‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth’ : 9/11 inside Punchbowl Boys’ High

As the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks approaches, award-winning author and academic Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad led a panel at the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote Festival on Sunday on the topic of anti-Arab racism since 9/11. In this accompanying piece for Spectrum, he looks back at the impact of that day on himself and fellow students at his school.

The age of terror had begun. Everyone remembers where they were. I remember Punchbowl Boys’ High School. At the time, 280 of the 300 students identified as Arab and Muslim. The school building was surrounded by barbed wires and cameras, which is why we called it Punchbowl Prison. The Australian flag was always perched so high that it could be seen from every corner of those nine-foot fences. We moved from classroom to urinal to sickbay, ignoring its ever-present gaze.

Author Michael Mohammed Ahmad as a Punchbowl Boys’ High student in 2001.Credit: Courtesy of the Ahmad family

But on September 11, 2001, the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison finally had their eyes open, marching through the front office with their heads cocked and their teeth bared. The principal, Mr Whitechurch, repeated the same words as each boy stepped past him: “Wipe that stupid grin off your face.” He sounded like a throttled mule, puncturing my ears as I scampered between this wog and that wog.

Out on the quadrangle, 50 boys were drumming on garbage bins and dancing in circles, their feet springing from the floor like popcorn, their hips tussling and hands waving. Even the school dux, Riad, was in the circle. Most days I saw him with his head down inside the library, but today Riad was swinging his bloated arms like it was his wedding day, while the boys around him sang “eye for eye, tooth for tooth!”

There were clusters of young men scattered throughout the oval. Their cracked voices spiralled at me from every direction — “Bush” and “Bin Laden” and “Allah”. In one corner was Rajab Masri. His head was shaved and dotted with black stubble except for the long white knife wound above his ear – a gift from the six-foot-four Samoan who wanted his stolen phone back. Rajab was thrusting his open hand into another Leb’s face, re-enacting the image he saw on the news that morning: an airliner slamming into a tower.

In another corner were the Year 12 boys standing around Usuf Osman, an Egyptian from Lakemba who had spent the past year instructing us to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Usuf was pounding his chest, shouting: “I prah-dick-ted it!”

The air was dry and dusty that day, the sun moving in and out of clouds, searing the red bricks of the school building. I stood at the end of the quadrangle, flanking the entrance to the basketball courts. As soon as Shaky spotted me, he wrapped his freckled arms around my head. “We got them, brother.”

But I had no idea who he meant by “we” and who he meant by “them”. Shaky’s father was from Lebanon, but his mum was as Aussie as meat pie. Unlike me, he passed for a yobbo – blond and fair-skinned and blue-eyed.

Then the Indonesian who also called himself a Leb, Osama, tumbled towards us. He and Shaky hugged and shook hands and laughed for the next 10 minutes as though I wasn’t there. Most days, I felt like we three were the same breed of dog but all of a sudden, I was conscious of our differences: I knew this day would be blamed on the “Lebanese”, just like the gang rapes and drive-bys had been blamed on the Lebanese. But it was me, the only full-blooded Lebo among us, who felt any grief for the people that plummeted from those buildings.

Finally, Osama turned to me with a sinister smirk, his thin lips and pronounced cheekbones swelling. “Don’t feel sorry for them, bro,” he said, “Bin Laden’s done all kinds of evil shit, but you think these people ever even heard of him until today?”

“How is today any different for us than yesterday or the day before that?” Telopea Street, Punchbowl, in 2001.Credit: Julian Andrews

Five minutes before the bell went, as I was making my way to class, I ran into the copper-skinned Palestinian named Isa Musa. He was a foot taller than me, standing casually in the centre of the quadrangle. An unnerving lull suddenly shot across the concrete beneath my feet – something about the expression on each Leb’s face that reminded me of a dagger; the way he looked around with a slicing glare and sharp curl of the lips. The only boy who seemed normal and balanced that morning was Isa, which was odd because he was usually the one screaming at all the teachers about how “those hypocrites stole my country!”

“Why does anyone even care about this?” the Palestinian said to me. “How is today any different for us than yesterday or the day before that or the days leading back to 1948?”

I stared up at Isa, Arabic fumbling off my tongue: “Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful”. A beam of light shot through the clouds, hitting my face and scrunching my eyes. I twisted my neck towards the sun, feeling its heat across my brow as tears formed under my eyelids. Then I opened my eyes again and noticed the Australian flag at the head of the quadrangle. It was glaring over me, limp and calm and silent in the warm air, halfway down the flagpole.

I turned back to Isa, pointed at the flag and said “look”. His eyes followed the direction of my finger and then his broad shoulders contracted, his colossal chest expanded, his large jaw and Adam’s apple pierced the air, and in this stance, the Palestinian hardened into a pillar of salt.

“You OK, bro?” I mumbled, trying to sound chill. The bell rang and the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison moved onto their classes like packs of cackling hyenas and Isa Musa kept staring at that flag, static, and slowly, I backed away from him, confused, so confused …

Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad outside Punchbowl Boys’ High School in 2019.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

In period three, my entire grade had been instructed to head to the library. I was with the 40 other students in Year 10, all of whom were sitting in groups of five around each table, vociferously sharing bullcrap stories like “I heard there were no Jews in the World Trade Centre today”.

At my table sat Osama the Indonesian and Shaky the half-caste and this four-eyes named Bassam that no one messed with because his older brother was a drug-dealer. All three of them had their collars up and the top two buttons of their shirts undone, pride oozing from their sunburned chests. Day after day, the Lebs were in a relentless war with the teachers; zero interest in Shakespeare, all they ever did was wolf-whistle at the chicks on the street outside our classroom windows. No teacher tolerated such behaviour but today even the educators weren’t interested in the Bard of Avon. It was only Isa, who was also sitting at my table, that said “stuff this, we should be doing King Hamlet right now”.

“King Lear,” I replied.

On the left side of the library stood Mr Watson, a history teacher we called Nose Job because he had excess meat blocking his left nostril, and Miss Wu, a commerce teacher who had a Master’s in business, which meant nothing to us because she couldn’t speak English. On the other side of the room stood our English teacher, Mrs Laila Haimi, who was technically “one of us” because she was Arab and Muslim and grew up in “The Area”.

Out the front of the library was the principal, Mr Whitechurch. His thin grey hair was brushed to one side, his chequered tie was clasped tightly around his neck and his fair skin was flaking beneath the library’s fluorescent lights. Whitechurch waited patiently for each blathering young man to look in his direction until finally a Maronite named Antony, who could bench-press 130 kilograms, screamed out “yulla, boys, shut up!”

Everyone went quiet as Whitechurch cleared his throat and tugged down at his collar. “I’ll be talking to each grade for one period today,” he squealed nervously. Perhaps that necktie was blocking his windpipe. “I want to give you all an opportunity to discuss the terror.”

Straightaway, Isa Musa raised his hand.

The entire left side of Whitechurch’s face began to spasm like he was going to spit out the F-word. “You’re relentless, Musa,” he seethed, “I’ll be speaking first.”

Isa kept his hand in the air, dipping his head down across the desk like a Rottweiler and nestling his gaze upon the principal.

“Three thousand people are dead. It’s probable that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern and Muslim, like yourselves, so I understand why you’re all upset,” said the principal.Credit: AP

Whitechurch gritted his teeth. Weighing up the situation, he seemed to realise that Isa’s hand wasn’t going down until he spoke. Then he did what any sensible principal would do – he ignored the mongrel.

“OK, so this morning, America was attacked,” Whitechurch said. “Three thousand people are dead. It’s probable that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern and Muslim, like yourselves, so I understand why you’re all upset … ”

Whitechurch rambled on, and all the while, Isa’s arm hovered over his head of thick black curls. There was a bored expression on the Palestinian’s face, his bottom lip bulging, his camel eyelashes flickering. Thirty-nine other sand monkeys sat there impatiently, heaving through their snouts, their piercing eyes on the principal like he was raw meat.

Whitechurch continued. “The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief. Boys, I only ask for your respect, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened.” On he went, but no one was listening anymore; we were all staring at Isa’s upstretched arm now, staring until at last, Whitechurch announced “OK, questions”.

Everybody in the room, students and teachers, waited for the principal to let the Palestinian speak but instead he looked around for someone else as though Isa was translucent. This went on for ages, Isa with his arm so high that even the children in Gaza could see it, and Whitechurch patiently looking around like George W. Bush staring vaguely into the distance.

Slowly, Bashir Gazelle’s hand ascended.

“Go,” said Whitechurch.

Bashir massaged the base of his circumcised-penis-shaped-head as he said in a deep croaky voice: “You gotta admit, sir, America asked for it.”

Whitechurch nodded at him and replied calmly: “I know why someone like you would say such a stupid thing.”

Five more hands were now in the air, along with the Palestinian’s, which had been up for the past 30 minutes. Whitechurch pointed to Ibo, whom everyone called Lesbo due to his high voice.

“I contend that our pupils are feeling victimised,” Ibo explained.

In a kneejerk reaction, the boy sitting by his side, Omar, whose boxy head and spikey hair made him look like the Arab Bart Simpson, blurted out “that’s gay!”

Omar would usually be sent to the deputy’s office after a comment like that, but Whitechurch was distracted by another arm in the air. Once again ignoring Isa, the principal signalled for a student we called Cabbage – because his body was shaped like a cabbage – to speak. “Sir, is there even any proof that it was us? How do you know it wasn’t the Jews?”

In the closest way that someone could actually take this question seriously, Whitechurch inhaled a tired breath and replied “there will be many conspiracy theories floating around right now. The best thing we can do is trust our government.”

Three questions later and there were no more hands up except for Isa’s. He still had his gaze fixed on the principal, but his eyes had slumped like a custard tart. Whitechurch kept looking around for someone else to raise his hand, but we’d all waited long enough, we wanted to hear what the Palestinian had to say. The Lebs of Punchbowl Prison locked their silent gapes onto Whitechurch, gums drooling. There was a drawn-out delay before finally the principal sighed – he knew he’d have to give in eventually – and said “very well, Musa, what?”

Isa slowly lowered his bulldog-thick arm and sat up straight. Student and teacher alike were glued to him, silent and still as death itself. Then, just before the Palestinian cracked the static air with his quivering voice, a sense of despair washed over me: why would Isa Musa have anything meaningful to say? Which wog from Punchbowl has ever said a meaningful thing in his life?

Isa’s chest deflated, shoulders hunched, face shrivelled – sinking into the Red Sea. His fat lips slowly spread apart as he took in a deep breath and began to speak. “I’ve been at this school since 1998,” he said, fractured voice growing stronger as he went on. “Over those past three years, a million Arabs like us have been murdered by America and Israel and you never gave a damn. Then this morning some Americans die and you put the flag half-mast.”

There was not even a breath between when the Palestinian stopped and Punchbowl Prison exploded – Lebos screaming in one voice “yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” and bashing their hands on the tables. It sounded like an army was charging over the barbed wires of the school. Osama the Indonesian and Shaky the half-caste shouted at Whitechurch, “kol khara!” which in their butchered Arabic means “eat shit!” From across the library, Ali Fatala and Bashir Gazelle were on their feet, chanting “eye for eye, tooth for tooth!” Even Antony, the wood-worshipping bench-presser, had his hands around his mouth in the shape of a speakerphone, hollering “sucked in, Aussie gronk”. Lesbo was flailing his hands and torso like a belly dancer and Omar, who’d just called him “gay”, was ululating like a hijabi, “Le-li-li-li-li-li-li”. Then up onto his table was Abdul Solomon, Punchbowl Boys’ self-proclaimed mufti, howling “takbeer!” which means “shout out loud!” and all the Muslims replied “Allahu akbar”!, which means “God is great!” Once again, “takbeer!” and “Allahu akbar!”

Our teachers said nothing, including Mrs Haimi, whose fair Arab skin was withering under the white library lights, her soot-black lashes matted, her green eyes turning grey and vacant. Whitechurch tried to raise his voice over the boys. “There were Australians that died in there today,” he blubbered, “Australians.” But it was too late – the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison had found themselves among the souls of the suicide bomber: “Shout out loud: God is Great!”

‘Arabs like us have been murdered by America and Israel and you never gave a damn, then some Americans die and you put the flag half-mast.’

Isa Musa, Student, Punchbowl Boys High School, 2001.

An entire generation passed by before I saw Isa Musa again. Our government had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq; thousands of bogans had rioted on a beach singing “no Lebs” and physically assaulted anyone who looked like us; the premier described our protests as “the unacceptable face of multiculturalism”, the media cried out, “I am Charlie” and the immigration minister called us the “mistakes” of the Fraser government. At last – as though the whole world had finally gone blind – an Australian-born white supremacist entered two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and slaughtered 51 Muslims peacefully conducting their Friday prayers. Three days later, I found myself standing in front of the silver dome of Auburn’s Gallipoli Mosque. A beam of light shot through the clouds and between the mosque’s minarets, which pricked the sky like two spears, striking my face. I quickly spun away from the sun and standing right there before me, also staring up at the mosque, was the Palestinian from high school. He still had his copper complexion and broad shoulders, but his thick black curls had vanished, as had mine.

“The government said they’re gonna lower the flag at half-mast,” Isa said to me, our eyes bolting together.

“Are you pleased?” I asked.

A tear ran down the Palestinian’s bulbous left cheek as he rose his arm up toward the sun. “I spent 18 years waiting for this day to come,” he whimpered, “and now I’ll spend another 18 wishing it hadn’t …”

Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad is an award-winning author, academic and a curator and panellist of the session “No Lebs”: Anti-Arab racism since 9/11 at Antidote Festival on September 5. His latest novel is The Other Half of You, which was published by Hachette in June. Names of students and teachers and some minor details of events have been changed in this article to avoid identifying individuals.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.