Like many American school kids, I felt vulnerable after the 9/11 attacks. What made my experience so different was not so much that I was a Muslim living in a Muslim country, but that I was an American living near the Taliban. My family had to flee our home in Pakistan because the Taliban had put a bounty on the heads of all Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I watched the events unfold live sitting in my parents’ room in Lahore, Pakistan, which had the only television with cable on it. The only cable news channel we had at the time was Fox News. “Fox & Friends“ was on with Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and E.D. Hill. Lahore is nine hours ahead of New York, so everything happened right after school for us.