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| Rehana Lew Mirza's 'Barriers', Post 9/11 By Lavina Melwani • Sep 4th, 2011 • Category: 24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog |
 Barriers -A serious moment in rehearsals- L-R Eileen Rivera, Raj Verma, Pooja Kumar and Jon Norman Schneider Remembering The World Trade Center Tragedy Like all New Yorkers, Rehana Lew Mirza has turbulent memories of September 11. A writer who lived on West 4th and Sixth Avenue, she had traveled uptown for her day job as a real estate agent, when all the world seemed to come crashing down. She was frantically trying to return downtown to her sister with whom she shared an apartment, but the subways had stopped, and there was mayhem everywhere. Her sister Rohi, who usually temps in the World Trade Center area, was at home that day. Mirza recalls, "I kept running to get to my sister. In the crowd, someone started cursing me out, screaming 'F—— foreigners! You're the cause of all this.'" That night, aware of the rising backlash against Muslims, they remained barricaded in their one bedroom apartment, watching the horrific images on TV. A week after that, just as they were struggling to get back to work, Mirza found a flier pinned to her door: it had the image of a missing South Asian woman – and someone had burnt holes into the paper, into the eye-sockets and mouth with a cigarette. It was at that chilling moment that she knew that for New York Muslims the tragedy was a double whammy – not only were they too the victims but were also being demonized as the perpetrators. "It prompted me to start writing and to try and negotiate the emotions that were going through me at the time," she says. The result was 'Barriers: 9/11 through Asian American Eyes', a play that ran at Here Arts Center. The above was part of a story I wrote for Newsday at that time of turbulence and grief when New Yorkers were shaken and in disbelief, and it seemed life would never be the same again. At that time, Mirza had told me, "The media had created an enemy and my goal ws to create a South Asian family that wasn't composed of terrorists but was actually hurt by the terrorism." Her sister Rohi, who was producer of the play said, "This play has come out as a response to slanted media depictions and a need to create a dialogue between communities." As NYTheater.com wrote at that time, "Mirza has chosen her medium well – Barriers reaches out and grabs us – wrenches us– to teach us something valuable about the state of the world." (The play was later co-produced with the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2003.)  Rajeev Varma, Sunkrish Bala, Eileen Rivera, Jon Norman Schneider, Joe Petrilla & Pooja Kumar. Sitting: Colette Robert & Rehana Lew Mirza |
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