Consider This from NPR - StoryCorps Presents: The Lasting Toll Of 9/11

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

This weekend the nation marks 20 years since 9/11 — a day we are reminded to never forget. But for so many people, 9/11 also changed every day after. In this episode, a special collaboration between NPR and StoryCorps, we hear stories about the lasting toll of 9/11, recorded by StoryCorps in partnership with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. You can learn more about that initiative and find out how you can record your reflections on the life of a loved one at storycorps.org/september11. Also in this episode: the story of how an Afghan translator's life was shaped by 20 years of conflict in his home country, culminating in a desperate attempt to help his family escape. Said Noor's story first aired on Morning Edition and was originally produced by Steve Inskeep, Arezou Rezvani, and Danny Hajek. More here. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org One morning, 20 years ago, at Dulles International Airport, two men were running late for their flight. So late, they almost didn't make it. But at the American Airlines check-in desk, an employee was helpful.

He worked efficiently, running through the security questions. Did you pack your bag yourself? Has it been with you the whole time? Well, the two men made it on board Flight 77 to L.A. that day. The airline employee, Von Alex, had done his job. I didn't know what I had done. It wasn't until the next day, September 12th, that I started finding out what happened. Back at the airport on September 12th, someone handed Alex the flight manifest. I just stared at it for a second and then I looked up,

I go, I did it, didn't I? As Alex would come to learn, about half an hour after takeoff in the air over southeastern Ohio, Flight 77 had turned around. I checked in a family. It was a retiree and his wife. I had time to talk to them. By 9 a.m., the plane was heading back east, descending from 35,000 feet. There was a student group, and I checked in a lot of those kids and parents, teachers. At 9.34, the plane made a looping descent, miles from Washington, D.C. And minutes later, nose down, traveling 530 miles per hour, Flight 77 crashed into the side of the Pentagon. And they were gone. They were just all gone. 189 people were killed, including the two men Von Alex had checked into the flight that day. They were among the hijackers.

Once it became known, people wouldn't look at me in the eye. People didn't talk to me. I might go weeks or months and everything would be just going along fine, and then there would be something that would trigger it. I was checking in somebody, and what she said was, my husband got killed on September 11th. And what I heard was, you killed my husband on September 11th. Consider this. This weekend, the nation marks 20 years since 9-11,

a day we are reminded to never forget. But no one marks September 12th, or any of the days after, when so many lives were suddenly so different. You don't really move past it. It's still always there in some form. Today, the lasting toll of 9-11, a day that for so many people changed every day that followed. We'll hear some of their stories. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Friday, September 10th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR. For years now, StoryCorps has been working with the National September 11th Memorial and Museum to record and catalog these stories. Talat Hamdani's starts with a bird, an injured sparrow that her son Salman found and brought home when he was a boy. And its wing was damaged or something, so we tried to nurse it.

And then he went to school, and when he came back, he asked me what happened to the bird. I said, the bird died. I threw it in the trash bin. He was very upset at me. So he went back, he asked me what happened to the Buddha. I said the Buddha died. I threw it in the trash bin. He was very upset at me. So he went back out and he buried the Buddha in the backyard. That was him. Helpful, loving. On September 11th, Salman was a 23-year-old emergency medical technician in New York. He probably saw the towers burning and then ran to help that day. During the days after, when he did not come home, he was wrongly linked as an accomplice in the attacks.

And I remember there was a flyer circulating about Salman. It said, wanted by terrorist task force. And reporters printed his picture and published an article that said, missing or hiding. But he was so proud to be an American. It wasn't until March that Salman's family got word. His remains were recovered in the rubble of the North Tower. They gave us a bag with his jeans and his belt. And they said his body parts were in 34 pieces.

There's a vacuum in life when you lose a child. It's a sense of incompleteness. And you always feel it. In April 2002, Salman Hamdani was finally given a hero's burial, with his casket draped and an American flag. He was one of nearly 3,000 people killed on 9-11. More than 7,000 U.S. service members would die in the following 20 years of military conflict. One of them was Staff Sergeant Donna Johnson, who was in Afghanistan in October of 2012. That day, I had a bad feeling. Donna's wife, Tracy, was also in the military, a veteran of the war in Iraq.

I immediately started scouring the news websites, and it said that three U.S. soldiers were killed in Khost, Afghanistan, and I knew obviously that's where she was stationed. And that's where Donna was killed by a suicide bomber. The next year, her wife Tracy recorded what you're about to hear at StoryCorps. Before marriages like theirs were recognized by the U.S. military, Tracy told her mother-in-law, Sandra Johnson, how she learned of Donna's death and what happened next. So how did you get notified?

I knew that any communication about Donna was going to come to you guys because even though we were married, I wasn't considered her next of kin. So Donna's sister called me and told me that the military people were there. I went to your place, and I said, you know, I am her wife, and I brought documentation. And when a soldier's fallen, they usually have a military escort that brings them home. And I said, can I do it because I'm military? He goes, well, we'll see. But I know it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for your assistance. I just, I did not want her coming home with a stranger. I wanted her coming home to family. I was flown up to Dover

to see her brought back on American soil. And honestly, I can't tell you how great of an honor it is to escort a fallen hero home. But then when that hero is your wife, it means a lot more. Well, I want you to know that I'm very proud of you. I consider you mine because Donna considered you hers. And I wouldn't have it any other way. 7,000 U.S. service members is just a fraction of the human cost of America's post-9-11 wars. There are also national and military police in other countries, opposition fighters, allied troops, civilians, contractors, humanitarian workers,

journalists. Altogether, Brown University's Cost of War Project estimates around 900,000 people have died in major war zones since 9-11. Many thousands more who did survive carry wounds that will never go away. Now we want to note that this next story is about suicide. So if you or anyone you know has been having suicidal thoughts, we want you to call the 24-hour National Suicide suicide lifeline. That number is 1-800-273-8255. I came home and things were different. Army Sergeant Ryan Sharp served two tours in Iraq with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

And in 2014, Ryan sat down with his father, Kirk Sharp, to talk about what happened when Ryan came home. I remember me and my sister Stacy were all at the pool. And I don't remember exactly what happened, but I remember I had my pistol up to my temple. My finger was on the trigger. And then my sister said, what are you doing? It's like I blacked out. I wish I would have known more, then we could have gotten you help sooner. And at that point, you had no idea that you had a traumatic brain injury? No, no, no idea at all.

TBI, or traumatic brain injury. It's been diagnosed in more than 350,000 military members. TBI can cause memory loss, aggression, impulse control, mood swings, and depression. But Ryan had never heard of it until he had a conversation with a fellow soldier, someone he'd been deployed with. He was telling me how he was on permanent disability through the VA. And I was like, oh my God, man, what happened? And he says, I have a TBI. And I go, when did you get that? And he goes, you were there. And I go, what are you talking about?

At that point, things just started coming back. And the first thing that came to me was the explosion in my head, the pain of it. And then the next thing I remember is my team leader had grabbed me by my vest and was shaking me, asking, you know, sharp, sharp. Ryan was eventually diagnosed with TBI himself, 10 years after the explosion that caused his injury. How'd that make you feel after finally being diagnosed? I was angry because the entire time I thought that if I spent enough time psychoanalyzing myself that I'd be better eventually. You almost felt as though you

were at fault and or you felt as though it was a weakness? Yeah, I felt I couldn't get myself to work right. I was finally able to forgive myself for so many of the things that I put my family through. Survival is a constant struggle. And sometimes people confuse it with living. I don't want to survive anymore. I want to learn how to live again. Until now, everything you've heard was recorded by StoryCorps before the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan came to a deadly and chaotic end this summer. By that time, more than 100,000 Afghan civilians and military personnel had been killed in 20 years of military conflict.

This year, NPR captured the story of one man whose life was shaped by those violent decades. His name is Saeed Noor. He still remembers weeks after 9-11 when he was just a boy in an Afghan village. I remember the aircrafts like we saw the fighter jets for the first time. American fighter jets. Later came American military bases. Saeed was fascinated by the foreign soldiers who sometimes passed through his village. And one day those same American soldiers helped Saeed's baby sister after an accident. Someone had spilled hot water and badly burned her. So they all came and started to work on her,

you know, try to treat her. And they gave me a piece of paper that wrote something in English on it. They were like, bring her to the base. And then they had requested a medical doctor, like a real doctor, to come down. They really saved her life. Now she's a grown girl, you know, she goes to school.

Was that then when you asked to work with the Americans? Yes. That was NPR's Steve Inskeep talking to Saeed, who eventually became an interpreter for the U.S. military. He followed troops into combat. He lost friends. He woke up to letters left on his door in the night. They had signatures of the Taliban commanders, Haqqani networks, on the bottom of their letters saying that I was out here, they're careless, they're going to come after me, they're going to kill me. And that's when I realized that I was in danger and I had to leave the country. Saeed applied for and was granted a visa to come to the U.S.

And he did that in 2014, moving to Houston. In the years after, he became a citizen and joined the U.S. Army, where his language skills were valuable. He even spent time deployed back in his home country, where his parents and siblings still lived. But when the Taliban began their takeover of Afghanistan this year, Saeed knew his family was in danger. They could see the Taliban right outside of my house.

And my family, especially my young siblings, they were like really, really scared. They freaked out. This was in Kabul. The family tried to reach the airport. They slept outside its walls. Back in Houston, Saeed tried desperately to get them help. And it finally came when a member of Congress heard a news report about Saeed's story. It was Democrat Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, also a veteran, who'd recently visited Kabul in a trip that drew a lot of criticism. Moulton's office reached a military

contact in Kabul who sent Saeed's family to a gas station to rendezvous with U.S. troops. And the family gave them an agreed-upon password, Tom Brady. Hours later, they were on the last flight out. Saeed met them at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin this week. Sometimes I feel like I'm still dreaming about the whole situation, you know, like how they were begging for help, how they were in dire situations. One of his family members who made it out, his sister, the one whose burn injury triggered a relationship with Americans that transformed his family's life. Having been treated so long ago by an American doctor, Saeed's sister now wants to be one. Now seeing them, you know, see the smiles on their face, coming to a country where they can have like, you know,

work on themselves and build a bright future for themselves. Saeed Noor spoke to NPR's Stephen Skeap, and his story was originally produced for Morning Edition. There's a longer version of that story that aired this week, and you can find out more about it at the link in our episode notes. The other stories you just heard were memorialized by StoryCorps in partnership with the National September 11th Memorial and Museum. You can learn more about that initiative and find

out how you can record your reflections on the life of a loved one at storycorps.org slash September 11. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.