The morning of September 11th, Salman Hamdani selflessly rushed to the World Trade Center to help. The 23-year-old was an emergency medical technician and police cadet, and like thousands of others, Salmon sadly died that day. “We went searching for him in different hospitals and his name was not there,” recounts his mother, Talat Hamdani.
In the weeks following, Salman, who was an American Muslim, was wrongfully linked as an accomplice to the attacks. “I remember there was a flyer circulating about Salman,” Ms. Talat recalls. “It said ‘Wanted by Terrorist Task Force.’ Reporters printed his picture and published an article that said ‘Missing or Hiding?'”
Salman’s remains were found the following April, and he was given a heroes funeral. Hundreds attended the funeral, including the city commissioner and then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and his casket was draped in the American flag. “There’s a vacuum in life when you lose a child,” says Ms. Talat. “It’s a sense of incompleteness and you always feel it. He gave me the joys of motherhood and the pains of motherhood.”
