Kian Tajbakhsh | Tales of My Two Cities | September 7, 2021

Twenty years ago, precisely on 9-11-2001, I was booked to fly out from NYC to Tehran. All flights were cancelled, so I witnessed the aftermath of the gruesome attack here in Manhattan. I wrote about what I saw and what I felt, drawing on what I then understood about the world. It was hardly a deep understanding especially about the Middle East, Iran, or Islamism, I admit. (That I was woefully unprepared to navigate the tumultuous waters of Middle Eastern geopolitics – which after 9-11 began churning with a new intensity – was something I would learn the hard way in the decade to come.) My essay “September 11: An Iranian In New York” was published in English in November after reaching Tehran. It was then published in Persian in one of Tehran’s main newspaper’s magazine edition. I have appended the Persian at the end of this post.

Why is that? And what can be done about it? These are the questions that Nikhar Gaikwad, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and Gareth Nellis, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, have sought to examine in much of their research.

Originally published by Tales of My Two Cities on Substack. Read the full article here.