Epilogue

Ten years later and three weeks after Osama bin Laden is killed, I return to Notting Hill. It’s night by the time I get out of the office near Lloyd’s in Tower Hill, by the time I get to Queensway and turn on Westbourne Grove—the streets I once knew too well. Ten years ago, I was given a grant to come here and live with Sufis—the mystical sect of Islam that doesn’t believe in the Sharia laws. London was one of a handful of cities I lived in for a year. It was the city I was in when 9/11 happened. Queensway had changed. There were more tourist shops, more middle eastern restaurants. The Starbucks had moved and so had the McDonalds. But there, right where you turn onto Westbourne Grove, was the pub--unchanged.

I had been out on errands when I heard about it. I was passing the pub and saw a crowd gathered around the bar, staring at the television. I peeped inside just in time to see the World Trade Center buildings, to see one crumble and fall. I remember thinking that it had to be a film everyone was watching, not reality. I was so convinced it was fiction that I kept on walking. I went into a shoe store in a state of denial.

I keep walking down Westbourne Grove; the shoe store is not there anymore. The Blockbuster next door is vacant, an empty shell, the sign still hanging.

In the shoe store, the store music had been turned off and a newscaster’s voice said something about a plane crash, something about the Pentagon, about the World Trade Center. Now I couldn’t deny it anymore. I left and walked quickly to the Sufi House. What was going on? What was happening?

The birds are chirping even though it is dark. Chepstow Place is devoid of people, just the sound of glasses clanking and laughter from the pub next to the Sufi House. There it is, the place where my whole world changed. It looked so innocent, the door painted lemon yellow. The lion’s head knocker still had a fleck of blue paint on it, a remnant from the last painting I was here for. Tati, the Sufi house caretaker, had spray-painted the knocker gold and the Sufi master had yelled at her because it was a gaudy thing to do and it washed off in the rain anyway. I stood there, contemplating whether to knock the door or not. There was a light on inside, but the curtains were drawn on the front window.

That day ten years ago, I returned to the Sufi House. They had been painting the door and carpeting the first floor, so there were Sufi workers in coveralls standing about. One of the Sufis who lived there, a businessman, had set up a small portable television on a ladder and everyone stood around watching. As I entered, he said, “You’re towers have fallen.” Tati told him to shut up. “There were people jumping off buildings,” she admonished.  “Have respect!” He gloated. I stood frozen, watching the footage over and over again. “My” towers?

The people at the pub next door are staring at me now, wondering why I’m standing in front of the house next door doing nothing. Ten years ago suddenly seems like yesterday. I wasn’t dirt poor anymore, living on grants, sleeping on floors, counting every pence. I have a good job and make enough money to be frivolous. I never became a writer like I thought I would; instead I write speeches and marketing materials. The Master of the Order is dead and his son who lived here is the new Master and now divorced. The Arabic writing on the window has been removed. Praying inside is forbidden. I live in New York now; I have my own apartment. All the things I was upset about then mean nothing now. I wanted to reach back in time and tell that forlorn, lonely girl, “It all works out.” I did not knock the door. I couldn’t. I had come and that was enough. The circle was complete. I kept walking; I had a hotel to return to in another part of town.