Fall back asleep and wake up knowing I’ve gone and had another seizure again. The moodiness and lack of stability take a week or so to fade off. Of course, the fear that another could hit anytime looms.
Gun-Totting Maniacs, Civilian War Games on Babies with A.K.A.s!
A feeling of heaviness surrounds my days. Epilepsy is something I must learn to live with—things I can’t do again. Consequently, just like my country, waiting for an uprising like those of January 6, where a Trump-incensed and enraged group of White Supremacists decided it would crash the transfer of power after the former President lost the 2020 election. The fall-out from that has further fanned the fires. We must figure out how to charge a little kid for a mass shooting at his elementary school.
Fifty years ago, Roe v. Wade gave women the right to determine whether to have children. In 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it. A professor’s doctorate thesis churned up a world of dangerous forebodings for White America who decided to ban books from public libraries and decry multiculturalism as we await the possible overturning of Affirmative Action. I’m left to ponder what definition of paranoid concept some White folks are terrified of. Not enough White babies; too many ‘woke” folks. Now that one caught me by surprise. Where did that phrase come from, and how did it get folded into the racist vernacular? When I hear it, I realize that they’ve misused it in a sentence even then.
The noise about Critical Race Theory has pumped conservative America into hysteria. A theory said to be originally pioneers a school of thought that believes that racism is so “deeply rooted “in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it. Accordingly, C.R.T. is attacked as Black-Supremacist racism—another “woked” subtitle.
Post 911.
In short, it has taken some time to accept that I am not the same person I was before the traumatic brain injury, but I am not alone. As I begin packing up my stuff to move back to Egypt with my husband, the country I call my own is a mess with massive brain damage and recurring seizures. Can this be fixed? I have my doubts. Is there medicine to keep it under control? Who knows? Mine certainly is less effective. After all, we’ve not recovered from a global pandemic (COVID), an intelligent virus that keeps us all on our toes.
Our immunity has been tampered with. We are damaged and beyond repair. We are not as strong as we thought we were, and like many empires of the past, we may be witnessing the downfall of this one. So do I have hope? No, I don’t. So we better set aside more money for emergency crews. There’ll be a lot more 911 calls to answer.