I've always read of Americans knowing exactly where they were when JFK was killed. I realized that moment ten years ago. I was a world away in the Philippines at my first consulting position. The workday had ended, and people were checking the online news before heading home. My colleagues were telling me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I immediately thought it must have been a Cessna. But as we continued to received reports over CNN, it became clear that it was a commercial aircraft. It was horrifying to think of.

Little did I know how unspeakable it would turn into. Walking to my daily commute, my mom phoned me as she was watching reports pour in over cable. She told me that another plane had hit the second tower. People began to talk amongst themselves wondering what on earth was going on. As I was nearing home, my mom called me once more. After I hung up the phone I told my fellow passengers that the Towers had collapsed. There was only stunned silence.

Upon arriving, I turned on the TV to listen to countless replays of Peter Jennings, the most gracious and eloquent of news anchors, at a loss for words. People I knew talked about it for days. It was simply one of the saddest days I've ever known. But at that time, though unfathomably tragic for those directly affected by it, 9/11 was just a distant news item. In the days, months and years to follow, I would learn just how much it would touch those I knew and cared for. How it would affect my family both immediate and extended. And how it would shape my relationship with all things American.

Al-Qaeda brought itself into the forefront of the world's consciousness. The perpetrators were revealed to be from Saudi Arabia, and for good or bad, the anguish and pain that swirled from the tragedy had found its target. Western sentiment grew to associate this most despicable of acts to something only Muslims could perpetrate.

My mind immediately turned to my dear uncle Samir and his family in Saudi Arabia. My mother and sister wanted to reach him and find out how they were and for months we could not reach them. And in that time of uncertainty, the unthinkable happened: I began to doubt his goodness. This kind, funny and thoughtful man who had taught me to think for myself; who had been like a big brother to me; suddenly became suspect in the shadow of fear and paranoia.

Images of Arabs dancing in the streets after the attack didn't help. And I had learned later that uncle Samir's kids, who were entering adolescence at the time, had done the same. These were the little tykes I played with on Samir's summer vacations to our home. I saw them when they were mere babies. They looked up to me like a big brother. We told jokes and saw movies together. They even taught me how to ice skate. "How could they?" I thought.

But I didn't know. I didn't live their lives in the Middle East. I didn't know how my Iraqi-born uncle saw the Palestinian cause being actively campaigned against when he grew up in England. I didn't know Saddam Hussein was an American-propped dictator before he became its sworn enemy. I didn't know about the history of Western entanglement in the region. I didn't know.

I did know that there was something deadly wrong about the characterization of Muslims. When I had studied in Australia, my Asian circle was almost entirely Malaysian or Indonesian. It was the most open time of my life, and religion was hardly ever recognized. My first girlfriend Putri was Indonesian, and with her love of smoking, the Doors, and night life, she taught me not to be such a tightwad. 

Al-Qaeda drove their attacks into South East Asia by funding their partners in the region. Successful and failed bombings in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore seem to galvanize the idea that Muslims were no good. Filipinos were already at war with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front under dubious circumstances. In the shadow of 9/11 and under our gloriously stupid and corrupt ex-President Erap, it continued unnecessarily.

It made me wonder if Dubya had been taking notes. I was able to grudgingly accept America's decision to invade Afghanistan. where Bin Laden was hiding out with the Taliban, a group that had terrorized the country for more than a decade. That first US invasion was swift and successful, or so it seemed until the guerilla warfare had started, along with those pictures of torture.

I thought nothing in my lifetime could trump the evil of 9/11, but what Bush Jr. did with Iraq was equally despicable. The lies about ties with Bin Laden and supposed WMD were as clear as day, and yet it was sold and agreed upon even by the supposedly most enlightened minds of the time. It was the first time I was truly angry at America, so much so that for a month or so I refused to buy anything made in the USA. That obviously didn't last long.

If I was angry at the US, can you imagine how Samir's family felt? His sisters, aunts and uncles were still in Iraq. And from our most recent conversations, he has told me there is NOTHING in the media that can show you how devastated the country was in the last decade. Because of the Iraq War a travel ban has placed on Iraq to several Middle Eastern states, so no Iraqi to this day can travel freely to Saudi Arabia among other places. Samir, a British national on paper, desperately tried to get his family members (my family members) safely into Saudi Arabia and find work, without success.

In 2005, I decided to try my luck finding work in Malaysia. My uncle Raul and his family had lived their briefly, and said it was beautiful and orderly place. But I knew nothing of the country, and my mom and mother-in-law could only wonder, is it safe? Are they strict like in the Middle East?

They're anything but. In so many ways, they're just like the Philippines, except that most people go to Mosques instead of Churches. Many Filipinos have forgotten how richly Islam very much defined Philippine culture before the Spanish came. Malaysia is an alternate reality of the Philippines reflecting an even truer Asian identity than we've ever known. But that gets lost in the Pinoy love for all things Western.

A few years later I would be forced to go to Saudi Arabia to find work. It has been the most extreme place I have ever been in. Many things I read were true, but people don't go out on streets everyday chanting "Death to America!" as the American news media would have you believe. They understandably have their misgivings due to history, but like anybody else around the world, they want to live their lives and support their families. They aren't single entities out to destroy the U.S. of A. Such labelings remind me of the wartime propaganda, like Disney cartoons portraying Nazis or schools teaching about Commies coming to invade.

And what of my Saudi cousins who I grew up watching over? They all had finished or were finishing college in Dubai while I was in their vicinity. All of them just like any young lad or lass fresh out of school with a degree: vibrant, forward-looking, hopeful for the future, in love with pop-culture and gadgets, thinking about falling in love. I never asked them why they danced when they did, but I knew them well enough to know that they were 9 years younger and didn't know any better. They are fortunate to have seen the world and have known foreign cultures. Much more than most Americans I know.

I have another cousin named Sunny Mae who grew up in America. When I first met her in the 90s, I had a crush on her. She visited the Philippines a few years ago to reconnect with her roots. The lovely young lady I had known then had become a tough grunt who joined the military and served in Afghanistan. Imagine that. I had family on both sides of the 9/11 aftermath. She told us stories of her stint there, where she served in a nation-building capacity. She helped build schools and restore order, and described scenes of humanity in what can only be described as a literal wasteland. She would go back to the North Carolina to try and build a career as a teacher. Seeing her again made me realized that I too could not generalize about America as a single entity. There's still a goodness that only they have the capability to provide, though it gets drowned in a sea of hopelessness.

What I have learned about 9/11 is that nothing is absolute, the future is unknowable, evil has many faces, but so does goodness. But most of all, there are no labels that can stick to people. Just recently I was labelled a "big-time Liberal" by one friend, and a "poster-boy for the Right Wing Nut Jobs" by another. I'd never been called something like that in my life, having been raised in a country where political leanings are irrelevant. On my last visit to Saudi Arabia, people greatly respected Obama (Samir included) because as a US President he finally greeted them, "As-Salamu Alaykum." Saudis would laugh if you asked them if he was a Muslim.

My hope is that America will grow to learn more about the world around it. Of all the things that is bringing about its decline, it is its parochialism. The US feels that is the center of the world, and in many ways it is, but the rest of the world has caught up, and it demands the same kind of consideration it has given America. This piece is not about who is to blame, there's been enough of that. It's about how we're connected and not separate. You can't label away the rest of the world. We feel more than ever what America calls us.

Would you label my uncle Samir a terrorist? Would you label my cousin Sunny Mae a killer of Muslims? Would you label me as someone on the Left or the Right? 

It's not that simple. It never is.